Just because you can build something doesn’t mean you should.

It’s conventional wisdom now: in the era of AI coding tools, taste and judgment will matter more than ever.

But you know what else will?

Our capacity to absorb change as users and customers.

Years ago, at when I was working at Schoolnet, after Pearson acquired the company to get a piece of Race to the Top Contracts, we had to roughly double our dev capacity to deliver on the massive contracts Pearson had wildly over-committed the team to. We did an amazing job delivering against those contracts, but existing customers started screaming for mercy and skipping releases.

Schools and districts simply did not have the capacity to adapt that quickly.

Workflows that impact teaching and learning in a classroom setting might be at the extreme end of necessary change management, but there are plenty of regulated industries and organizations that will find themselves absorbing an avalanche of new features and products and facing pressure to innovate internally.

And as individual users and consumers, we are already losing a 20 year war for our attention that is only getting worse. Builders, creators, startups are all in a race to get new apps and products in front of us. (I’m doing it too!)

• On the one hand, we are on the way to unlocking what will be incredible innovation and a flowering of new businesses and economic opportunity.
• On the other hand - an unsustainable amount of noise and slop will make it hard for anything that doesn’t create lasting value to stick.
• I feel this pressure. As much as I am amazed at what I have been able to build with ForecastMaven, there are days when I feel bad that I am not moving faster.

Then I go look at what people are using and not using, get feedback and try to make it better before pushing ahead to add more features.

Companies are facing incredible pressure and FOMO - some of it self-imposed, much of it from investors. I suspect little of it is coming from customers right now.