Reqless and Step Skipping

Paul Ford: Hi, I’m Paul Ford.

Rich Ziade: And I’m Rich Ziade.

Paul: And this is a new podcast called Reqless. How’s it spelled, Rich?

Rich: R-E-Q-L-E-S-S.

Paul: That’s right. We’ll explain that in a minute. This is the official podcast of Aboard, and if you go to aboard.com, you’ll learn all about it. It’s a great tool for organizations to manage any kind of data, any kind of challenge, any kind of workflow. Just get in there and see what it’ll do for you.

Rich: It’s really powerful. We’re not going to hit you over the head with an ad right out of the box here, but we’re going to talk about it. It’s sort of— Reqless is about the motivations behind why Aboard even exists.

Paul: And in specific, it’s about how AI is changing the world of software. This isn’t going to be a big ad just for our product. We’re old-school software people, and we realized we’ve been doing a podcast for the company over the last really year or so, and even before, and we’ve been doing software podcasts forever, and over and over we kept coming back to this subject until the point where we looked each other in the eye and said, “You know what? Maybe this is the podcast and we should stop pretending.”

So Reqless is about the world of AI and software. Rich, let’s go ahead and let that theme song play. And then we should explain why the name.

Rich: Let’s do it!

[intro music]

Paul: Alright, R-E-Q-L-E-S-S. Very cute.

Rich: Very adorable actually.

Paul: So I’m gonna say what the “req” means and then I want you to explain it.

Rich: Okay.

Paul: Requirements. Requirements-less. What?

Rich: Yeah, um…boof. For people who have worked inside of companies that build software, or frankly implement software, requirements are, it’s sort of the collective wish list of the things that have to be in the software.

Paul: Think about the worst Microsoft Word document you’ve ever seen.

Rich: It’s rough, right? And it’s because businesses are specific and nudgy and stakeholders have particular needs. And even when you pick up something as sort of generic and universal as, like, WordPress or Slack or Salesforce, there’s always requirements. Sometimes you have requirements that require you to build from the ground up. It’s essentially the negotiation phase before actual building happens.

Paul: Let me give a concrete example. You need to allow people to log in to the blog so marketing can update it on a regular basis.

Rich: Yes.

Paul: That’s great. But then someone says, “Hey, I need you to use our unified login system that we spent tens of millions of dollars on.”

Rich: Yes.

Paul: Now you have to go find the unified login people. They have to tell you about what it takes to use this system. And then you need to figure out how to integrate that into WordPress’s login system.

Rich: And hand over specific, certain types of rights to specific people as specified by your company. I’m going to head this off right now.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: This sounds like the setup to one of the most boring podcasts in the history of podcasting—

Paul: [overlapping] No, no, we’re going to keep it interesting.

Rich: This better get exciting.

Paul: No, but I’m going to promise you. Well, it’s going to get exciting because that’s the most boring 20, 30, 40 page part of the 400 page document.

Rich: Uh-huh?

Paul: We’re going to throw it in the garbage.

Rich: What?

Paul: Yes. We believe that increasingly—and we always believed this, that you could do this with good software tools. But because of AI and because of some of the ways that the software industry has moved in the last ten years, you should get rid of that phase. You should get rid of an enormous amount of the software development phase.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: And skip straight to prototyping with online tools as opposed to running around an enormous organization and trying to figure out what people might want.

Rich: Okay, you just threw a lot at me.

Paul: Okay.

Rich: So this is a design tool?

Paul: No, no. You can build software faster and easier than ever before. Not always the best or the perfect software. Not the right software.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: That’s usually the goal of the requirements process. It’s so expensive and difficult to build software that we’re going to run around the whole company and we’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the perfect Word document. And then over 36 months we will build every single thing in that document and everyone will be happy. And they all fail. Like, not all of them, but like literally a statistical majority of those projects are disasters for reasons that are completely clear to any adult.

Rich: And the majority overrun budget and whatnot. Now wait a minute, are you talking about a specific tool? Are you talking about this is a sea change that can happen because of AI?

Paul: That’s why this podcast. We’ve been kind of nosing around this for a while and our tool tries to embody that and good for us and we’re gonna talk about it. This is a sea change. There are people doing things with code who never did things with code before. There are teams building software, there are people talking to computers and getting results out, and that’s never been that way before, and it’s really different.

Rich: Are you talking about code generation?

Paul: A little bit. A little bit. But more like—

Rich: Because I’ve seen a lot about, this isn’t new, Paul. It’s all over GitHub. There’s Copilot, and Visual Code, there’s all kinds of stuff. Is that what you’re talking about?

Paul: No, I’m talking about a business change. I’m talking about a whole sort of different logic. Let me give you an example—actually, let’s talk about our tool for a minute because I think that’s why people know us, and here we are, okay?

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: Aboard started as a kind of workflow-management tool. You’re going to move cards around and we’re going to go to organizations and help them organize their stuff.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: This is like two years ago.

Rich: Okay.

Paul: And then AI shows up and we’re like, no, that’s nonsense. Don’t bother with it.

Rich: Not yet.

Paul: Not yet.

Rich: We were watching it, just didn’t want to lean in yet.

Paul: And then we built a tool, our head of tech built a tool that if you said, “Hey, I need to make a board, a data thing, I need a thing.”

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: “That lets me manage my Little League team.”

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: It would go away and think for like a minute and then it would produce something. And it was kind of good.

Rich: Software.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: In your hand.

Paul: Yeah. Like, it had—

Rich: That worked.

Paul: It had cards, it had data models, it had the right fields.

Rich: A UI?

Paul: Yeah. Because we had the UI we had to use. So basically we had built this system that let you move the cards around because we’re like, we always built this for everybody before, let’s build it once and then go take it to organizations.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: And then you threw a little AI at it and it was like, oh wow. That whole phase where we used to run around and run around and get people to ask us what they really wanted.

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: I can now do that. I can just say to, I can say, “Give me a board that lets me manage my Little League team,” or “lets me track content through my marketing pipeline”—

Rich: Mmm hmm.

Paul: Or whatever and it does a pretty good job and literally go on in and try it. It doesn’t solve all your problems, but go ahead to Aboard and try it and you’ll see the actual magic trick that showed up in the last couple of years.

Rich: So I want to come back out.

Paul: Yeah, please.

Rich: And talk about what this podcast is really about. One of the most interesting things happening with AI right now is it’s attacking so much of the deeply embedded culture and status quo around how things get built. We’re just now seeing AI produce book reports, research reports, pictures, really weird, bizarre, fantastical images.

Paul: Squirrels flying airplanes.

Rich: Squirrels flying airplanes. And those are two output types. And I think a good way to look at Reqless is we’re going to explore how AI can be used to produce other output types. And what I mean by output types, I mean like really expand your brain here. So for example, I have 6,000 square feet, and I have air rights for six stories. Start drafting me a full-blown, down-to-the-screws, detailed-level CAD of an apartment building that has three luxury penthouses.

Paul: Or help me craft my day-to-day routine post-op for breast surgery.

Rich: These are outputs. These are fascinating, rich outputs. We are going to talk about software as an output. The idea of fully mature, refined looking software that looks like it had been iterated on for five years to be in your hands so quickly means that there are going to be other interesting things happening. We’re going to talk about the technology behind it, but we’re also going to talk about how the status quo and how culture has to kind of absorb this because it’s coming. Like, we can talk about it in the context of our little startup, but it’s coming, right? It’s coming in a lot of ways.

Paul: Well, we will because that’s the reference that we have.

Rich: Yes.

Paul: And obviously we want people to use our product and this thing exists for a reason.

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: We’re here for a reason, but the reason, the honest reason you and I are here is because we like to talk about software all day.

Rich: We do.

Paul: So we’re kind of, we’re kind of putting that out there. Let me, let me articulate some of these changes, right? Because I think here’s the narrative. The narrative is AI’s coming and your organization should get on board, and then you have a whole group of other people who are saying AI is bad for the environment and it’s destructive and it’s stealing our stuff. And then I think there’s this enormous subtext where, and there’s a kind of understanding like, okay, these new companies, like OpenAI are going to come and they’ll be the new Googles and kind of like all the value is going to go to them and then maybe they’ll give some back, right?

Rich: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: And I actually don’t think that’s the future we’re headed for. When you make one of these models, they fit on your phone, they’re little, you can actually, this is actually software. It’s weird little blobs of software that will talk to you, help you run faster, help you with your medication. Like, they’ll do all kinds of stuff. We don’t even know what yet.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And so the idea, I think what I really want to keep exploring is that individuals are going to have a role in this world. There’s this idea that like, it’s just kind of up to Sam Altman how the future is going to work.

Rich: It’s not. And I think what’s so interesting about our angle on it, so to speak, is that it actually is enfranchising people who didn’t think they had any sort of power or influence. And this is not about better code generation. That’s not this podcast. This podcast is for the non-technical people and the people who are sort of on the other side of the expertise line.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: Who don’t understand it and have been sort of in a haze because experts tend to defend their expertise and the domain that they govern over.

Paul: I can make this really, really simple. When you and I would build software for companies, we would always advocate for speed and in specific, for skipping steps. People love steps. That’s what the requirements document is.

Rich: It’s the first big, big step.

Paul: Thousands of steps.

Rich: Big steps.

Paul: Yeah, it’s the big step, and it’s—

Rich: It’s a contract, in a lot of ways.

Paul: It is. And we would say, hey, why don’t we all just sit down and build something and see if we like it or not?

Rich: Right.

Paul: And people would panic because that would take months and you didn’t know what you were going to see.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Here’s what. You can now make software roughly as easily as you can make a PowerPoint presentation. It may not be more valuable than a PowerPoint presentation.

Rich: And it will still need work. But the idea of having something in-hand to talk off of as a tool to socialize where you’re going and is immensely powerful.

Paul: So what’s going to happen is that people who defend the steps because the steps are their job, which is—

Rich: I live inside of step five.

Paul: I am, step five is the login system. Step five is the legacy WordPress install.

Rich: No, it’s, it’s unit testing.

Paul: Yes. All of this, all of the—it’s not that those jobs go to job heaven immediately. People don’t have to panic. But like, this is a tool for skipping steps. Skipping steps empowers people to do things without getting approval. And that’s incredibly, incredibly disruptive.

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: And that could be the vice president who just wants to get their thing. That could be the little group that wants to help feed people in the neighborhood. That could be someone who wants to manufacture something. All of that is getting blown up. It really is.

Rich: Yup.

Paul: And so let’s try to figure out how to make a better world out of it, cross our fingers, rather than just sort of, like, shrug and go, oh well, ChatGPT won it all.

Rich: Well, I think we’re better than, I just need an assistant.

Paul: Yes, that’s right.

Rich: I think we’re better than that. I think what this is about is humans are incredibly resourceful at getting together and producing these incredibly complex things, whether they be entire office buildings or whether they be sprawling pieces of software, whatever they may be. And those outputs require expertise and knowledge. And I think AI can empower a lot of people who don’t have all of that knowledge. You still need people to get it right at the very end, but it’s way better than goofing around on a prompt. That’s not what this is.

Paul: So look, ket’s set this up for next week. This, here we are. I hope you like and subscribe. I hope that our change in branding hasn’t confused or upset you. What, let’s focus on an industry next week. Let’s talk about changes happening in some industry. Pick an industry for me.

Rich: The law.

Paul: Great, that is a perfect one. There’s a lot—

Rich: Huge investment happening right now in AI and the law.

Paul: Tons going on. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Maybe only medicine and defense would be higher stakes than the law.

Rich: I talked to a few lawyer friends of mine. They’re very defensive about it, but at the same time they know full well that so much of the law is templates and is a lot of sort of, like one last thing, just to sort of take the temperature down around this. This sounds like it is disruptive, AI is disruptive. There’s been many, many waves of tech that have shown up that are disruptive and they always talk about coming for the jobs. I used to make a phone call to get a car.

Paul: Mmm hmm.

Rich: I’d call a car service. Arecibo in Brooklyn.

Paul: Oh yeah.

Rich: All right.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: Someone would answer.

Paul: They were nice guys.

Rich: Sometimes they’d hang up on me.

Paul: Yeah.

Rich: When they were busy. You saw the automation of calling a car show up. And if you look historically, oh my God, there go the jobs. If history is any indicator, it’s that it just leads to growth and opportunity, actually. And we still need humans, like we really badly need humans to get it right and to think through what the machines are helping us with. So I’m not, I don’t think we even have to be defensive about it.

Paul: No, no, no, no. I don’t want to be defensive. What I want to do is help people find strategies that cut through a lot of the politics around this stuff and cut through a lot of the marketing around this stuff, and they can figure out what they want to do with their careers and their lives as this big change happens. And I want to—there’s another big point here, which is this is an enormous industry now. Not AI, but tech. Like, tech, probably, you probably have, like, last time I checked, it was 20 million, so it’s probably, like 25 million developers in the world right now.

Rich: It’s a lot of developers.

Paul: That’s a big battleship, right? Trillions and trillions of dollars run through systems, like, on a daily basis. A lot is going to change very, very slowly. But unlike crypto, where I could never quite get the case for it in an enterprise or an organization, the case here is pretty strong, and I want to keep exploring it.

Rich: It’s so early days.

Paul: Yeah, it really is.

Rich: Like, whatever we’re building today, I have no, I’m fully convinced that in three years, we’ll look absolutely quaint.

Paul: Oh, we’re going to look ridiculous, like, by next year.

Rich: Yeah. That’s fine.

Paul: Yeah. Which isn’t the first time. All right, so on that note let’s close this one out. We’ll come back next time, and we will talk about The Law.

Rich: Yeah. And until then, if you’re interested in having more involved conversations about how Aboard can help your company or organization, hit us up, check us out at aboard.com. And we’d love to talk.

Paul: Or, any reason, just get in touch.

Rich: We love talking to people. I like talking to you, too, Paul.

Paul: I know, I know. It’s good times. Good.

Rich: Have a wonderful week.

Paul: Bye.

[outro music]