What to focus on

Business first means business first.

Beautiful code or just working code? Maintaining code or building new features and increase sales? Adhere to the development process, continuously remove technical debt, prettifying code or keeping the stack up to date? There are many things to choose from. But what is the most important?

The answer is so easy, but so often forgotten. Business comes first. 

Working in departmentalised companies, we usually work in silos. We build up our own set of priorities which we hold as the most important thing. To a developer this could be “code quality” and “code readability” or even “indent code 4 spaces” or as trivial as “stick with a standard way of CamelCasingTheCode”.

To a marketeer it could be do get the campaign out the door and start generating leads or impressions. To an accountant may be to get the receipts, with the right company information on them (don't forget VAT) and to a customer service agent it could be to make the customer happy — because the customer is always right (nope). Everyone has their own focus.

Whatever the priority is — we can be certain we all see things from different perspectives. That’s fine. We all strive to deliver our goals, KPI’s or deliverables so we can get that bonus, or feel we have done our job, or left great code, or have a good legacy, increased the conversion rate or increased sales. Whatever the reason is — one thing wins over them all. Tutti.

Business. Business comes first.

Read more in "The CTO Playbook" available on Amazon/Kindle.