Software costs that companies don’t want to pay for
Software costs money. I realise this is obvious, but its more interesting to look at what companies are prepare to pay for, and what they are not.
Most companies are happy to pay for UI/UX work, as they see what they get, and they perceive the are getting value because of the visual nature of the deliverable
Similarly, paying for the creation of documents seems acceptable to most companies.
What companies don’t seem interested in paying for is:
- Continuous delivery pipeline creation (e.g. Jenkins pipeline), and the ongoing maintenance costs (turning etc)
- Server side architecture
- Integration
- Testing/performance
- Exploratory costs before work is started
- Refactoring to allow teams to maintain velocity
The first bullet point above is shocking, because without a few cycle time, the companies are actually paying every day, or maybe even every hour, which is going to impact velocity, which the company will pay for in some shape or form
Disappointing 😦
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I am sure there are many things that companies don’t want to pay for. The ideal business model, as far as I can see, is to “earn” unlimited money instantly without spending any money or making any effort – and with an acceptably low probability of going to prison.
If companies don’t spend the money they need to in order to acquire and run appropriate IT systems, they will suffer for it. Think of it as evolution in action.
The real problem seems to be ignorance – or a lack of communication if you want to be polite. Executives, like all users, want the benefits of IT but are exceedingly reluctant to pay for them in terms of either money, other resources, or attention. It is the last resource – executives’ attention – that is critical. If they believe that IT is something that can be delegated to underlings, they should not complain when it does not perform as they wish.
Maybe it is just lack of knowledge and understanding?
Efficiency IS money. Improved efficiency utilized by a fully automatic CI/CD pipeline will make everyone work faster, the developers, the testers and operations people. The project will complete earlier and with higher quality.