Category: Business

Read Adedeji Olowe’s take on business, business models, and other transformational topics about business in Nigeria, Africa, and the world.

Should non-dev organizations develop applications?

For those of us who work in the IT department of organizations, and who have some programming skills, we face a recurrent issue of build versus buy.

Sometimes, a dude in finance wants some fancy Excel macro, for a report NOW! Where I work, everything is needed NOW or worse still, yesterday. (Back to the Fancy dude/Excel macro) Should I search MS marketplace and buy a suitable macro or bump my head on macro writing to develop something for the annoying gnat. The above scenario is simple enough.

Sometimes, we are faced with under-performing legacy application. Legacy because that is what annoying program that is expensive to replace are called. Should we write helper application, modules, etc.? Is it right, em, to rewrite some part of the code to optimize it if the original vendors are too rich and complacent to do it?

From experience, I, with my colleagues, developed an application to do some function of the legacy app running our organization. Now, this app of ours is so large with a billion and ten modules performing all manners of functions: from generating statements to serving coffee with croissant. As you can expect from such attempts, the idea is good, but the app is far from perfect albeit better uptime and performance than our legacy app.

So every day, we get a zillion requests to develop this and that. When we send reminders that we ain’t programmers or developers, the honchos bark at us. But man, when we ask to go for trainings, developer conferences and buy books and materials, all of a sudden, the organization ceases to develop applications. What a life!

For me, I think organizations can develop little widgets here and there but should not dabble into app development unless it is ready to commit resources to it. Workers turned emergency developers usually write horrible codes with documentation and continuity equal to zero. The security implications of organization that rely on such home brewed apps is not too hard to imagine.

Email and Success

A jobless man applied for the position of “office boy” at Microsoft. The HR manager interviewed him then watched him clean the floor as a test. “You are employed”, he said. “Give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you the application to fill in, as well as date when you may start”.

The man replied “But I don’t have a computer, neither an email.” “I’m sorry “, said the HR manager, “If you don’t have an email, that means you do not exist. And who doesn’t exist, cannot have the job.” The man left with no hope at all. He didn’t know what to do, with only $10 in his pocket. He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a 10Kg tomato crate. He sold the tomatoes in a door-to-door round. In less than two hours, he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the operation three times and returned home with $60. The man realized that he could survive this way, and started to go every day earlier, and return late. Thus, his money doubled or tripled every day. Shortly, he bought a cart, then a truck, then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles.

5 years later, the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US. He started to plan his family’s future and decided to have a life insurance. He called an insurance broker and chose a protection plan. When the conversation was concluded, the broker asked him his email. The man replied, “I don’t have an email “. The broker answered curiously, “You don’t have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Can you imagine what you could have been if you had an email ?!!!”

The man thought for a while and replied, “Yes , I’d be an office boy at Microsoft!”

Moral of the story….

Moral-1 – Internet /email is not the solution to your life.

Moral-2- If you don’t have internet / email, and work hard, you can be a millionaire.

Moral-3- If you received this message by email, you are probably already an office boy/girl and not any close to being a Billionaire.

So guys, am shutting down my blog and would be selling tomatoes!!!