The work comes first

I love building software, but I am often more interested in the work it is meant to support. Before we write anything, I want to sit with the people doing the job. How a planner plans, how a forwarder books, how a quality inspector decides that a pallet of citrus is good enough to ship.

That is where the real problem lives. Not in a feature list, but in the moment where a process breaks, where someone re-keys the same data for the third time, where a decision waits on a phone call that never comes.

Software that does not start from that reality tends to look impressive and change nothing. Software that does start from it can make the work more transparent, more serviceable and more efficient. That is the only kind I am interested in building.