In this post I will try to describe what happens when one day we once again try to extend or improve our large and established complex product.
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Imagine you live in a 100+ year old house and one day decide to make a minor renovation, say replace the kitchen cabinets. Cheerful, you start on the project reaping the old cabinetry apart, only to find behind them the water damage on the wall. You need to repair that to prevent mold formation, so you take off the damaged part of the wall to reveal rusty plumbing just about ready to burst open. You try to turn off the main water supply and the valve handle stays in your hand. On top of that you notice the beams of the foundation are nearly rotten through...
Before long you realize most of the house is in dire need of serious restoration. You step back and decide you might as well just bulldoze the house and build the new one, and while at that take advantage of all the modern technological breakthroughs and such, like energy efficient insulation, roof and windows; home automation controlling your heating, cooling, lighting and window shutters; modern kitchen appliances, plus add some excitement like sauna and indoor swimming pool and fully equipped exercise room. Awesome! Your family loves the project idea, you are excited and can't wait to start, and finally move out to a summer cottage...
As the project commences everyone can't stop talking about new and exciting things this new house will have. How it will all be wired for Internet, the custom made front door, Italian chandeliers, the Jacuzzi, the new furniture and flat panel TV that will go in the new open plan Living area...
Time goes on, the checks get written to contractors and the work seems to steadily progress. After some time we are all excited about the big hole in the ground. A little more patience and we have a skeleton structure that we are told going to be our new house. No walls or staircase inside yet, but we manage to keep our spirits up by imagining things. All we talk about are the new and exciting features of our new house: the pool, the Jacuzzi and Italian chandeliers.
More time passes by. Our impatience starts to build up and anxiety creeps in as allocated pool of money quickly dwindles down and the winter season approaches. We now have a temporary front door, just a cheap one to provide basic security. There is also a designated area for kitchen with one electric outlet available. No appliances or sink hooked up yet, but hey, there are now temporary lights throughout the house so we can be there after sunset!
When the first snow arrives and the remaining work on the house has to be put on hold until spring time we move back in.
So what do we have? Everything is very basic or temporary while the right stuff is on back order. Linoleum floors in the kitchen, cheap carpet in bedrooms, plastic bathroom counter top. At least for the time being we have no more money left for exciting extensions and additions, but whatever we have is brand new! We also feel good about how easy it will be to extend or improve what we have.
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If you've ever engaged in a product innovation (see Dealing with Darwin) on a large scale the story above might resonate well with your experience. No matter how much it makes sense looking at it from aside, we are never quite ready to deal with reality of deep re-engineering existing feature rich, mature product. The risk of failing in this endeavour is very high, but if we succeed the benefits are superior to most of the other alternatives.
Let us succeed!
