I recently read Dreaming in Code in which author Scott Rosenberg watches Mitch Kapor spend three years and lots of money building new software that, as of this blog posting, still hasn’t reached version 1.0.

As I have my own code dreams, I was naturally concerned. I could dismiss these worries by the relative complexity of our projects. Mitch Kapor wants to take on the entire concept of how we organize our life electronically. Jamseed is simply trying to be a site that allows musicians to solicit money from fans in exchange for tickets, songs, and backstage time with the band.

But a week ago I was, literally, called on my conceit. This call was a teleconference. Me at home with a cat in my lap, and Shannon, the dean of computer science at a local university, and his two student developers, Rose and Steve, at the college. It was to be the grand unveiling of their solid month (and lots of overtime) of development.

I think the tone was set (and rapport damaged) when I said, “I’m not sure we’ve made any progress from the version coded by the other programmer in May.” I should have found a better way to express my disappointment. But when I clicked on the Jamseed logo and the site crashed, I couldn’t help myself.

“It’s just an alpha version,” Shannon said in defense of Steve and Rose. “You can’t go clicking anywhere.” And he went on to describe all the solid work that had gone into building the database and critical foundations.

But I was thinking about how I couldn’t show Jamseed yet to the potential investors, musicians, news outlets, or even my business partners. Most importantly, we just weren’t ready for business, any business. I thought of the passages in Dreaming in Code where Kapor finds himself torn between “just implementing” and “building the idea”—and I imagined myself never ever leaving my day job at World Wide Wicket.

This is where I diverge with Kapor. I see the problem not as code, but as people—specifically, their alignment. All the missteps in development (like allowing the logo to lead to a 404 page not found error) were based on people having different goals.

For the students, Jamseed is a summer project—a way to earn some money while learning. For me, it contains all the pent up dreams of my entire career and hoped for eradication of the black mark of my last failed venture. This is a gap in alignment.

I was at fault for not telling them what I needed, and the developers at fault for not being sure they understood. Every employer and employee have the same challenge. If you don’t know what my goal is, then we will fail together.

What do you think? Is it, to borrow from Shakespeare, “The code’s the thing.” Or are all problems in software development essentially the same problem with every project: aligning people with the goal.