Those of us who work on teams that produce software somewhat naturally think of our software or our code as an asset. Afterall, it is the thing we’re producing, right? When you hire a homebuilder to build you a home, that home becomes an asset.

Sadly, that’s not how software works. Nobody wants software. We make software to serve some other purpose. The software itself is a liability. It’s expensive to create, it’s complicated to maintain, and it’s risky to change.

Software is more like surgery.

Nobody ever says “I want lots of surgery! Give me as much surgery as possible as quickly as possible.”

Rather, surgery is considered a last resort, when all other safer, cheaper, fastr options have been exhausted. And then you want the least amount of it possible to achieve your goal.