Fast Tech, Slow Teams: The Hidden Cost Of Chasing Trends
In today's tech industry, we build for immediate gratification. We want to have as many features as possible, as fast as possible, to stay ahead of the competition.
This has lead to Fast Tech, a culture where convenience trumps sustainability.
There is nothing wrong with convenience, however, when it becomes your North Star, it effectively becomes a drug. Why build something properly when a third-party library can get you 80% of the way in half the time?
Combine this with the fact that many engineers today suffer from shiny object syndrome, and you end up with teams running in circles, stacking tools and frameworks on top of each other, with no clear architectural vision.
The Real Problem: Leadership is MIA
The fix for this is dead simple. Strong technical leadership.
Unfortunately, this has become rare these days. A lack of mentorship has created a generation of engineers who rise into leadership without ever learning how to build for the long term.
This is trend driven leadership instead of principle driven leadership, and the only thing this leads to, is chaos.
Chasing trends doesn't just harm your software, it burns out your team and increases turnover.
How to fix this problem
In my experience, better planning is one of the simplest and most effective solutions.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
When you are failing, you become desperate, and when you are desperate you cut corners and quality is always the first thing to go.
Planning needs to replace convenience as your North Star.
Planning doesn't prevent failure, but it does reduce its likelihood significantly, especially when done well. It takes time to build this skill across teams and leadership, but over the long term, good planning becomes a competitive moat.
Your competitors can easily copy your features. They can't easily copy your planning culture.
And because they’re still chasing trends, they won’t be able to move as fast as you once your team is grounded in planning and discipline.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
This is an old Navy SEAL saying and it helps with keeping in mind that accuracy should be prioritised over speed.
Going slower also builds muscle memory, which means that when the time comes that you need to act, you act fast and without hesitation.
This is how software engineering teams need to run. When your teams know what they need to do and how they need to do it, you get faster feature delivery.
These features are delivered at a higher quality, with less bugs, requiring less rewrites and fewer late nights.
Final thoughts
Technical leadership needs to prioritise planning over delivery. Delivery will come automatically once you have the foundation built properly.
I have seen this happen multiple times, and the results were amazing.
Focussing on delivery will only lead to team burnout and increased staff turnover. This is a very expensive exercise that does not need to be run.