Sometimes We Don't Lose Technology, We Lose Time

It was 2006.

I had about four years of business experience, and I started to notice something about the requests coming from ERP users.

Many of the requests were actually similar. Users wanted to see the same data in different ways. But for every new request, screens had to be changed or new development was needed. This meant they needed IT support again.

I started to ask myself a simple question:

What if users could do this themselves?

I wanted to build a screen where users could choose how to group their data. They could also select simple calculations such as total, count and average.

My goal was simple: reduce their dependency on IT as much as possible.

I looked especially at the production screens in our ERP system because many user requests were coming from this area. I started to collect the common requests and build a small library around them.

After some time, the project had moved much further than I first expected.

One day, I showed the screen to our General Manager.

I still remember his reaction when I explained how it worked. He became excited. It was almost like a passenger being pushed back into the seat when a car suddenly accelerates.

Seeing that reaction made me very happy.

For a developer, sometimes a reaction like this is one of the best rewards for the work you have done.

The project was moving in the direction I wanted.

But later, I learned something else.

Building a good system was not enough. Users also needed to want to use it.

The tool gave users more freedom, but it also asked them to work in a slightly different way. It did not get the level of user interest that I had hoped for, and over time the project lost its speed.

Years passed.

Around 2016, the company I was working for started looking at Power BI. This made me think again about the project I had started years before.

Of course, what I built in 2006 was not Power BI.

But the problem I was trying to solve felt very familiar:

How can users look at their own data in different ways without asking IT for a new report every time?

At that moment, I realised something.

I had not been too late.

If we had continued developing the idea, maybe it could have become a much stronger data analysis tool inside our own ERP system.

But it did not.

Today, when I look back, the main lesson for me is not about technology.

Sometimes we have a good idea at work. We start building it and take it to a good point.

Then daily work takes over.

Meetings. Support requests. Urgent problems. Deadlines.

We put our creative work to one side and tell ourselves:

“I will continue when I have more time.”

Then years pass.

When I think about that screen from 2006, I no longer ask myself why I did not continue.

Instead, it reminds me of something more important:

Daily work does not only take our time. If we are not careful, it can slowly take away the things we wanted to create.