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Why iW needed to change

As iNTERFACEWARE grew, the greatest challenge I encountered as the architect of Iguana was not purely technical in nature—it was managing the way information flowed within the organization.

As the company expanded, new layers of communication were added between myself and our customers. While these layers were established with the intention of helping facilitate smoother operations and providing structure, they sometimes unintentionally filtered out the nuanced information that was most valuable to the technical decision-making process. Much like a computer system, the quality of the outputs relies heavily on the quality of the inputs—and I found myself increasingly distanced from the direct engineering realities our customers were facing.

Customer discussions often remained at a strategic or high-level focus, which sometimes prevented us from drilling down into the practical details: the specific interfaces, the messages exchanged, the raw inputs and outputs, and the root causes of failures or inefficiencies. As a result, it became a challenge to truly understand and address the core issues our clients were experiencing.

At times, I felt that our services team was not as helpful as they could have been. Their suggestions did not always align with the technical needs at hand, and there appeared to be a tendency to focus on justifying team processes or roles rather than collaborating to solve the customer's issues. I believe there is substantial value in aligning the efforts of our services team more closely with the actual engineering challenges facing customers.

Where I am best able to contribute is in hands-on work with real customer interfaces—observing firsthand how data moves through the system and then applying the appropriate technological solutions from Iguana and Flow. In my experience, the most effective solutions often come from direct engagement and practical problem-solving, rather than from abstract discussions or indirect communication.

This approach is not just about making Iguana simpler. It also means working with customers to streamline their own software, processes, and integrations—striving to remove obstacles and complexity wherever they exist.

From a Theory of Constraints perspective, our customers and Iguana together form an interconnected system. If we focus on optimizing just one side—be it our own software or the customer’s infrastructure—we risk missing the broader opportunity for improvement. The ultimate objective should always be to identify and eliminate complexity wherever the true bottleneck lies, thereby unlocking the greatest possible system-wide benefit.

This philosophy underpins the new direction for iNTERFACEWARE: reducing unnecessary layers, fostering direct conversations between engineering teams, simplifying systems, and striving for solutions that optimize the entire environment—not just the products we provide.

Eliot Muir

Architect of Iguana