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Example: the entire software industry (to include, and perhaps especially, companies that develop software but aren’t exactly software companies) seems to have

Example: the entire software industry (to include, and perhaps especially, companies that develop software but aren’t exactly software companies) seems to have a problem with splitting tools across a bunch of vendors, many of which have heavily overlapping functionality. It adds friction to everything and makes it harder to see what’s going on, burning god knows how much productivity. But you can’t fix it by making another multifunctional tool, because you’ll just get people using one or two of your five feature-areas, and two or three other tools for the rest, same as now.

askafriend 3y ago
> seems to have a problem with splitting tools across a bunch of vendors Why is this a problem?
- wharvle 3y ago
  Adds a little overhead and friction to processes. Causes miscommunication and lost and scattered info, and worse visibility and awareness of what’s going on than could be achieved. The result is fairly significant rarely-accounted-for costs. I’ve seen it every place I’ve worked. Of course “well just use all the tools the right way and always look where you’re supposed to and put things in the right place” but it never works out so nicely in practice. [edit] example: paying for a half dozen services that provide, between them, two code repo hosting solutions, four CI solutions, six wiki solutions (LOL), two cloud hosting solutions, two CDNs, three issue trackers, and on and on… and mixing and matching those such that it requires daily manual upkeep to synchronize info between them (you’re not using all the features of each one, to be clear—or, if you’re really in hell, maybe you are), onboarding is messier than it could be, account management is a pain, you’re over-paying at least a bit on everything, “where did/does that go?” is a constant question, everyone needs several pinned tabs opened when they could have, like, two, et c et c. Usually the reasons for doing this aren’t even strong, it’s just how things have ended up.

askafriend 3y ago

> seems to have a problem with splitting tools across a bunch of vendors Why is this a problem?

wharvle 3y ago
Adds a little overhead and friction to processes. Causes miscommunication and lost and scattered info, and worse visibility and awareness of what’s going on than could be achieved. The result is fairly significant rarely-accounted-for costs. I’ve seen it every place I’ve worked. Of course “well just use all the tools the right way and always look where you’re supposed to and put things in the right place” but it never works out so nicely in practice. [edit] example: paying for a half dozen services that provide, between them, two code repo hosting solutions, four CI solutions, six wiki solutions (LOL), two cloud hosting solutions, two CDNs, three issue trackers, and on and on… and mixing and matching those such that it requires daily manual upkeep to synchronize info between them (you’re not using all the features of each one, to be clear—or, if you’re really in hell, maybe you are), onboarding is messier than it could be, account management is a pain, you’re over-paying at least a bit on everything, “where did/does that go?” is a constant question, everyone needs several pinned tabs opened when they could have, like, two, et c et c. Usually the reasons for doing this aren’t even strong, it’s just how things have ended up.