Don't Get Dumped By The Hype Wave

The Gartner hype cycle has a plateau productivity, but what if that doesn't come? Maybe you should beware of hype that thrashes you on the bottom or just causes a lot of effort without a whole lot of payoff.

Hype waves result from pressures in the industry to constantly innovate. We're always creating new stuff and then moving on before we've figured out what to do with the last new thing. A wave also gets amplified by industry publications, social media and conferences that have a stake in riding the wave. And last, our own need to keep up with the Joneses frequently leads us to try and catch waves when we should know better.

In this post I'll define the attributes of a hype wave and give an example or two. Following that I'll give some advice on avoiding hype waves or at least minimizing the damage.

What is a hype wave?

A hype wave is a hype cycle where both sides of the peak are relatively even, possibly with one a bit lower than the other, or possibly a lot lower ("Boy, that was a really bad idea" cough, crypto, cough). The hype wave starts out like any other hype cycle, with industry pundits and leading organizations making a lot of noise about whatever it may be. The difference with a hype wave is that few people can catch it and few actually achieve anything close to the expectations. Another feature of a hype wave is having the pendulum swing in the opposite direction of the hype rather than creating a sustaining change.

Example?

Microservices are a pretty good example of a hype wave. The industry was thoroughly taken with microservices in the early days of the cloud, especially in the face of Netflix and others demonstrating so much success with the technique. While some were slow to embrace microservices, social media, trade publications and tech conferences made them an unavoidable topic for several years. Many companies got caught up in the supposed benefits of implementing microservices without fully understanding the costs. While there are definitely benefits to be had, these benefits can easily be lost if the organization doesn't account for cultural and behavioral changes that go hand-in-hand with implementing a microservices architecture.

Many organizations were caught off guard by the full cost of going down the path of microservices. The efforts took years and for many the benefits didn't arrive. Indeed, they created systems that were significantly more complex to understand, operate and develop. Some companies thought they had microservices under control but failed to notice that many of the supposed benefits did not materialize. Instead, they were operating much as before, just with a new and different set of problems.

While organizations were going through this painful process, the industry at large had moved on to new topics like Kubernetes or serverless and the topic of microservices dropped off the conference circuit. Worse yet, there has been a pendulum swing gathering momentum back towards monolithic architecture.

Counterexample

Big data exemplifies a hype cycle that progressed to widespread productivity. Initially, Google's MapReduce paper highlighted the potential of handling large datasets, previously a challenge for traditional databases. Hadoop, an open-source project by Yahoo!, democratized this method, sparking immense hype with numerous startups, articles, and conferences. Ultimately, big data fulfilled its hype, becoming essential for large companies and paving the way for machine learning and predictive modeling.

How to avoid getting thrashed on the bottom?

There are some steps you can take to avoid being caught off guard with a hype wave.

Number one: always be connected to delivering real value to your business. If you can't point to a concrete value for doing something new, ask some hard questions:

• Is this just resume padding for someone?
• What is the cost of implementing this? Will it pay for itself one way or another?
• What will maintaining this thing look like in 2-3 years?

Put some systems in place to analyze new tools and practices:

• Review the Thoughtworks radar and start your own tech radar program
• Seek out balanced view points on new trends
• Use iterative experimentation when implementing new systems; set goals and measure progress
• Wait: unless there is a clear business advantage at stake, let early adopters cut their teeth for you

By adopting these strategies, we can navigate the industry hype cycle, avoid wasting time and energy and focus on generating business value instead.