There is no "front end" or "back end"

I want you to take a moment and look at the Yin Yang symbol above, because it illustrates an attitude that will define successful products for the next 10 years. First I'll explain the attitude, then I'll explain why this attitude is going to be critical to your company's success for the next 10 years.

The key insight you should gather from the yin yang symbol is that although there's a white half and a black half, the halves are intertwined; the white contains the black and vice versa.

If this is not how you think and structure your internet or mobile applications you're thinking about it wrong.

I know, I know. The technologies for the "front end" and the "back end" are completely different. So it seems natural to structure things that way. Mobile developers this way, server developers this way, web application developers this way. Pretty soon, you have three development groups, and they're all fighting and pointing fingers. I've seen it happen over and over. The product suffers as a result. When the product suffers, the company suffers.

Your product isn't just the white part or the black part above. It's the whole circle. You need to run your company according to the circle. You need to fix problems, not blame. Sometimes, that means locking a "front-end" engineer and a "back-end" engineer and telling them to work it out. Sometimes it means having "Freaky-Friday" days where the front end engineers trade places with the back end engineers. Sometimes it means having one develop tools to help the other team. Sometimes it means having the back end engineers responsible for code inside the front end, the white circle inside the black half above.

But the first step is the attitude. Stop calling it the front end. It's not an "end". It's the front "half". The team that delivers the "front half" is only delivering half a product.

Instilling this attitude just works, people want to deliver products, and they want to work together. I was able to get a 30 point improvement in Net Promoter Score for a product where I was in managing the back half by doing two things: First I worked with the front half team to help them understand that product problems were our problem, second I demonstrated that attitude by building a test tool that simulated and unreliable network connection for the front half. Not only did the front half team happily do what I asked to make the product reliable, but they found 6 bugs in the code on their side.

Ok, now that you understand what I'm saying, why is this attitude going to be critical for the next 10 years?

Well, look around you. Our products are no longer living on just one device. Web applications have always been about browser side/server side, but now its everything. Nearly every mobile application has a server side component. Our devices are now talking to each other; you can buy light bulbs that are connected to the Internet. People are now starting to talk about the Internet of Things. It's inevitable that soon everything you own be talking to everything else.

But if we're going to get to that place, our products need to be reliable. They're not going to be reliable until we realize that our product isn't the white part above or the black part above, its the circle, and the world that circle inhabits.

P.S.

For further ideas on how you can help bootstrap this attitude, read my previous post, The Best Career Advice I've Ever Received

P.P.S.

While I'm job hunting, I'm posting all the "secrets" I have for managing technology as a series of LinkedIn articles. If you'd like to be emailed whenever I post a new article, you can subscribe here.