The Parable of the Toolmakers

Chapter One

Some builders wanted to fasten two boards together. So they asked their toolmakers for a tool to help. The toolmakers crafted a screwdriver.

The builders were puzzled. "Can you teach us how to use this?" So the toolmakers sent them documentation. But this did not answer their questions, so the builders gave up and began holding the long neck of the screwdriver and using the large, solid handle to pound in their nails.

After a week of this, word finally reached the toolmakers: your screwdriver handles are too weak, they break after only a few hits! Horrified, the toolmakers added a section to their documentation: NOT TO BE USED TO POUND NAILS. It was very clear, large font, etc. They delivered the new docs. Nothing changed, of course.

Frustrated, the toolmakers held meetings about how to improve the screwdriver and fix the problem. "We could make a smaller handle, out of silicone," said one. "We could decrease the force of impact by making the neck shorter," said another. These were clever ideas. They created a new version of the screwdriver. It took a long time to produce - they had never worked with silicone before.

The builders were incensed. "You have made the tool worse!" They hoarded all of the old screwdrivers they could, they needed them to meet their deadlines.

The managers of the builder team and the toolmaker team came together. "Our team is working harder than ever!" "So is ours!" "So why have we not fastened any boards together?" It was quite a problem. Neither one was willing to add more scope to their team’s work. The builders were twice as busy now that their new screwdrivers were half as good at pounding nails. The toolmakers were frantically iterating on the screwdriver design to make it non-poundable.

A distinguished builder came along and saw the builders hard at work. "Those look like screwdrivers," she said (though they were very odd looking screwdrivers, by now). "You should be using screws with those." She gave the builders some screws. But when they tried to use them, the silicone handles torqued and squished and barely drove the screw at all. And the short neck could not reach into tight corners. "Screws are useless," said the builders. But the work was very slightly faster, and the distinguished engineer insisted on the screws. "At least," she shrugged, "we are now using screws with our screwdrivers." (Even if the toolmakers make terrible screwdrivers.)

A designer came along and saw the toolmakers hard at work. "Your users like nails," they said, "you should be making them a hammer." "What’s that?" They helped design an excellent hammer, and the toolmakers built it and gave it to the builders. "This would have helped with nails," they replied, "but we are using screws now. We’ve learned very clever techniques to get the handles to turn reliably, and we just skip tight corners. We don’t need this."

A few years passed this way, and the team celebrated the fastening of one hundred boards. It was hard work by all teams - well done! 🎉

Chapter Two

A new team of builders wanted to fasten two boards together. So they asked a new team of toolmakers for a tool to help. The toolmakers crafted a screwdriver.

The builders began using the screwdriver to pound their nails into the boards. The toolmakers' designer saw this, and designed a hammer. They gave the hammer to the builders. Within a few days, the builders were using hammers for nails exclusively. Their distinguished builder taught them when to use screws instead of nails: when tensile strength is critical to the structure. Screws were more expensive, so the builders learned to select the most effective option for each join.

Within a quarter, a hundred boards were fastened.

Epilogue

Our original toolbuilders got hold of one of the new screwdrivers. They observed its large, solid handle, and its extended neck.

"Why did you make a new screwdriver?" they asked the new toolbuilder team. "We already have one we spent years perfecting."

"Oh," said the new team, "we didn’t recognize it."

"Your screwdriver is not very well-designed," said the original toolbuilders. "Nowhere in the documentation does it call out the most important thing - NOT TO BE USED TO POUND NAILS. And its handle is too large and hard, its neck is too long, the builders will surely pound nails with it. Our builders love pounding nails with whatever we give them."

"Oh," said the new toolmakers, "We made them a hammer for that."

"A hammer? Hammers are a waste of time, we never saw any adoption of ours."

Coda

After years of slow and troubled deliveries, the original toolmakers devised a more powerful tool. They spent a full year working on a very fancy impact driver. They showed the CEO a demo of driving a 3-inch screw into a board in the blink of an eye. This was going to be huge – a revolution in board-fastening.

When their builders got the impact driver, they were thrilled. They were sick of screws and these awful screwdrivers! The impact driver was big and very solid. They could pound plenty of nails with it.

After the launch of the impact driver, productivity metrics went up quite a bit – but not as much as expected. The impact drivers kept getting broken by all the pounding, and they were very expensive to fix. Some of the builders and toolmakers were laid off, since the work was more efficient now anyway, and the money was needed for the impact drivers.