51 Core Abilities of Successful Software
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51 Core Abilities of Successful Software

To be successful, a project must balance these 51 core abilities


  1. Accessibility
  2. Affordability
  3. Beauty
  4. Build
  5. Caching
  6. Code Coverage
  7. Compatibility
  8. Complexity
  9. Consistency
  10. Credibility
  11. Cyclomatic complexity
  12. Discoverability
  13. Documentation
  14. Efficiency
  15. Ethics
  16. Extensibility
  17. Honesty
  18. Integration
  19. Licensing
  20. Logging and instrumentability
  21. Maintainability
  22. Marketability
  23. Memorability
  24. Modularity
  25. Open-ness
  26. Optimisibility
  27. Originality
  28. Parallelability
  29. Performance
  30. Platform versatility
  31. Popularity
  32. Power
  33. Practicality
  34. Predictability
  35. Purity
  36. Readability
  37. Reliability
  38. Remarkability
  39. Responsiveness
  40. Reusability
  41. Robustness
  42. Scalability
  43. Scriptability (automatability)
  44. Security
  45. Simplicity
  46. Testability
  47. Transparency
  48. Trustworthiness
  49. Usability
  50. User eXperience
  51. Versatility

You have room for three.

Security and usability are two.

Pick one.

[Apologies to Scott Adams who provided the template. See dilbert cartoon (here too)]





'Rinat Abdullin' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:53:27 GMT, sez:

This is lovely.

Although I do not understand why this list contains the code quality aspects. Unfortunately usually they have little to do with the real-world success.



'Zooba' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:26:07 GMT, sez:

I choose "Parallelability." That means I can have more choices at the same time, yes?



'stovell' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:44:40 GMT, sez:

Marketability, discoverability, and popularity. Hopefully that's all I need to make people give me money, then I can do another iteration :)



'lb' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:47:30 GMT, sez:

@stovell:
sorry but since you neglected scalability and security, it crashed as soon as it became popular, then a hacker stole your insecure code, improved and made the millions you should've been making.



'Mike Breen' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:11:57 GMT, sez:

I gotta go with "simplicity"



'mike' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:54:41 GMT, sez:

What about "cool"? Core requirement for the all-important 9- to 64-year old audience of gamers.



'Suraj Barkale' on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:55:10 GMT, sez:

This reminds me of a small passage of text in a wonderful book by Samit Basu. Here is a very close replica of it : (Note: you better read the original, my writing is not what it used to be. It's worst)

A man and his camel are traveling in a desert. There is a sand storme going on, they are trudging along the path and the man finds a magic lamp laying in the sand.
Remembering the stories, he picks it up & starts rubbing it vigorously. Dreaming about the princes he is going to get. Behold, a Genie come out of lamp. The Genie is a monstrous creature now standing besides the man looking at his lamp.
The man says "I have freed you from your prison. You must grant me three wishes". The camel however takes a look at the Genie & starts running. The man is insistent "Grant me my three wishes Genie".
Genie blinks at the man, takes some long strides, picks up the Camel and eats it. The man realizing his doom starts running fruitlessly.
After his snack Genie find the lamp, now half buried in the sand, takes it out and goes inside. Thinking about the stupid man & tasty camel who disturbed his sleep. "Freed from prison" indeed, the lamp is his home since he can remember and he just wants to get back to sleep.
However, a troubling thought keep the Genie awake a long time - "Why *three* wishes?"



'Rinat Abdullin' on Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:48:27 GMT, sez:

Suraj Barkale,

The story is beautiful in this context. Thank you for sharing it!



'mutlaq' on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:17:07 GMT, sez:

What about stability ?




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