We take technology for granted. At work, we back ourselves to find help every time when we are stuck—a new way to draw, a new word in our message, a new template for product vision mapping, a new type of retention-churn graph in a multi-product brand, and so on.
Sometimes I wonder how much more we can actually do. We post questions in Slack, on Twitter, or in our community forums, and we get the solution or a workaround. We get in a bigger challenge than yesterday and we get a new solution to move forward.
It also shows that our mind stops exploring deeper when we get a solution. Because we are conditioned to think and act for the goals in our roadmaps. Because we are being paid to meet those goals. Imagine how much we could do if we had the right incentives to dig deep, to explore more, and to put the technology for more effective use, beyond the roadmaps. What if we let our goals leave a positive and a longer impact on the systems around us, the life around us.
If we use or leverage the technology better by 10% after every quarter in a year, we could be be 46% more effective at the end of the year.
Three months is a good time to have a quick review of how we are using any technology whether for code, deployment, APIs, or systems and workflow. It could be for optimizing tech for latest practices, fixing the gaps if anything causes delay, upgrades if these help in efficiency, internal trainings, or doing comparative analysis of what else is new or happening and how others are using the same technology but more effectively.
Ten percent extra effort after every quarter and we could be 46% more effective in technology. That too when we know that we are capable of finding ways when we are stuck.
This ROI comes back to the product, the people, and the business itself.
In design, #Config2022 (opens Twitter in a new tab) showed how we are capable to do more. The technological progress in knowledge graphs, JS libraries, API standards, and data sense clearly show that we can use technology for a lot more than we are doing it at present. I am yet to hear many stories where people quit their work because technology could not solve it.
It is fairly understood that we cannot learn beyond a certain limit but I get a feeling that most of the teams are caught in the battle of talks and frameworks on leadership, processes, finding portable data libraries, and generating reports. The ratio of education to execution is too imbalanced, either way. Some of them invest too much in education and buyin while many others are simply doing it without learning what and how they should be doing it.
Technology is not only in the DevOps or DesignOps or data lakes—these are the practices and frameworks and tools that organizations use to streamline or standardize their operations. Of course they use technology too in all operations.
If we think that we already doing our best at the current speed, well someone else might show you how they could do it far better. Either you can watch them doing it, or you can show it by doing yourself.
Only 10% more effort is the ask, quarterly. Over to you.
