{"id":191,"date":"2020-03-29T19:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T17:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/?p=191"},"modified":"2020-04-08T16:32:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T14:32:25","slug":"now-is-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/now-is-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Now is the time (this is about Technical Debt, I promise)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Pandemic. Crisis. Black Swan event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For very obvious reasons, there are only few other topics on the news right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With entire countries, businesses, industries grinding to a halt, many business owners are struggling to maneuver their businesses and their employees through this time of anxiety and uncertainty. Demand plummeted, so it is responsible and natural to be very cautious regarding the cash flow; obviously all unnecessary expenses had to be stopped and cut immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last couple of days, I\u2019ve talked to businesses who seem to already have gone past a stage of initial trauma, and are now actively\u00a0<strong>making the most of the lockdown<\/strong>.\u00a0<em>\u201cSilence is a source of great strength\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 this quote is attributed to philosopher Lao Tzu. For many business owners, managers, employees forced to working from home, a time of inner reflection started, which seems to be an unexpected opportunity to focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While some of my clients are just completing the weatherproofing of their operations, a handful is already actively looking forward. In several conversations, I\u00a0was consulted for ways to paying off <a href=\"http:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/buy-now-pay-later-technical-debt-and-how-to-pay-it-back\/\">Technical Debt<\/a>. Technical debt, a term coined by Ward Cunningham, is described as \u201cthe pain you feel every time you want to add a new feature\u201d. We used to be in a constant debate if it was better to pay off technical debt, i.e. invest in infrastructure, refactoring, learning &#8211; or rather build shiny new features!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"936\" height=\"562\" src=\"http:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Paying-Off-Technical-Debt.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Paying-Off-Technical-Debt.png 936w, https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Paying-Off-Technical-Debt-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Paying-Off-Technical-Debt-768x461.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But now, given the dozens, sometimes 100s of employees who are happy for anything useful to do during lockdown, might be the perfect time to look forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I fully agree, cutting unnecessary expenses in times of crises is important \u2013 it ensures the short-term survival of the business. But in the long run, investing<strong>&nbsp;in learning and paying off technical debt seems to be an optimal strategy&nbsp;<\/strong>to outperform the competition later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Go ahead and reconsider what the \u201cunnecessary expenses\u201d are for your business. Is learning and improvement really among them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because by definition, just in case we forgot &#8211;&nbsp;<strong>a crisis is of limited duration.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While some of my clients are just completing the weatherproofing of their operations, a handful is already actively looking forward. In several conversations, I was consulted for ways to paying off Technical Debt. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[7,6],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-continuous-improvement","tag-black-swan","tag-technical-debt","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metaworks.eu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}