What matters in software?

Next time you talk to someone about a piece of tech, listen to the words that they use. They may mention databases, web or internet, online, offline, user-experience, easy to use. You’ve heard all those things a thousand times before.

But do they matter?

Well, yes.

But do they matter to your business?

No.

Ultimately, when you have a requirement for some software, for something in the IT world, you are looking for something in particular. You have an objective. All the offline user-experiences in the world don’t matter at all if you can’t meet that objective.

So when we work together, we start off with the objectives. From those, we look at the metrics - how can we measure whether we are moving closer to those objectives. Then we look at how much those objectives are worth - in monetary terms, and in terms of peace of mind and general well-being (because not everything’s about money, not even in business). Finally, we can start thinking about how to get there. Because that web-enabled database may be all-singing all-dancing, but if it doesn’t meet your objective - or it meets your objective but the price exceeds the value of that objective - then there’s no point even thinking about it.