Laziness is the mother of innovation

If necessity is the mother of invention, then maybe laziness is the mother of innovation 

- Danny Brian, Vice President and Fellow, Gartner

At Gartner Catalyst 2018, Brian named laziness, impatience and hubris as the three secret virtues of a great IT practitioner -- borrowing them from acclaimed Perl programmer Larry Wall.

In Wall's book, laziness is defined as "the quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure."

Brian lists specific examples of what true laziness requires of an IT practitioner:

• not repeating yourself;
• not reinventing the wheel -- utilizing the best frameworks and tools to save time and effort;
• focusing on the most important problems;
• knowledge and recognition of design patterns, which avoid solving the same or similar problems multiple times;
• ensuring test-driven development in order to avoid hours spent later in panic mode trying to figure out what broke;
• developing processes and procedures that actually help people short cut their tasks, rather than creating standards for standards' sake; and
• documenting everything -- as close to the activity as possible -- in a way that is easy for others and for your future self to understand.

While laziness is about overall energy expenditure, impatience is all about the emotion -- specifically anger at a slow program or process.

Impatience is also key to Agile development. Examples of what true impatience requires of an IT practitioner:

• a sense of urgency;
• automating everything automatable;
• constantly watching for better workflows, tools and methodologies;
• continuously integrating so you never feel behind;
• utilizing wikis, because we need to edit that right here and now;
• empathizing with impatient end users;
• having empowered teams with the resources necessary to push projects through to completion;
• the ability to use cloud services, or any service that is the best tool for the job; and
• strong communication skills from all contributors and sponsors.

Examples of what else true hubris requires of an IT practitioner:

• pride in yourself and in your work;
• zero fear of new technologies -- the ability to dive in and emerge an expert;
• attention to details, such as design, documentation and code formatting;
• flexibility to adjust to changing requirements and user needs -- a "we can do that" mentality;
• owning the results of your work -- releasing, maintaining and improving a service;
• knowing what "good" looks like and how to get it;
• going above and beyond, even when it is not requested;
• constantly retraining yourself; staying abreast of new technology developments; reading technology books; attending conventions and workshops; and subscribing to training sites
• a craftsmanship mentality -- seeing your job as creating solutions for people and the business, rather than racking servers or writing code.