Mmmm Brownies!

The Pentagon’s recipe for baking brownies is 26 pages long and has been making its way around the Internet recently. The recipe is pretty simple, but it also covers almost every possible certification and validation for each ingredient.

Some requirements seem straightforward, even though they are rarely listed in cookbooks. Such as requirement 3.2 on page 4, which states "all ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors."

However, some requirements seem a bit lengthy or unnecessarily complicated. For example, sections 3.2.4 list in detail the care and use of shortening in preparation for proper brownie baking. It reads, in part,

"The shortening shall have a stability of not less than 100 hours as determined by the Active Oxygen Method (AOM) in Method Cd 12-57 of the Commercial Fats and Oils chapter in the Official and Tentative Methods of the American Oil Chemists Society. The shortening may contain alpha monoglycerides and an antioxidant or combination of antioxidants, as permitted by the Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS), and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and regulations promulgated thereunder."

Is this important information? Yes, probably. But do people generally consider any of this information when they want to make brownies? No. We just want the brownies to taste good.

Procedure Matters

Even though we really just want good brownies, we rarely consider the intense process that is required to make those brownies so tasty. Each ingredient must meet quality standards and be handled correctly in order to have the final product also meet our expectations. This procedure helps ensure overall consistency and success.

In the software world, procedure helps ensure that each element of a software application works and communicates properly with every other element. Instead of ingredients, software applications require very specific communication channels, called integration points, which must send information in a very exact manner. Almost all software has multiple integration points, which help it communicate with other software programs, hardware, and other elements of the application.

Failure to follow proper procedure, or failure to properly integrate the application, will cause the application to error, crash, or fail. Software programmers and developers need to be able to follow these procedures, but also anticipate additional potential difficulties that may arise. The software needs to know what to do if a specific integration point is temporarily disabled or offline.

For example, take an e-commerce application for the iPhone. In order to work properly, it must be able to communicate with the phone’s operating system and hardware, with an external website and database, and with payment card companies. Each of these, especially when dealing with sensitive payment card information, must follow a very carefully outlined procedure in order to function properly. Even then, proper integration may occasionally fail, and so backup procedures should also be implemented to manage errors.

From a developer’s point of view, process and planning for contingencies makes the software successful. It separates skilled software programmers, from the unskilled and inexperienced. From everyone else’s point of view, we just want it to work right, and be easy to use.

As custom software developers at Amadeus Consulting, we are used to working with complicated systems that have tens, sometimes hundreds, of integration points. Having an intuitive understanding of proper procedures, as well as the foresight to plan for potential errors, helps us to build custom additions to existing software platforms.

Making Delicious Software

Possibly the most important part of the Pentagon’s brownie recipe is section 3.3.5, which ensures adequate chocolate frosting. It reads "The brownies shall be completely enrobed with a continuous uniform chocolate coating (see 3.2.14) in an amount which shall be not less than 29 percent by weight of the finished product."

Like frosting covers a brownie, delicious software describes what is put on top of the code and internal workings. It is the user interface (UI): the pictures, the graphics, and everything we see. But in order for it to be delicious, the inside needs to work well too. Great software developers help make creativity possible. They provide the framework and function that is required to give the creative design team the freedom to do their jobs effectively.

Sometimes people make the assumption that procedure and process limit creativity because of its rigid nature. We seek to prove that it is because of proper process that the end product can turn out so tasty, beautiful and delicious. Like the hand built engines of Mercedes-AMG, or the beautiful hand carved sculptures of the Renaissance, process does not mean that the end result cannot be a work of art, tuned to performance, or precisely targeted to produce a result.

In the same way, we make software that fulfills a need, meets or beats expectations, and leaves a feeling of satisfaction. Delicious software is a team effort, just like the best brownies have the right balance of frosting and substance, without letting one overbalance the other.

As our creative design team and development teams work together to develop custom software applications, or do software development consulting for our clients, we always focus on what makes a piece of software delicious. We understand that individual tastes and preferences vary – among our clients as well as among their customers – and we seek to bring those elements together into a "delicious" custom software solution.