Bottom Line
People are human. They make mistakes. If you happen to work on a project where absolutely everything goes as planned, consider yourself lucky. Most projects encounter at least a few bumps in the road. However, you can avoid the big mistakes by ensuring that you address the one concern that many projects ignore: the human equation. Almost every terrifying project trouble you encounter boils down to a failure to address the humans who interact with the software, rather than a problem with the software itself.
John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 83 books and more than 300 articles to date, on topics ranging from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads-down programming. His current project is LINQ for Dummies. His technical editing skills have helped more than 60 authors refine the content of their manuscripts.