The Race to Ubiquity is not Always a Good Thing

Let's get right to why. This headline appeared on my feed about 10 minutes ago - http://bit.ly/uberdeath. Here's the headline of that link -

Uber self-driving car kills Arizona woman, dealing a blow to a feverish movement

Yes, incredibly tragic and my thoughts go out to that woman's loved ones.

The exponential and expeditious rise of technology excites me as a technologist. But as a technologist, I am also a pragmatist. This is a critical mindset when clients entrust their projects and expect the highest possible quality delivery. The greater goal when seeking to over deliver means to improve the overall expectation of the end product which does not necessarily equal to faster.

Somewhere around the spring of 2007, Apple announced the iPhone. In addition to the rise of social, mobile, big data, and cloud computing to name a few, the curve of technology experienced a dramatic peak in those technologies as well as new ones yet to be discovered. This spike has yet to slow almost 11 years later and again, as an innovator and technologist, I love it! Here comes the big "however".

However, that curve that launched a feeding frenzy of sorts that catapulted hungry joiners releasing either differing versions of what was trending or trying to break in with their own products or services. While the application of speed to market methods (e.g. Agile, DevOps etc.) have helped to shorten production timelines without any product degradation, there is no replacement for proper quality assurance, end to end testing. alpha, beta, prelaunch additional testing etc.

In having attended several industry events such as CES, SXSW, Mobile Congress etc., I feel it was in 2010 when Apple released the iPad. It was the following year at CES where I saw a myriad of tablets. While there was no absence of innovation and some quality products, there was a larger percentage of boxcar type products that simply felt cheap, under-performing, not fully baked in essence. That approach, unfortunately, has not waned and it seems to many innovators and technologist just want to rush to ubiquity to get there as fast as possible.

I know the Uber example is a bit harsh and tragic, and I'm not suggesting Uber did not do their due diligence, but it did happen. There are many other examples I've seen over the last several years that I could site, but this one has broken a certain sensitivity in its tragic result.

To conclude, don't dilute what's critical. Better to arrive a little late, but arrive as whole as possible.