Nobody Loves Your System Baby But You – Investment Moats

What makes a well-engineered software process?

This is a question that comes and about my mind these few months. Part of the reason was hearing about some of the frustrating work processes at work. And there are a few.

Within the advisory team. Within the investment operations. Within finance. Between departments.

Sometimes I thought back to a lot of those systems that I have supported in the past. Some successes. But many what I deemed as failures.

And there are a lot of failures.

What caused them to fail?

The standard development process just doesn’t cut it. But the critical element is that processes keep evolving. In a standard development process, you provide the business requirements, then you ask for people to build, negotiate and negotiate, then you build. The requirements cannot change much because that was agreed upon and what I would develop for you. If you keep adding requirements and I need to keep coding then how do I maintain the cost?

Some other stuff that would contribute to higher failure rates:

1. Unrealistic expectations and demands from higher ups (Usually the head of the organization).
2. The project owner on the user end keeps changing and that doesn’t always help.
3. Trying to be cheap, when the realistic effort cannot be so cheap doesn’t help.
4. Fxxking cramp so many requirements into one project budget.
5. Indian chiefs within large organizations, who has their agenda doesn’t help because they won’t change their processes to be progressive.

Clarity over your processes and how we can successfully translate to software applications.

Aside from those causes of failures, I find this is a big one.

The first project that I support has a few functionality. But it is a really small project. It’s goal is to do one thing. And it does that pretty well. Do some calculation and churn out results, that you cannot do it with an off the shelf project. Because of the safety sensitivity, there are cautious things to build around it.

Eventually it gets used again and again and again.

A lot of the failed systems… they don’t get used.

Many of the failures is because

1. The requirements are inter-group, inter-department.
2. It is either the inter-group process keeps evolving and the system ends up being stagnant and does not keep up with the process. If the system cannot fit the process, either your process don’t change or the system doesn’t get used.
3. How poorly thought out the system is.

A system is supposed to aid the actual process.

Some processes are tough especially inter-group ones. Let us admit it. No running away.

And if the process keeps evolving, by right the system needs to keep changing. But the system cannot always be changing because… usually there are costs that comes from it.

You need your system to be so malleable that it allows customization that fits a wide array of process requirements. That is how these ERP systems like SAP comes about.

The opportunity with A.I coding is, what used to takes time, is so fast now. In the past, a limited brain like Kyith may take a while to work through some model for a business requirements someone gave him. Now it’s less of an issue.

Basically, if you have an inhouse team, you can translate your business processes into system much, much, much faster.

A Software System is a Translation of An Organization’s Clarity of their Processes. What is the Best Form of their Process?

But I would like to emphasize: It is not always the system.

You can kind of understand why those small calculation like requirements usually gets used so much. Or those functions that does just one damn thing and do it damn well.

The reality is that what improves the productivity nowadays may be challenging inter-group processes.

The main problem if the issue is with the processes is… they don’t have a clear idea about how everything adds up.

More so, considering the challenges and problem in the past, what would be the ideal form the process should evolved to.

A clear process allows some team to better distill to the technical requirements. It is not the end of the story yet.

But my experience is… people don’t spend enough time thinking about their processes. There are a few ways of doing things, but what is more ideal and what are less ideal?

I don’t think you can just come up with it in just 1 week or 1 month of work.

I don’t know how much time I spent thinking about what I should be doing in the Windows-version of Gilgamesh. I can tell you, this current flow, it is suggested by AI. If it were up to Kyith, he would not have considered this. And even today, I kept pondering how my users would feel about this flow.

So that means its not a 1 day, 2 day thing.

The brain is a rather mysterious and powerful processor. If you give it a requirement early, that you may not have the solution to, it has enough time to mysteriously run a background thinking thread and one day you might have an Eureka moment of a potential answer.

But if you force the solution out in a short term, that might not be the best.

The people that are usually tasked to work with the IT people… are usually those who are senior, clearer about their processes.

But sometimes, I wonder if they would give good requirements. They are probably the most critical people here. They would have the problems but do they have the process solutions?

I have my doubts.

When I craft my personal project with Claude, I was clear about some things that I feel closer that I want to do. But there were so many stuff that I am less clear about.

A good example is… suppose I own a bunch of assets. Assets can be your bank account, or say a pool of money that you put in a bank account.

Or it could be:

1. A property.. with a mortgage.
2. An investment portfolio… that has a different calculation view.
3. A cash value insurance policy… that is an insurance policy.

So how should the usage pattern be?

Do I make them to different types, or should I just linked a property to a mortgage, link a investment portfolio to a investment management object.

Then do I just take the value from the investment management object or just update the value at the asset. I have ideas but I don’t know how great or badly they will work.

Because I am clear on this, my first requirement is to create a blank canvas, with a user access matrix. Think about the rest later and it will evolved.

Get something out, think and play with it enough.

If I struggled with it, them how sure are we the requirements given make sense? More so if it is inter-group.

There is also another problem: These senior people have already moved past the stage of doing more grunt work. They can only received the feedback from their subordinates. But the nuances matter.

Sometimes their subordinates would emphasize some stuff that needs to be build in somehow, but because these senior people cannot see the real pain, they dismissed it.

But the pain is real.

Yet to balance out, subordinates will think what they are doing is the most important thing in the world, but some of these things are.. not so important.

So how do we deal with this?

Ideally, enough time and resources should be spend here, if the organization wants this to be a success.

The senior person needs enough headspace to think about it, aside from main responsibilities, and personal and family stuff.

KNN life already so hard already you still want me to think about challenging work process?

It is a tough ask.

Stew on the processes earlier but remember to cook that stew and also go and see how it is from time to time.

In what I see, not all process evolved THAT fast. And there are detail part of requirements that can leave for the later.

Ideally, folks should spend 1 year to think about… why do we have these fxxking problem. Just sit on the problem. Corporate like to make it into “challenges” as a better term.

And no one likes someone who keep bringing problems but no solutions.

But if you name something a pain, a problem, and under the right culture, maybe most people will think about it. Collectively people think, more brain power and it would work out.

If You Lived in a V-Lookup World, Your Hammer to Problems is always V-Lookup.

Those in finance and accounting might understand what is V-Lookup.

It is a function in spreadsheet which is to look up a certain value from a set of value.

I sit next to my finance team so I would keep hearing V-Lookup, V-Lookup. For info, I don’t use V-Lookup at all, but I do use Index-Match.

But I guess in their world, a lot of things can be solved with V-Lookup.

There are limitations. Even Excel came up with X-Lookup because of V-Lookup’s limitation.

If you only know a hammer, you would try to apply that hammer to all your problems.

But sometimes, there are better ways to solve a problem than what you know.

And it may not be so difficult to do it.

Many would say that technology helps make your life easier and I disagree. Poor tech implementations make you frustrated because you are forced to use it, yet you have to do more to solve the same issue (without the system).

You have to design your system well.

But the issue is:

1. Those folks with the business requirements cannot think in software processes.
2. Those folks who understand software, may not readily understand business domain needs.

And so systems doesn’t always improve productivity but sometimes creates more frustrations for the people.

Epilogue

I find that sometimes it is a dream to have systems that work and solve problems that people are happy about because of all the challenges that are mentioned.

It is not easily uncovered maybe because… like investing people don’t realize most active managers struggle to beat the market?

The base assumption is systems will go well but systems in the past ends up like white elephants partly because of how the whole user and tech team interactions are. They just don’t work in modern landscape when requirements keep evolving.

Which is why IT moved off-premise to software-as-a-service because someone can be more dedicated to devote IT expertise, resources and can keep improving without the user spending mental and monetary resources to have some functionality.

If you are doing a Masters in some Technology management, you would have better ways to word why tech projects end up as white elephants.

I am less educated, more on the ground, used to be not so far from the users, or technology. I can only explain it this way.

I think it boils down to how much heart people put into it a lot. Many treat this whole things as part of the job. To get your compensation. Yes doing it well gives you a good compensation.

But doing it well means very different things.

Delivering a system that ground users are happy with, that serves its functionality may not be doing it well. Keeping the project moving and closing the project, handing off the project may be closer to “doing it well”.

The people delivering are not the users, and don’t feel the pain.

The upper management also don’t feel the pain because that is not their main KPI. They have more important KPI to bother about.

So all no heart.

If you feel the main, you would push through. If it is your baby, despite being tiring you would do something to advance your child so that his or her future is brighter. It ‘s not easy to craft my FREE Google Stock Portfolio Tracker in 2013. There were less resources and there was no one that I could validate with if the average cost of a unique security is calculated correctly because… I could not find another similar spreadsheet that tracks by transactions. I have to stick with the problem and fortunately, my brother who works in fund management back office was able to help me think through.

Sometimes, we should take a step back and appreciate the spreadsheets we created. They are also “software systems”. And I am sure you are appreciative about it if you have used it for so long. You used it long because it is usable enough, helps you solved some problems you cared about.

And so how much do the people care to push through frictions that exists?

If you feel nothing for it, perhaps you deserve the system that you get. An always imperfect system for you.

Here are your other Higher Return, Safe and Short-Term Savings & Investment Options for Singaporeans in 2026

You may be wondering whether other savings & investment options give you higher returns but are still relatively safe and liquid enough.

Here are different other categories of securities to consider:

WordPress Responsive Table

This table is updated as of 17th November 2022.

There are other securities or products that may fail to meet the criteria to give back your principal, high liquidity and good returns. Structured deposits contain derivatives that increase the degree of risk. Many cash management portfolios of Robo-advisers and banks contain short-duration bond funds. Their values may fluctuate in the short term and may not be ideal if you require a 100% return of your principal amount.

The returns provided are not cast in stone and will fluctuate based on the current short-term interest rates. You should adopt more goal-based planning and use the most suitable instruments/securities to help you accumulate or spend down your wealth instead of having all your money in short-term savings & investment options.

Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.

Readers also follow Kyith to learn how to plan well for Financial Security and Financial Independence.

Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Fee-only Wealth Advisory Firm Providend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.

You can view Kyith’s current portfolio here, which uses his Free Google Stock Portfolio Tracker.

His investment broker of choice is Interactive Brokers, which allows him to invest in securities from different exchanges all over the world, at very low commission rates, without custodian fees, near spot currency rates.

You can read more about Kyith here.