Warrilow's First Law

As I prepare for a presentation later this week, it's a good time to put digital pen to digital paper and write down Warrilow's Laws.

What are they?

They are the key learnings from 30+ years in IT. And here's the first:

If you don't know where you're going...

...then all roads will take you there.

This one is both obvious and impactful (in fact, they all are). What I didn't consciously realise was the origin; in Chapter 6 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wrote the following masterful piece of dialogue:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

And this is exactly what many technology projects and initiatives become: a stronger desire to do something —anything — than to take the time to build a strategy (ie a plan of action). One variant of this is the following, which I learnt during leadership training in my first full-time job:

Don't just do something, stand there.

This embodies the same concept and is clearly a reversal of the classic "don't just stand there, do something". But it doesn't start (to stop) there. In Moral Letters to Lucilius, Seneca the Younger wrote:

"If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable."

What does all this prove?

Like many things in IT, it's not the technology.

Postscript: You'll see me reference this Law as it applies to contemporary examples of Alice's ongoing adventures in a world of wonder.