Organizational Leakage

I had a bad experience this weekend at Tim Horton's. My girlfriend and I ordered the sandwich combos which include a doughnut and drink. The nice lady behind the counter quickly got us our doughnuts and drink, put them on the counter, then proceeded to help the next customer in line. I waited at the counter for our sandwiches, growing increasingly impatient. After many minutes, the same lady that took the order originally asked what I was waiting for. I told her that I was waiting for our two sandwiches and her reply was "oh, okay, that's not something I have to worry about". This annoyed me but what does it have to do with software? I'll get to that.

As a Tim Horton's customer, I don't care that they have decided to separate jobs so that one employee is a counter/drink/doughnut person while another is a sandwich maker. My transaction is with Tim Horton's and their internal organizational structure should be irrelevant to me. Just get me my ham and cheese, please!

The same "organizational leakage" occurs in software when error messages indicate the module at fault. Customers don't care about modules... they bought a product not a bunch of modules!