Within every company, technology or project you need to decide focus areas for your investments of your time and money. At our company we have defined three focus areas in our continuous R&D investment strategy: Innovation, Time to Market and Enhancements.
These three strategies are similar for the most established platforms/languages and tools.
For me, the most important pillar is Enhancements. We want to reduce technical debt so that we are more efficient in delivering new innovations, not building upon a bad base
However, this is different for start-ups and new technologies, as they need to focus on innovation to drive adoption. Enhancement -reducing technical debt- will follow after the developer community is established. The community will then provide feedback and push the prioritization from innovation to enhancement.
It's critical for every technology/tool or platform to find the magical balance between innovation and enhancements. If you do not innovate you have no chance to survive the future. but if you don't enhance your core foundation you will be unable to innovate and have a very unhappy developers.
How does this impact you as a developer
During preparation for my sessions for our developer conferences in Europe and India I started brainstorming on how our strategic pillars impact the day-to-day job for the developer working with our software everyday. In this article I would like to share my thoughts and vision on how high-level strategic pillars are all tight together and how this affect you as a developer.
Although this article is written in the context of Sitecore the content should resonate with other software vendors, platforms, languages or technologies.
Innovation – Solutions to solve the problems of tomorrow
Starting with the first pillar – Innovation. Innovation is what makes a platform unique. There are a lot of content management systems, DX platforms, customer data platforms and commerce systems out there. We need to stand out with innovation, it is the innovation we bring that differentiate us.
What does this mean for you as a developer?
Innovation makes my technical heart go faster, it excites me, it opens new opportunities to create cutting edge solutions with new products that introduce exciting technologies to my day-to-day job. Some recent examples are Sitecore Cortex that brings the world of Machine Learning to your front door and Sitecore JSS that opens a whole new world of JavaScript development options.
I am aware that innovation sometimes forces you out of your comfort zone. But for me as a developer at heart this is what motivates me and keeps me sharp and motivated. I need the challenge of learning new things and I’m always eager to learn and keeping up with new trends.
Time to Market – Speed throughout the project lifecycle
When we talk about time-to-market , we’re talking about the entire lifecycle of the solutions. From installing, to upgrading, configuring, developing, deploying changes, scaling up, scaling down – it all needs to be fast, easy and reliable.
What does this mean for you as a developer?
Time to market is all about efficiency; how does the platform helps you to do your job more effectively. Providing you with an opportunity to focus on the cool & fun things in your job. Instead of building the same feature or component time-after-time, you can focus on building new features that add business value and create the opportunity to work with innovative technology.
Enhancements – Reduce technical debt
Our work on enhancing our platform is guided by the feedback we get from our customers, partners, analysts and our community. Our ecosystem and community are not shy in telling us what is missing and what we can improve. We’re listening, and we’re taking on board what we hear.
What does this mean for you as a developer?
Enhancements are all about comfort , making sure you have a working and comfortable working environment. Meaning that our platform should be the platform that you prefer to work on, a platform that supports you in doing your job and is not blocking or frustrating you.
What do you think?
I'm very interested to know your opinion on this, do you see similar focus and investments done in your favorite platforms/languages/tools?
Top comments (1)
"I am aware that innovation sometimes forces you out of your comfort zone. But for me as a developer at heart this is what motivates me and keeps me sharp and motivated. I need the challenge of learning new things and I’m always eager to learn and keeping up with new trends."
This paragraph resonates so much with me. I recently watched a panel where leaders of tech companies where asked about what they look for in new hires. And what stood out is that proficiency in specific frameworks (or lack thereof) is trumped by the ability to be adaptable to change and a joy of learning. If the candidate's resume showed that they took on projects in different frameworks, and the candidate can speak to how they continue their learning (whether it's books, or e-courses, or podcasts, or whatever) - this is the winning trait.