Are Software Factories too complicated to be used in the real world?

Continuing this thought, one of the more interesting answers that came up at teh TechEd Architecture panel by Guy Ron is that the Software Factories initiative is most likely to fail from the evidence thus far. He mentioned a big project for the healthcare industry (HL7 Software Factory) and how, even today, a long time after it started, it still has not finished. Microsoft was trying to build (with third parties) the full object model of the HL7 so that applications can be built against it.

For now, it has proved too complicated to come up with such generic components to be reused in “factory floor” applications, which may be a testament to upcoming difficulties that the software industry will face when trying to get on board with this methodology.

Guy mentioned that it may prove useful for only smaller scale projects and domain (like UI) and not for “real world” domains.

That’s an interesting thought that I had not considered and I can certainly see the logic behind it. Personally, I’m not sure about Factories. I think they are a step, some step, forward. We’ve only been doing this for a few decades. We have a lot to learn. Software is still a craftsmanship, and not a manufactured product. How do we move to that Cross Posted from Blogs.Microsoft.Co.Il/Blogs/Royo