Building on the shoulders of giants & search driven development

There’s no denying that the pace of technology and therefore of development and progress is increasing exponentially. From any angle from which we view it, from science to any other area of life, as we look back centuries, decades, years, months or days all we see is a rapid ramp-up. 

We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants whether that is Galileo or Isaac Newton. 

The Open Source movement takes much pride in building things for a common good. Creating a swiss army KNIFE of tools that is flexible and resolves a need well at least once. 

So before we charge ahead wondering if we’ve re-invented the wheel please do sit back a little with curiosity. Are you able to distill this idea so well you can research if someone has done it before?

Sadly too many times we’re so focused on the latest fad, technology or process that we lose sight of fundamentals. We become obsessed with Paradigms (Agile or Waterfall), Methodologies (RAD, RUP, XP) or Practices (TDD, XP, DDD, BDD) but we never realise we have built an entire CRM from scratch and attached it to our bespoke system.

So before you run ahead check to see if there’s a giant you can shoulder off and add value on top of it.