Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Can we all stop saying "home grown" software like it's a bad thing?

I have a problem. I like things that are home grown. I can tell you, the tomatoes from my garden are better than the ones in the grocery store. In fact, if you look down your nose at home grown food, take a look at this article
and it might just change your mind - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370130/Just-fresh-fresh-food-supermarket.html.

So, if home grown food can (and in my opinion, usually is) better than the off-the-shelf stuff, why do we talk about "home grown" software like it's a questionable-looking mole that has grown on our IT infrastructure? Sure, some custom software is bad. So is some commercial software. However, some custom software is brilliant, well-developed, scale-able, integrate-able and does exactly what the organization needs.

In the Healthcare industry, most of the revolutionary game-changing software that I know about started as internally-developed "home grown" software.

So, here's what I'm asking for: Can we stop talking about "home grown" software like it's an inherently bad thing and change the conversation to good software vs. bad software?

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