Have you ever noticed that people tend to blame software for project problems? Or worse, for people problems?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and decided to post after I read Robert Green’s Cadalyst series on the “tool worship trap“. These articles describe how easy it can be to get caught up in the promises of new software (and yes, I’ve been there!), and the reality checks you need to be sure your expectations don’t get out of hand.

But this attitude has a flip side: fear of new technology. Or if not fear exactly, a transference of existing issues onto new software. I’m mostly thinking about Revit today, but there will probably be more examples in a future post.

• “We’re over budget because we did this project in Revit.” (Are you sure it’s not because of all the client-driven changes?)
• “Revit should have notified us that the slab openings moved.” (Maybe. But how would we have handled this in AutoCAD?)
• “I thought coordination would be easier now.” (Well, it can be. But you still have to talk to each other.)

Basically, whenever I hear a complaint or an objection to a Revit-based process, I try to find out if it’s an issue now anyway, regardless of software, and whether it’s something that we could fix if we just talked to the person on the other end.

Revit’s not perfect. (Far from it…although it is getting better all the time.) But I don’t think it deserves all the blame it accumulates for problems that are either long-standing collaboration challenges — that could be just as true for two people working on a Word doc — or that can be traced to other project management issues.

Just some Friday musings…