Development companies love low hanging fruit but the expression has lost some of it's meaning in recent years through over use and, I propose, because the very pursuit of it devalues it.
It refers to fruit that you can easily harvest, that you can reach without tools and ladders - it's low effort so potentially high value for effort.
Low hanging fruit can exist in many places in tech companies: cost reductions in hardware purchasing and design, easy bug fixes in critical areas, simple process improvements that save people time. It is worth looking for these high value for effort items.
But, the thing is that once you've picked them, they are gone. There isn't a limitless supply of low hanging fruit.
It takes a specific focus to identify low hanging fruit and then it takes specific actions to address those issues. It takes time and focus and often involves creating some new practices having new meetings, possibly hiring or reassigning resources - infrastructure.
That can be where the subtle trap is set. Once people become good at it and certain infrastructure is in place it can develop a certain amount of inertia. Also, if it is successful, management can become very attached to the easy gains and want more.
Therein is the conundrum. It's very success is the seed of it's downfall. The next round of gains isn't quite as easy and the payoff isn't quite as large but the organization has developed some skill and the activity may still bear some fruit (not quite so low hanging, pun intended).
But each round is more difficult with less gain. Organizations need to recognize when the effort is no longer returning high value.
Some activities can be rolled into ongoing activities. Every new hardware design may have the potential for cost reduction once it passes proof of concept and prototype phases. Bug triage can give a priority boost to easy bugs.
The approach to low hanging fruit tends to be very short term, quick fixes which can have consequences. Quick fixes may not fully or properly solve a problem. Each round of low hanging fruit harvest deals with more difficult problems and the quick fixes consequently bear more risk.
Don't forget that some problems deserve in depth solutions. Don't empower the focus on low hanging fruit to create new problems that outweigh their gains.
Most small companies that have to rush to market with a product create a significant amount of low hanging fruit in the process but a compelling argument for a focused harvest of low hanging fruit may only occur once in a company's lifetime.
It can be very worthwhile activity. Just remember that you can only pick each juiciest, easiest to reach piece of low hanging fruit once. Don't get caught up forever looking for easy gains.
