I’m enjoying building stuff again, after years of managing stuff being built – but as I look around, we’ve still not learned basic lessons about how to build useful technology.
Here are some thoughts.
1. People use technology.
Many tech folk seem to think that their software is going to be the most important thing for the client.
Some of the more extreme ones see users as interchangeable identikit people that live in little boxes and will do what they’re told.
Then they’re surprised when those people have views, get frustrated because the software doesn’t work for them, and push back on adoption.
Build for users – not for some ideal or ideology that’s been dreamt up on a whiteboard.
2. Managers think more about people than technology
I did a session with a manager recently to talk through all the things that they were trying to sort out.
Technology didn’t come up a single time.
Alignment did. Strategy did. Communication did.
Most managerial problems are people problems. They are also opportunities.
Learn how people work – and then make something that’s going to make it easier for them to get work done.
3. Simple and Fast = Useful
I came into the workforce with a bunch of programming skills and quickly realised that the business world runs on Excel, not Perl or python.
It still does. SaaS has not changed that equation. Most SaaS vendors still tell you about the option to export data to Excel.
We build services that take advantage of Microsoft not because it’s the best tool but because it has overwhelmingly dominant distribution – every company over a certain size will give its employees access to this ecosystem.
I’d rather build something that can be bought and used tomorrow than something that takes months to get through procurement and legal and IT and corp security.
Do you recognise this picture? Agree or disagree? Anything else to add?
Handcrafted insight 