Ways Starbucks Is Like A Dev Team
An author identifies some of the ways Starbucks order taking and processing mirrors software:
I just returned from a 2 week trip to Japan. One of the more familiar sights was the ridiculous number of Starbucks coffee shops, especially around Shinjuku and Roppongi. While waiting for my “Hotto Cocoa” I started to think about how Starbucks processes drink orders. Starbucks, like most other businesses is primarily interested in maximizing throughput of orders. More orders equals more revenue. As a result they use asynchronous processing.
That’s all well and good, but we here at QAHY want to extend the metaphor further.
Ways Starbucks is like a development team:
- They’re very expensive for what you get.
- Anything besides the basic product costs extra.
- The customer is the only QA.
- Those who participate believe their in a superior class, but the rest of us use the word clique.
Ways Starbucks is not like your development team:
- Starbucks produces the same thing over and over again, so they get good at it, unlike your development team who build slightly different things using new technologies they want to learn on the fly. It’s like having every barrista be a trainee every day.
- Barristas won’t try to adjust a drink if the order changes in midstream. They rightfully throw it out and start again and sometimes charge you again. A development team will just try to remix the existing espresso, sugar, and flavor shot so that you get hot chocolate at the end instead of a triple Venti cappuccino.
- Starbucks gets its money up front and doesn’t have to wheedle and do just one more thing to get its paycheck.
- You like to see a Starbucks product or representative first thing in the morning.
And in closing, I’d like to point out that management from your software development team could probably run a Starbucks, but not vice versa.
Feel free to add your own below.
(Link seen on Megan McArdle via Instapundit. That’s enough chain of custody to introduce it as evidence, werd.)
