The Essential Point

Dear Reader,

Companion to the essential principle is the essential point.

What's the essential point for understanding the VISTA software lifecycle?

There are many wrong answers to that question and only one right one. The problem is that each of us prefers one or more wrong answers, for reasons we think are really good reasons. Nothing I can say can compare to the attraction of those reasons, so I'm not going to answer this question for you.

Instead I leave you with the exhortation that you have work to do on this problem, that there is no shortcut to answering it, that the answer matters, and that you'll have to work diligently and scrupulously over a long time to peel away the layers of your misunderstanding of this essential point in search of the truth.

That's not a bad thing. Work is good. Work on the right things and that work will transform you into a better person. This work, the work to discover the key to understanding the VISTA lifecycle - the real key, not the one you like - will do that too, and it'll make you a better VISTA manager.

Without this work it's all too easy, inevitable really, to violate the essential principle, as VISTA's history demonstrates over and over.

So I'll leave you with this task - it was yours already - and turn away from the eight essential points for now to a different perspective on the VISTA software lifecycle.

Yours truly,
Rick