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Innovation Debt

blog.pbell.com

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Re: Innovation Debt

#11

Post by mbesto »

eitally wrote: post #10
mbesto wrote: post #3

> You’ll lose your best developers So what? If you have paying customers and the software "works" this isn't a huge downfall. New, young and challenged developers will gladly follow in the foot steps of seasoned coders before them. > Recruiting will get harder This is a problem for every company with developers. As long as you have paying customers, recruiting isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. Is…

This idea is not aimed at startups. It's a huge problem for large enterprises, albeit less so for product companies than for captive IT orgs creating internal systems & utilities. If you, or anyone else, would like specific examples from one company -- along with discussion of remediation attempts -- feel free to email me. When the economy went south in 2007/2008 we dismissed about 18% of our global IT org and didn't…

Fair enough -- loads of enterprise IT and IT software experience on my back...

captive IT orgs creating internal systems & utilities.

Again, so what? These are _costs_ centers and therefore treated as such. As long as the accounting team can add to the general ledger and the trucks ship the goods, the company doesn't go broke and people get paid. If you need innovation for your company to survive, then you do the innovator's solution - create an organisation outside the rules and realms of your existing structure to innovate.

This is all too wishful and pie in the sky type thinking.

Re: Innovation Debt

#12

Post by pnathan »

mbesto wrote: post #3

> You’ll lose your best developers So what? If you have paying customers and the software "works" this isn't a huge downfall. New, young and challenged developers will gladly follow in the foot steps of seasoned coders before them. > Recruiting will get harder This is a problem for every company with developers. As long as you have paying customers, recruiting isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. Is…

I don't want to get into an extended discussion, but in my opinion, most web based start ups don't do innovation. They build a small service people want and then 'coast' quite profitably and happily on that.

The heavy duty R&D and innovation requirements start coming into play for different sorts of shops. E.g., enterprises or r&d-driven consulting shops. If you don't have R&D/innovating driving improvements to your products, you will wind up dead in the water.

Re: Innovation Debt

#13

Post by setrofim_ »

mbesto wrote: post #3

> You’ll lose your best developers So what? If you have paying customers and the software "works" this isn't a huge downfall. New, young and challenged developers will gladly follow in the foot steps of seasoned coders before them. > Recruiting will get harder This is a problem for every company with developers. As long as you have paying customers, recruiting isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. Is…

This is a very short-sighted view. While losing great devs will not put your company out of business over night, it may start a death spiral that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Hiring may be easy for you now, but once your start up starts falling behind the curve, if will suddenly look a lot less attractive to new talent.

> If there is a new piece of functionality required then smart developers will simply find the tools, frameworks, libraries, they need to solve that problem. They don't need this dictated to them.

What smart developers? They have all left to work for your competitor. Besides finding the right tools, frameworks, etc takes time, which is precisely what this article is arguing for.

> Are your customers still paying? Good, get over this aspect then

Your customers will stop paying when something better comes along. And it will come along because, unlike your company, others are innovating.

> You also are inherently decreasing their productivity by teasing them with new technologies that may never be used.

Maybe, but not by as much as you'd think. Looking into new technologies may often improve productivity with the technology currently being used (by bringing in ideas from the new tech).

> What about the increased costs (real actual currency HR costs) that are included in constantly taking your resources off the software maintenance

You don't have to constantly take resources off. Just occasionally. A day-long hackathon a year, and a couple of lunchtime sessions a moth is really not that much.

> I think this idea of innovation debt is a clear non-problem for me and most web based startups in my situation.

The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it.

Re: Innovation Debt

#14

Post by mbesto »

setrofim_ wrote: post #13
mbesto wrote: post #3

> You’ll lose your best developers So what? If you have paying customers and the software "works" this isn't a huge downfall. New, young and challenged developers will gladly follow in the foot steps of seasoned coders before them. > Recruiting will get harder This is a problem for every company with developers. As long as you have paying customers, recruiting isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. Is…

This is a very short-sighted view. While losing great devs will not put your company out of business over night, it may start a death spiral that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Hiring may be easy for you now, but once your start up starts falling behind the curve, if will suddenly look a lot less attractive to new talent. > If there is a new piece of functionality required then smart d…

The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it.

And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right?

You know what kills companies? Cashflow.

Re: Innovation Debt

#15

Post by mattgreenrocks »

pnathan wrote: post #12
mbesto wrote: post #3

> You’ll lose your best developers So what? If you have paying customers and the software "works" this isn't a huge downfall. New, young and challenged developers will gladly follow in the foot steps of seasoned coders before them. > Recruiting will get harder This is a problem for every company with developers. As long as you have paying customers, recruiting isn't as big of a problem as people make it out to be. Is…

I don't want to get into an extended discussion, but in my opinion, most web based start ups don't do innovation. They build a small service people want and then 'coast' quite profitably and happily on that. The heavy duty R&D and innovation requirements start coming into play for different sorts of shops. E.g., enterprises or r&d-driven consulting shops. If you don't have R&D/innovating driving improvements to your…

Which is funny, because they often bill themselves as 'changing the world.'

There is a distinct dearth of R&D-to-product shops, and our industry suffers greatly for it. Intellectually, some people need more than displaying a DB on a web page, no matter how profitable it is at this time.

Re: Innovation Debt

#16

Post by eitally »

mbesto wrote: post #11
eitally wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea is not aimed at startups. It's a huge problem for large enterprises, albeit less so for product companies than for captive IT orgs creating internal systems & utilities. If you, or anyone else, would like specific examples from one company -- along with discussion of remediation attempts -- feel free to email me. When the economy went south in 2007/2008 we dismissed about 18% of our global IT org and didn't…

Fair enough -- loads of enterprise IT and IT software experience on my back... captive IT orgs creating internal systems & utilities. Again, so what? These are _costs_ centers and therefore treated as such. As long as the accounting team can add to the general ledger and the trucks ship the goods, the company doesn't go broke and people get paid. If you need innovation for your company to survive, then you do the inn…

I should have been clearer: innovation debt when combined with technical debt is the issue. When the internal systems stagnate and become a) unstable, b) un-supportable, c) un-upgradable, there is a direct impact to business operations, and escaping from the cycle is time consuming and painful.

I did exactly as you suggested, btw, and created a team whose explicit charter is innovation & directed R&D.

Re: Innovation Debt

#17

Post by Retric »

mbesto wrote: post #11
eitally wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea is not aimed at startups. It's a huge problem for large enterprises, albeit less so for product companies than for captive IT orgs creating internal systems & utilities. If you, or anyone else, would like specific examples from one company -- along with discussion of remediation attempts -- feel free to email me. When the economy went south in 2007/2008 we dismissed about 18% of our global IT org and didn't…

Fair enough -- loads of enterprise IT and IT software experience on my back... captive IT orgs creating internal systems & utilities. Again, so what? These are _costs_ centers and therefore treated as such. As long as the accounting team can add to the general ledger and the trucks ship the goods, the company doesn't go broke and people get paid. If you need innovation for your company to survive, then you do the inn…

Thinking in terms of skimping on 'cost centers' is stupid. From the development side nothing changes when managing software for internal use vs. selling that same software. What people forget is if your internal software improves in functionality you capture 100% of that value, the only problem is assigning that savings to the software vs the shipping department or whatever.

What is often forgotten is time is the hardest thing to gain in software development. 1 person for 10 years can get a lot more done than 10 people for 1 year.

Re: Innovation Debt

#18

Post by setrofim_ »

mbesto wrote: post #14
setrofim_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very short-sighted view. While losing great devs will not put your company out of business over night, it may start a death spiral that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Hiring may be easy for you now, but once your start up starts falling behind the curve, if will suddenly look a lot less attractive to new talent. > If there is a new piece of functionality required then smart d…

The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it. And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right? You know what kills companies? Cashflow.

> You know what kills companies? Cashflow.

That, in turn, gets (eventually) impacted by innovation debt.

> And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right?

No, not at all; and I don't believe the author of the post does either. There is a whole bunch of things that can kill a company (especially a startup), and a lot of them are going to be bigger and more urgent then innovation dept. You should definitely focus on dealing with those. However, innovation dept should not be dismissed entirely, especially since it doesn't take much to offset it.

Re: Innovation Debt

#19

Post by stevenameyer »

mbesto wrote: post #14
setrofim_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very short-sighted view. While losing great devs will not put your company out of business over night, it may start a death spiral that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Hiring may be easy for you now, but once your start up starts falling behind the curve, if will suddenly look a lot less attractive to new talent. > If there is a new piece of functionality required then smart d…

The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it. And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right? You know what kills companies? Cashflow.

If you have code that is difficult to maintain and build upon and as a result are loosing a lot of your top development talent then this will eventually kill the majority of companies.

But like you said if you have little to no cashflow right now then that is going to kill the business faster. It's all about finding a balance. You need to make sure that you have the cashflow to get to the point where having a sustainable code base and talent matters. If you worry too much about innovation debt off the bat you'll never get out the front door, but if you don't worry about it at all you will likely reach a point where everything eventually comes crashing down.

Re: Innovation Debt

#20

Post by ambiate »

peterbell_nyc wrote: post #7
ambiate wrote: post #4

I'm currently working at a company that is facing this problem. The programming team has stagnated on repairing legacy systems. Innovation and modernization is a business objective, but the philosophical issue of losing 'expert business knowledge' due to technological evolution presents barriers in the process. Our code ranges from 10 to 20 years old. Most of the principles involved in that based are from those years…

Yeah - that's a really hard change. For anyone dealing with a legacy system, I always recommend Mike Feathers' book on "working effectively with legacy code". He talks about lots of patterns for dealing with this. I'd probably see if I could start to break off a piece of a system, bring in a consultant or new dev for a couple of months, pair them with one of your team and rotate every few weeks. You won't lose too mu…

Thank you for the advice and reference. It is difficult to find actual advice in these circumstances other than 'consult consult consult.'

That last line really shifted my outlook on this experience.

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