The 'Trust Me' Koan

“Would I lie to you” – Charles and Eddy

One of the premises of this blog is the importance of experience, not only so that you know you are doing but that others believe that you know as well. This story shows why. A large, complex, development was underway, as usual racing against the clock. No one on the team, apart from myself, had ever built a major system from scratch, as with most of the world's development staff they had spent their time maintaining a system. We had designed the system as a series of modules, 20 in fact, and because some of the modules took longer to design than others, and because sometimes we had to go back to the drawing board there was no real 'overall design'. Nevertheless everything was going well and the project was making good progress until the team called a meeting to ask me a key questions;

Will the system work?

Will it all fit together?

Are we doing the right things?

And the responses (exaggerated slightly!);

Of course it will!

I've done this before!

Trust me ! (best said with Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglasses on)!

Did I know it would work? Of course not, they were building the software, not me! But all software developers go through this period of self doubt, of thinking that it is just all too complex to ever fit together, and this is where experience can pull you through. Of course you could always lie! ...wait a minute, it's time to conjugate a verb!

I lie
you lie
he lies
she lies
We lie
They Lie

Yes, they do actually, especially if they work in marketing, and you'd better remember that.