Will customer willingness to deal with fast-moving products become the next bottleneck in software?
Spoke with someone redesigning the SDLC at an infra company that many of you use
They’re big Amp fans and she wanted to learn more about how we’ve changed they way we work to accommodate agents
She mentioned Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, pointing out that last year the bottleneck was code gen, this year it’s code review (although she’s doing away with that soon), and the next one she’s seeing:
** Her customers are increasingly frustrated by how quickly their product is evolving and new features are being released **
Someone in this situation might ask themself, shouldn't we slow down and listen to our customers? Isn't the customer always right?
The reality is -- software companies are being forced to act this way because of competitive pressures
If you move slowly and build only what your customers ask for, you'll be leapfrogged by an agent-native competitor that is focused on building the best possible product
And so you find yourself in a dilemma. Competitive pressures demand that you keep shipping, but your current customers -- especially the really big ones that pay all the bills -- are asking you to slow down
Which leaves you with a choice:
- slow down, milk those big contracts for all they're worth, and hope an agent-native competitor doesn't leap-frog you
- speed up, do damage control with those big customers, and try to rebuild your business around a new type of customer that expects you to turn around features and bug fixes in days/hours rather than weeks/quarters
Choosing the first is implicitly a bet against AI progress and diffusion into the real economy
Because you know what causes your customer to start demanding agent-native shipping velocity? When they themselves are feeling nigh-existential competitive pressures