Software Industry is a knowledge industry, it’s core value lies in its people, the knowledge stored in their brains, the intelligence they develop and willing work they put in, for some reason even veteran’s I see are creating companies that are business driven, of course business is a key to I.T industry, but the companies are mostly doing Business Driven Development (BDD), which pulls down the productivity out of the company decreases the efficiency of software industry as whole.

Let me tel you an example. Recently I took an I.T project, I was supposed to lead it, instead I crashed out of it. I was told to bring up Ruby on Rails software on my laptop, which I did partly, and to complete it I need to take dump of MySQL from server. None seems to know its password. The project manager assigned me tickets even before its done and kept asking me the status of tickets. I got annoyed, he then tried to arrange meeting with management. I was convinced he is a perfect manager, and there is no future for me in this project. He was just a messaging and annoying spam bot. I stopped responding to him.

The project had no tests, it had no documentation, and none seemed to know what is what. This company was business driven, had no idea what right knowledge could do, had no will to empower its employees. Their idea was since I am experienced I will pick it up and generate them riches.

I was into another reverse e-commerce company before, one funded by Al-Gore, it had subcontracted some of its work to a company in Chennai, and it’s boss was a stupid. This company made lot of money, no doubt, but it made a unsustainable move where it made employees feel working hard and long means they are dedicated and great engineers. Kind of like 996 philosophy by Jack Ma. This company made work lot lot difficult, over here too finding knowledge was hard. I could take time, get the right knowledge and finish the work, but for the boss, if he knows something, then by default every one should know it, an hence work should be finished in half the time.

I worked hard, but my body took a toll and I had to quit. I am happy that I quit. Even today those employees talk very sad and depressed to me, wheras I have gone to create a new services company, and am creating my own productivity product.

We need KDD, PDD and HDD

Tech work is knowledge work really. Many technical projects are there because its not focused on money, but its focuses on passion of people. GNU/Linux, Libre Office, Mastadon, VLC and so on, and they are successful. These are Passion and Happiness Driven Development, some are NDD (Need Driven Development). A for profit company too can have all these attributes. Here is how.

Start with enough money or will and time

When you start a company, you have to meet with lot of uncertainties, you have to have enough money and will to solve it. Trying to start on a dying budget and killing other people (at least mentally) because you do not have enough resources is not the way to go.

Do not have project managers

Why do you need some one who does politics for a living? And that one just serves as a pipe, delivering messages from one place to another and not much else. Try to get passionate people. If a business proposal does not attract passionate people, then don’t take that business, better beg and survive.

Make sure knowledge is freely available

In both the case studies / experiences I have told you above, my freedom of communication was restricted, I wasn’t allowed to talk to client freely. In reverse e-commerce company I have to kind of rehearse with my boss on what I would say to the client, if by mistake I told something, he (my boss) would be really pissed. He was like a big brother all the time. Knowledge wasn’t freely available and scientific progress does not work that way.

If can, invest in systems where employees will get right knowledge sooner, sit with newbies and coach them.

Believe money will follow skill and knowledge

It happened for me! It will happen for you. Follow your passion.

KDD Vs BDD

The current company I run is called DataMaking, and we are investing in bringing up skills of people. We are boldly rejecting projects that doesn’t deserve to be a software project, and one that does not have a listening leadership. And till now not a single day hs goneby where I went to bed with regret.

I believe in this growth curve:

Given same resources and opportunities, a company following BDD will grow fast initially and get profits, but it will plateau out as it will finally start to rely on management and marketing people to fuel growth, but look at the green curve where the company invested in KDD, it will make a loss initially, but once it has caught it will over take the BDD curve, eventually it too would plateau out if it follows conventional business practices and falls to management guys, the tricks is not to make that happen.

Will that happen in DataMaking? Time will tell.