The "Yes, But" Syndrome

14 July 2010

One of the most frustrating, pervasive, and seemingly downright sinister problems in all of application development is the “Yes, But” syndrome, being the observation of the users’ reaction to every piece of software I have ever developed.

For whatever reason, I always observe two immediate, distinct, and separate reactions when the users see the system implementation for the first time:

• “Wow, this is so cool; we can really use this, what a neat job, atta boy,” and so on. • “Yes, but, hmmmmm, now that I see it, what about this … ? Wouldn’t it be nice if … ? Whatever happened to … ?”

The roots of the “Yes, But” syndrome appear to lie deep in the nature of software as an intangible intellectual process.