The final type of classic mistakes that I want
to mention are technology related mistakes. One typical mistake
in this context is the silver-bullet syndrome. What does
that mean? Well, the silver-bullet syndrome refers to situations
in which there is too much reliance on the
advertised benefits of some previously unused technology. For example,
a new technology. And the problem here is that
we cannot expect technology alone to solve our software
development issues. So we should not rely too
much on technology alone. Another typical mistake is to
switch or add tools in the middle of
a project. And sometimes it can make sense to
upgrade a tool, but introducing new tools, which
can have a steep learning curve, has almost always
negative effects. Finally, a common unforgivable mistake is
the lack of an automated version control system for
your code and for your various artifacts. Manual and
ad hoc solutions are just not an option. It is
way too easy to make mistakes, use out of
date versions, be unable to find a previous working version,
and so on. I saw that happening many times,
and it always results in a disaster. So be warned,
use a version control system and an automated one. And
actually we will use version control systems in our projects.