Business and Technical Clash

There is an impedance mismatch in most software based companies. The business side (the 'suits') want to build up financial capital, getting sales and putting more money in the bank. The technical side (the 'coders') want to build up technical capital, creating code that is elegant and easy to maintain.

There are several interesting parallels that can be drawn regarding both sides. For example a cash flow crisis is pretty much equivalent to code becoming unmaintainable. Likewise a code base that is easily extendable and flexible is equivalent to good financial growth and opening up potential new markets.

The mismatch is that both sides do not really pull in the same direction. Rarely do the short term objectives of the two sides mesh.

After any period of development it is necessary to go back through the code and correct the mistakes that were made during development. As far as the suits are concerned this could be seen as 'technical masturbation' - after all it is not changing the product and so is not generating new revenue. The coders though realize that if this cleanup is not carried out sooner rather than later the mistakes will get baked in to the code and will become increasingly more difficult to extract, eventually resulting in the code becoming unmaintainable and requiring a rewrite.

In order to make the business work the suits need to be able to offer the customers the features that they want. Often the most interesting technical problems are not the most profitable ones and so there can be reluctance from the coders to work on these features. This is especially the case if the coders are not in contact with the end users and so do not have the needed perspective. The suits realize that unless the product does what the customers want then there is no money to be made.

There are four possible scenarios that can develop, three of which will lead to the company failing. These are:

bad business, bad code - this is fairly obviously going to fail.
good business, bad code - if the code is not up to scratch it will cause failure, even if the business is good. This is because the code is the core of the business, and others will come along and compete. If the code cannot match the competition then the business will go away.
bad business, good code - regardless of how good the code is if no-one is willing to pay for it the company will fail.
good business, good code - the recipe for success. There is money coming in from the good business and the code is able to adapt to the competition when it presents itself.

The problem is that good business and good code take time. If either is favored over the other then in the long run the company will fail. There can be a real pressure to let sleeping dog lie from both sides, which just pushes the problems into the future where they will be harder to deal with.

Essentially both sides of the business need to listen to each other and understand where they are going. Conflicts will arise, it is only natural. The trick is in knowing when to back down and let the other side have its way, and when to stand firm. Bear in mind that if either side loses then the company will fail.