I recently attended a conference that was partly on Real Estate policy. And since I was involved in projects across the spectrum from software development through data analysis and optimization up to land management / Real Estate development, I guess I have a say on that.
Software engineering is a young discipline, when I learned it, it was more of an art form where guru artisans were building their own object libraries and carrying then from project to project. There were no QA teams and information security standards meant that you had to have a magnetic card to get access to the computer room.
Now, of course things are different, and when planning a software or data project, you have to choose between various ecosystems and navigate between industry standards, but still while not an infant, SW engineering is rapidly evolving.
Real Estate on the other hand, was dealt with since Sumerians and Egyptians discovered geometry to measure plots and orient buildings. So one major difference is historical depth.
The other issue is physics. When dealing with software and data, you’re not dealing with physics, your actually working with applied math. Real Estate is all about classical physics, mainly statics, but you get to have some dynamic modelling once you’re at the extreme size, height or elevation.
When you’re not bounded by physics (at least not by classical one) you have to responsibility to control Entropy and by so try to keep it simple as possible, either by reducing the system variables or its dynamic behavior.
Design & Planning
From Use Case perspective, Real Estate projects are dealing with several simple ones that revolve placing and moving physical objects through structural bindings. In software projects the Use cases tend to be more involved, however in modern IT projects, you actually use IT products as large building blocks and in both environments the project architect is responsible for the design stage.
Approval of the design stage in Real Estate is usually given by the local municipal authority, due to buildings residing in the same space. With software, modern architecture is enabling isolation from neighboring processing, but in some ecosystems (like Apple) you do have to have some kind approval by the monarch.
Execution
Execution of the planed design is usually very straight forward in the building industry, you dig foundations, get building materials in various completion stages into the building site and stack them up using various machines and manual labor. There isn’t much automation going on and innovation is mainly focused on materials and prefabrication methods. In the software industry and IT, in contrast there is a great deal of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) due to the fact that in contrast to the building industry, the main cost driver is labor cost, while in the building industry it’s the cost of materials.
Monitoring and process control
In both industries process control is performed at the production site during the fabrication (real or virtual) and the end of each phase there are testing and verification and at the end of production there are acceptance tests. The two main differences are that in the building industry there is almost no opportunity for versioning and change management after deployment is extremely difficult, while in the software industry due the distance from physical world, one get’s a chance to deploy and chance during the life cycle of the project. This difference caused the second which is the proliferation of Agile methodologies in the software industries while the building industry has mainly stayed with the common waterfall paradigm. Yes, you can be agile if your world segmentation is modeled on non physical entities, it’s harder to do that while erecting walls and dealing with various subcontractors that are not part of your team.
Closure and epilogue
Delivery and post delivery processes are remarkably similar in both industries, as they involve people and closed feedback loop to gain insights on the differences and perceived errors with the finished outcome. The main difference is that this feedback loop in the software industry is extremely quick, so quick changes and deployment of those changes can be made almost on the spot. In the building industry that process takes years as some of the corrections are slow to be spotted and are not easy the fix (think about locating a leak in the floor and the hustle to mend it). In the software industry is just a matter of downloading a patch or changing a script.
