Software & Opera, Part 1: The Music, Not The Browser

Over the past decade, I’ve done eight seasons with the Sarasota Opera. The usual reaction I get is either “Wow, I didn’t know you could sing!” or “I could totally see you as an opera singer!” I’m never quite sure if that second one is meant to be a compliment, but in either case: I can’t hold on to a note any better than to a cat. So instead of a Pavarotti-type, I’m what’s called a supernumerary, which is Latin for “extra numbers” — a non-singing extra, normally just shortened to “super”. (Because I’m male, they usually refer to me as a “super man”, which is awesome.) Also, Sarasota Opera is a very professional house — which is actually the reason for this essay — and only hires phenomenally qualified singers, who’ve formally trained for years. I, on the other hand, still haven’t figured out what a “clef” really does.

My parts are usually some kind of guard or soldier off in the background, my only reason for existence being to underline the importance of other people by escorting them on and off stage — or because they’re prisoners. Sometimes the parts are beefier, like a very cool executioner in the degradation scene in Jérusalem, or a nimble thief that scales the wall to kidnap Gilda in Rigoletto. My last role was a guy in a band in La Wally, faux-playing a faux-violin on top of a table, while trying to keep time with the actual violins in the orchestra pit, during a lively party that, of course, ends in disaster.

La Scala of Milan

At this point, you might be thinking “this is neat and all, but what does it have to do with software?” — and that’s a perfectly valid thought. The answer is that over these long years, I’ve noticed some very interesting parallels between the production of an opera and the production of software.  From my first day there back in 2010, Sarasota Opera amazed me with its clockwork precision, streamlined efficiency, and amazing courtesy and professionalism toward everyone, from principal singers, to lowly supers. And every year but this one, they deliver five operas: all on-time (same Friday every year), all impeccably sung, directed, and designed, generally getting great reviews, and involving a crew of several dozen people over a timeline of more than a year.

Can the average software company make the same claim? Apple and Google can: iOS and Android are released on a yearly cadence, like clockwork, and for the most part, they are masterful works with serious bugs being rare. However, in my experience, most other software releases are late and buggy. They’re probably buggy because they’re late and were rushed out the door, and they’re late because things didn’t go according to plan. So how does the opera — in essence a small, non-profit business — stay on plan and deliver such consistent and high quality results? What parts of that are and aren’t applicable to software development? And how much does the operatic world even have in common with that of software?

To answer the last question first, a lot:

  1. Both follow the same process: design, development, testing, narrow release, wide release
  2. Both produce highly technical works of art. Music, orchestration, choreography, and stage production are all, of course, highly technical. And if you don’t think software is a work of art, just think about how important good design is to user adoption.
  3. Both have audiences that are intolerant of bugs
  4. Both are staffed by highly trained professionals
  5. Both have administrative staff managing “the talent“, plus support staff making everything actually work.
  6. Both have the same constraints: deadlines, budgets and headcounts
  7. Both require a great deal of planning and design in order to be done well
  8. Both have a number of specialized departments that work in concert (pun intended): developers, testers, DevOps, ProdOps, UX, and product management on one side vs singers, orchestra, props, costumes, makeup, lighting, set design, and stage hand, on the other.
  9. Both have hundreds of components interacting with each other, even in parallel. Opera is generally massively parallel, especially if counting the orchestra.
  10. Both are run from compiled code: musical notation is conceptually the same thing as binary code, with each singer or musician being the processor that executes the instructions for their particular role

There are more, but ten is a nice round number. And hopefully the reason this essay exists makes more sense now. If you’re still keen, the next part talks about how an opera is produced and finally in the third part, what can be applied to the software development process — which is that projects should focus on design and testing, rather than coding. Oh wait… did that just spoil the ending? Because if not, you should also know that the other two parts are much longer, too.

Next: Software & Opera, Part Deux