The Ariane 5 Failure provides one of the most interesting examples of software failing because of reuse. 1/
(The report is at sunnyday.mit.edu/nasa-class/Ari…) 2/
In a nutshell, the problem was that they strapped a component from the Ariane 4 onto the more-powerful 5. Because of that extra power, censors started sending out numbers that were unexpectedly large. The resulting overflow cause caused the explosion. 3/
There are many lessons, there. One is that, simply because something works reliably in some context gives you no assurance that it will work in a different context. Software "reuse" is dangerous. 4/
The more interesting inference, however, is that we have the same problem with development practices and processes. You cannot infer that a process that works in one context will work in another. In fact, it usually doesn't. 5/
That puts into question the whole notion of adopting a canned process like Scrum or SAFe. Just because it worked in the original place gives you no guarantee that it will work for you. You will never hear this from the people in the business of selling processes, tho. 6/6
