Speed and feature velocity often dominate executive discussions about software delivery. As Harm Garvelink, Chief Commercial Officer at Boncode, emphasizes, the true cost of software is rarely determined by what ships first, it’s defined by what’s under the hood.
Drawing on years of observing complex custom software programs, Harm highlights a recurring pattern: organizations that prioritize short-term delivery over long-term engineering discipline often pay for it many times over.
The hidden impact of weak software foundations
For many organizations, early engineering decisions seem small and technical. In reality, they shape the entire lifecycle of the product and the business outcomes that depend on it. Shortcuts taken during architecture or design do not disappear, they accumulate.
What starts as a pragmatic decision to accelerate delivery can become a persistent drag on innovation, scalability, and cost. As Harm puts it: “If you don’t get the basics right, it will follow you throughout the whole project. For custom software, that could be ten years or more.”
This is especially critical in custom-built systems that evolve alongside the organization. A fragile foundation leads to slower feature delivery, rising technical debt, and growing maintenance costs.
Over time, teams spend more effort fixing earlier compromises than delivering new value. For CTOs and CIOs, early-stage engineering design is more than a technical checkpoint, it is a strategic business investment.
Disparity in decision-making authority
A common challenge is misalignment between those who fund projects and those who design them. Business stakeholders typically control budgets, while engineering teams are responsible for implementation.
When timelines and costs dominate early decisions, technical expertise may be overridden in favor of rapid functionality. Harm notes: “Engineering decisions made at the beginning are not isolated technical decisions; these are business decisions and the foundation for the entire business case.”
When engineering leadership helps shape architectural direction, organizations create conditions for accountability. When it does not, ownership becomes fragmented, and technical risks go unnoticed until they are expensive to fix. The solution is not to shift power from one group to another, but to align incentives so business and technical leaders share responsibility for long-term outcomes.
Achieving transparency and balanced accountability
Leadership plays a decisive role in building trust between business and engineering. Shared accountability, supported by transparency in decision-making, helps teams understand trade-offs, risks, and long-term implications.
Instead of being driven by budget ownership alone, decisions become collaborative discussions grounded in evidence and expertise. This encourages engineers to take ownership of quality and design, while keeping business leaders informed about investment outcomes. Ultimately, transparency brings alignment, and alignment reduces risk.
Investing in foundations that deliver long-term value
Investing more time and discipline at the start of a software initiative can feel counterintuitive in fast-moving markets. However, the alternative often leads to escalating costs, frustrated teams, and disappointed customers.
For leadership teams, the message is clear: foundational engineering is not an expense to minimize, it is an investment to optimize.
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