Tool vs Outcome

"We are agile because we use Issue Tracker." "We are DevOps because we use Jenkins." "We are Collaborative because we use Messaging App."

The Cargo Cult

This is Cargo Cult Engineering. It mimics the artifacts of successful companies without understanding the underlying mechanisms.

Buying Capability

Vendors sell tools as "Solutions".

• Buying ServiceNow does not give you ITIL maturity. It gives you a form builder.
• Buying Datadog does not give you Observability. It gives you a bill.

The Inverse Law of Tooling

The more complex the tool configuration, the less actual work is getting done. If your Issue Tracker workflow has 15 states (Backlog -> Analyzed -> Ready -> In Dev -> Code Review -> QA -> UAT -> Done), you have built a Bureaucracy Simulator, not a delivery pipeline.