We work on a lot of different projects in Room Y that touch various parts of the Partnership. We also get a lot of requests from various different companies to either work with them or use existing solutions.
Being a small team, you could be forgiven for thinking we’d be tempted to take up each offer, and indeed sometimes we do! But, as our remit isn’t always the “right here, right now” work, we can afford to spend time exploring and building solutions ourselves and this has a number of amazing benefits.
Firstly, it allows us to have some knowledge of a subject, so when we do engage with a third party, we don’t go in ‘unarmed’ so to speak, so we are aware of the benefits or limitations of a particular piece of technology.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, by experimenting ourselves, we also see all the failures along the way. It’s this learning throughout the process that is invaluable.
For example, if you outsourced the building of an app to a third party, they would probably do a great job in delivering what you asked for. But would they inform you of the reason feature X was coded that way? Or that feature Z will have some limitations due to the way your API works and won’t scale?
By embarking on a journey yourself you find out what and why something doesn’t work. You’re constantly improving your own knowledge and can help the business to understand more.
So the next time you’re thinking of outsourcing a project, spend some time experimenting first, play around and explore. You might learn some amazing things, even that you should go in a different direction, before you’ve spent more time and money getting a fully fledged product developed.
To quote from Thomas Edison and his invention of the lightbulb:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
