Tech moves fast. Super hella fast. The best analogy I’ve heard was in a meeting recently, tech years are similar to dog years.
In a nutshell, if you haven’t noticed, a new technology is released and BAM they are already announcing the next major version, which probably broke half the things that you wrote in the previous version. This is especially true right now with Angular 2 being such a huge shift from Angular 1.x.
It’s great for innovation, but it also gives us a greater inclination to get “ooooooh shiny!” Syndrome (OSS).
This is good and bad. Good, because it encourages us to try new things, be adventurous. But it can go horribly wrong and cost businesses money. OSS is the rose colored glasses in a new relationship. It hides the minor, and depending on the severity of the OSS, major pitfalls of whatever language, software, tool, etc being evaluated. We are in the process of picking a new Content Management System (CMS) at work (more on that later) which is an interesting exercise in OSS.
The trick is recognizing you have OSS, and allowing yourself to see through the shiny to the iron underneath.
How do you know you have OSS?
Next time you’re evaluating (what will be known from now on as) The Shiny, notice how you’re feeling. Do you feel all bubbly inside as you watch the demo/read the spec/whatever? Like you want to play with it RIGHT NAO? That’s great, it’s a good feeling, and that’s a well done presentation of The Shiny.
What do you do now that you know you have OSS?
- Stop. Back away from the email you’re writing to All-Dev-Staff to proselytize about The Shiny.
- Take a day – at the very least – to read into more of the nitty gritty about The Shiny. Talk to other people on your team. Especially someone who may have a tendency to be more pessimistic than you are about new tools (it shouldn’t be hard, there are a lot of people who don’t like change) to ask them to take a look and talk the pros/cons of The Shiny.
If you both (or all are) still feeling rosy about The Shiny, congratulations! You probably have a baller Shiny to work with.
How do you prevent OSS?
Well, you really can’t. It’s human nature to get excited about sweet, sweet Shinies. They’re pretty! They fix all our problems! THIS IS THE BEST SHINY EVAR!
But you can take some steps to help prevent OSS blowing up a project and pitting your teams against each other Hunger Games-style.
- Have a well thought out project roadmap. Know your start date, end date, and major milestone dates in between. Thinking about how much time you have can really help take some of the shine off. (See what I did there?)
- Have your criteria for The Shiny laid out before you start looking at those beautiful shinies. That way you can easily see that “Hell YES this Shiny is awesome, but it doesn’t do half the things we require.”
What do you do if someone else has OSS?
Kindly point out the pitfalls and issues you see from the steps immediately preceding this section. Help them see it in a nice way. Because, if you’re a dick about it? They will probably double down on The Shiny, then you end up in the Arena.
Your final step, and this is really, very, very important:
Prepare yourself for the come down.
It’s a bitch. It feels like the air being let out of the balloon.
Things that combat Coming Down from OSS (CDFOSS)
- Coffee.
- Chocolate.
- Something that is actually shiny that you can play with.
- A big snuggly blanket. Swaddle yourself right up in that!
Have you suffered from OSS before? How do you talk yourself down? How do you talk others down?
