We cracked the puzzle!
Let me tell you a story. It's a tragedy that I've heard countless times.
In this story, the characters all have good intentions; they all do their best, but a tragedy unfolds regardless.
What strikes me is that the story is always the same.
A business has a problem and needs external help finding a solution. It searches for experts and selects a company it believes will give it what it needs. Initially, that goes well. But as time passes, concerns start building up.
Eventually, they realise they're heading for disaster.
The tragedy is that despite the time and money spent, they don't have a solution to their business problem.
It's a tragedy because it isn't just a waste of money——they don't get the time back either, the time they could have spent doing something more productive for their business.
They are worse off than when they started.
Let me give you an example.
Jill has a problem. She needs help with her business. She asked others for advice, looked at existing solutions, and tried some. It got too hard and slipped down her priority list. For some time, she did nothing, simply ignoring the problem. But every problem grows to the size it needs for you to acknowledge it. Finding a solution is again at the top of her list. Given her journey, she is confident a solution to her problem doesn't exist and will need help creating it.
Jill searches the Internet for companies that can help create the solutions she needs. Although she considers herself tech-savvy, she feels out of her depth. She's read many blogs and reviewed the websites of companies she thinks can help. Jill decided to shortlist companies based on their website content.
She then contacts each of the shortlisted companies. The conversations with each of them go well, and they sound professional. She discovers they all follow a similar process: She answers their questions, and they deliver a proposal.
She's worried about this approach because she is unsure about comparing each proposal. Jill wonders if she is comparing apples with apples. Suppose each company asks different questions, uses varied technologies, or has an entirely alternate design. In that case, the proposals are fundamentally different. She explains this concern away, telling herself that there is rarely one correct solution to any problem.
It's time to make a decision. Jill was honest with herself: She didn't know enough to make a fully informed decision. Despite feeling comfortable with technology, she was undoubtedly no expert, making comparing difficult. Worse, two of the proposals looked the same to her. In the end, she chose the company that appeared the most credible. They'd worked with well-known brands, launched many apps, won awards, received media coverage, and listed impressive statistics.
All was going well at the start. However, after some time, Jill started to worry. She asked to see what they'd produced, but they always gave excuses. They assured her they'd provide access to a working solution soon, so she kept paying the invoices.
After many more months, they finally gave her access. Jill immediately felt dread. What they'd created didn't appear to solve her problem, and what they'd produced seemed low-quality. Jill demanded they fix the issues before she paid any more invoices. They were unhappy with her demands and downplayed her concerns. Ultimately, they relented and promised to fix the problems. Jill felt the relationship had soured, and she'd lost all confidence but felt like she had no choice but to continue. She'd already spent a significant proportion of her budget.
Two years later, Jill still had no working solution to her problem. She'd put in so much effort, blown her budget and lost so much time, all with nothing to show.
Jill was worse off than when she started.
Despite what you may think after reading that story, Jill's real problem differs from the business problem for which she sought a solution. Her problem is that she lacks the experience to make clear and informed decisions.
Early in the story, her research and conversations with the experts encourage her. They each independently confirm that the problem is solvable and that they are willing and able to help. Furthermore, they all follow a similar process, which she now believes is industry standard practice.
Jill soon realises it's difficult to compare each of the proposals objectively. She ends up relying on superficial claims that one is better than the other.
Unfortunately, Jill's story starts in a bad place and ends in an even worse place. She has no solution to her business problem and no budget to try again.
Jill made a decision based on her gut feeling, which cost her years of wasted effort and blew her budget.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
Over the last decade, we've delivered tens of millions of dollars in projects. We're proud they solved the business problem, were good value for money, and were successfully integrated into the operations of our clients' businesses.
But we've also struggled through some challenging projects— thankfully, none as bad as Jill's story.
We've had communication issues, misunderstood requirements, delivered substandard code, and encountered embarrassing bugs—all common problems software teams encounter. We are also committed to improvement; every fortnight, we meet as a team to discuss what went well, what went wrong, and the actions we will take to improve.
We are thankful to have been on a decade-long journey where we've seen it all before and had the opportunity to learn and improve.
This history helps us avoid the pitfalls that end in tragedy.
But I realised we'd spent over a decade learning and improving only to become world-class at avoiding pitfalls.
That's like priding oneself on putting a "slippery when wet" sign under the drip in a leaky roof. If we fix the roof, then we no longer need the sign. Don't get me wrong; the sign is valuable, and we learn to put it out through experience. The point is that fixing the core problem, the leaky roof, removes the danger entirely.
It's this puzzle: what is the core problem?
That's taken me over a decade to crack.
And isn't it odd that despite having worked at it for that long, the solution can dawn on you in the strangest of places? I cracked this on while on holiday with my family; I was sitting by the resort pool in Penang, Malaysia, and a paradox crystallised in my mind.
This odd solution is the key to helping you avoid this terrible fate.
Founder & CEO, Brendt Sheen
If you are still reading, then this story resonated with you.
You have a problem that you need to solve.
You recognise that it's a journey that is full of perils.
You need a guide to help you from where you are to where you need to be.
We have a secret hard-won map to get there safely.
Let's embark on this journey together.