Takeoff: What software development can learn from aviation

Whether it's the small pet project at home, the open source project on GitHub or the large enterprise application at work: A big and important part of the software development process is good craftsmanship.

Not without good reason do we compare creating software solutions to building a house. Even the vocabulary sounds similar: We "build" applications, we "connect" systems and "do the plumbing", we "bolt" infrastructure together and "tinker" workarounds for existing problems. However a lot of things that are simply non-negotiable for a good craftsman are often ignored or interpreted in a creative way when dealing with software.

But why? A lot of professions have been around a lot longer than software development and have developed "best practices" to handle typical problems and challenges. Especially aviation puts emphasis on precision and reliability - who wants to hear that his flight has been cancelled because of missing or bad quality maintenance?

So we as software engineers can definitely benefit from taking a closer look on aircraft maintenance or the processes of a pilot to learn from them, optimize our processes and last but not least try to reduce the stress that we see over and over again.