Chris On The Bridge: Build To Learn

During the pandemic I shared a short series of videos about some of the software development and teamwork topics that Lab Zero was facing. Here's one about the importance in learning when building software products...

Software development is tricky and can be expensive. If your hopes and dreams involve delivering software, you better be ready to learn about the impact it makes. Sustained value comes from taking stock of what you've delivered and improving upon it. Software enables a relationship between a business and its customers - so learning is a requisite part of building.

Transcript from the video:

This is Chris with Lab Zero. We work with a lot of clients who are trying to launch new things, trying to accelerate their new product or a new feature that needs some help from a team that knows their stuff. They'll call up Lab Zero and we're pretty good about helping our clients deliver software they can rely on, that does a job.

Every once in a while I have that conversation with someone asks me in all earnesty and all seriousness, "we're ready to build this thing (can you help?)" and when I start probing and asking a little bit to get a little bit of the background, usually interesting things happen.

When I ask, "what do you want this thing to do, this thing you want to build?" That is the doorway to some really interesting topics.

One of the things that we've learned from going down that hall a bunch of times and going through that door is that building doesn't happen on its own. It's expensive! You got to build things right. But really building is for a purpose - it's about delivering value to your customers (of course), but more importantly it's about learning.

One of the things we have said to ourselves and now I'm saying it to you - you're ready to build when you're ready to learn.

More from this "Chris On The Bridge" series:

• Build To Learn
• Self-Healing Teams
• Embrace Risk
• Are You Agile?
• What Is Essential?
• Trust From Home