The tool is not the workflow

Changing software rarely changes the quality of what comes out, because quality is decided by the sequence of steps and the standard applied at the end. An essay on the quarterly purchase, the real cost of moving, and the rarer case where a new tool genuinely is the answer.

There is a particular kind of meeting that happens in small companies at the end of a difficult quarter. The work has not been good enough. Nobody disputes this. What is disputed, gently and without anyone quite saying so, is why. And somewhere in the second half of that meeting a familiar sentence arrives: perhaps the problem is the tool. It is a generous sentence. It assigns blame to a vendor rather than a colleague, it suggests an action rather than an argument, and it can be acted on by the end of the week.