Utilisation – It’s wheel’y important

There’s a saying that people have, “Don’t re-invent the wheel”, and as much as this article isn’t about wheels, I think it’s a useful phrase.

Usually in the technology world when we talk about utilisation, or more specifically in the software engineering world, we’re usually talking about some form of code re-use. Re-using code in a project is almost a no-brainer but there’s another side to utilisation that’s not so often talked about. This is the type of utilisation I simply call “using what’s out there”.

Now sometimes when we talk about things on a website like this, there’s often the temptation to answer “well of course, duh” but the truth is often different than the behaviour people exhibit. What I refer to as “using what’s out there” is nothing more than going out and finding what’s already out there in the world to fulfil the business requirements or other criterion.

There are two main things I’ve seen as an software engineer that prompted me to write this post. The first thing is the idea that all software must be written in-house because it’s just the way things are. Now sometimes this is a really useful belief and can often lead to some fantastic new and innovative software being created. Other times, and more often than not, this leads to time wasted. I say that because the truth is, if there’s already software or “things” out there in the real world that can fulfil the business requirements and add business value then it makes good sense to utilise those things and spend your time on other tasks that can add even more value to the business. The bottom line is, if what you’re doing is adding less business value than you could be by making your life easier, start making your life easier and offer more value to the business.

The second thing I often see, and this ties in well with the first thing also, is the idea that the technology you use to engineer the things you want, is the most important part of what you do. As software engineers the idea of being eclectic should be nothing new but for even still there are some who will only use specific technologies.  To me this simply doesn’t make sense. To say that C# and .NET are the only tools to use for developing software is like saying that a spanner is better than a screwdriver for everything. I’ve often joined a new company and found them re-writing software from one technology to another simply so they have everything the same. Now I know some people do like to have everything the same and to have all software written in the same language, and the main reason people give for this is that they want to interface each different application with each other. Sometimes it’s useful to take that approach and mostly it’s not.

Once we start to focus more on what being an engineer is all about, and when we work closely with and in the business, it becomes easy to see that the future of our industry is not in the specificity of technology nor is it in the art of being the 0ober-smart developer guy. The future of our industry is in our ability to offer genuine value to the business’ we work with and to utilise what we need to get the results we want.

This blog for example is a demonstration of utilising software that returns the right amount of business value and allows me, the consumer, to post the things I want to post and not spend 2 months developing an in-house blogging system.  Some people would be shocked that a primarily Microsoft based developer would use Wordpress, a PHP based blogging system, to create a website. Again this comes back to the idea of being an engineer and knowing which tools to use for which job.

There are people who say that there is no need to re-invent the wheel. I agree.