You Want IT When?

When I review the articles published to this site over the last quarter, there is a dominate theme for the quarter.   The theme deals with the mistaken trade-offs of delivering products faster.  Our culture has become increasingly impetuous.  Many buy homes without saving for down payments.  Many lease to drive cars that would be, otherwise, too expensive to purchase outright.  The investment community has become increasingly speculative where promising high risk investments are outrageously favored over modestly priced companies with strong balance sheets, good earnings, and promising but modest growth rates.  Parents purchase new vehicles for their high school children instead of teaching the lessons of working and saving to get what they desire. Executives destroy the balance sheets of great companies to satisfy Wall Streets expectations for quarterly earnings.  Political candidates maliciously and falsely tarnish the character of their opponent rather than invest in the hard work to make the case for their policies and leadership.  In software, many start coding before completing sufficient analysis and design, and many accept requirements change without fully analyzing the impacts. Society increasingly mobilizes to satisfy its desires and needs quickly; however, satiating too quickly comes with grave consequences as we are seeing in our economy today.

I fear little-by-little we’re losing the culture that has made America the eminent economy of the world: the culture of preparing intelligently for the future.  We’re forgetting the lessons of Aesop Fables, “The Ant and the Grasshopper:” the lesson of sacrifice and preparation today for tomorrow’s needs.   The future is a current requirement.  It’s why we save in 401(k) plans for retirement.  It’s why we send our children to school.  It’s why we purchase insurance policies.  Without proper investment in the future, today, the future, that we arrive at tomorrow, is likely to be regrettable.

Of course, there is a balance that needs to be struck between today and tomorrow.  The proper mixture cannot be reduced to a formula or a set of rules. The right balance is unique to every situation.   Sometimes the balance favors the future as children spend most of their time in school preparing for the future.  Other times, the balance favors the present when health issues strike.

I recall an interesting study presented on 60 Minutes a number of years back.  The study concluded that those who are able to postpone present gratification for the promise of a larger future benefit are more likely to be successful.   Isn’t that the promise of a college education?  Doing the hard work, today, of earning a college degree holds the promise of a more prosperous future.

If you think about it, though, all product development is an exercise in satisfying future requirements as the typical software product release sells for one to two years before the next release hits the shelves, and development typically requires six to twelve months of effort to create the application and to prepare it for delivery to customers.  Consequently, the debate is less about making tradeoffs between the present and the future, and it’s more about assessing how far into the future that we should prepare.  Many of the problems that society is dealing with today are the consequences of bad decisions made in the past - and in many cases the future wasn’t even considered. 

In the business of product development striking the proper balance between present requirements and anticipating future needs is an art, requiring a mixture of experience, talent, knowledge, and vision.  It’s essentially a function of leadership, leadership that seeks council and then decides.  Those leaders who strike the right balance win and secure longevity in the marketplace.  Those leaders who wrongly favor the present are doomed to a regrettable future since opportunity is realized when good decisions about the future are made in the present.