Whatever impact we want to make, we do that not from a blank page; there is always a baseline in which we observe potential. It might be condensed to the founder’s Vision Statement, or it may be a simple mail stating “the word ‘eiffel’ is misspelled”.
Modelithe treats Change Management as the default. The blank page is the exception.
A bold vision statement from a defined baseline can transform your product development.
For a customer, the baseline is the promise stated in a sales pitch. For a manager, it is the current state of the Backlog. For a software engineer, it is the git HEAD of a certain branch, or a git tag of a certain commit. In either case, the baseline is now – as experienced by the observer.
Organizations create value by iteratively improving their baselines—whether that’s code, a backlog, or a customer promise.
Using Tasks as Change Management
To understand the relation between the Vision Statement, the baseline and the value creation, we need to take a step back in history.
Industry’s best practice has been to define baselines ever since the start of the industrial revolution. First, it was mechanical drawings being signed off by the engineers and managers before handed off to the blue-collar workers. This was later brought into electronic engineering and naturally also to software engineering.
But since software engineering is so tightly coupled with the observable behavior of the system that rarely translates into physical property, it soon became a matter of subjective interpretation.
The waterfall model tried – and failed miserably – to mitigate this through up-front design, break-down of overarching requirements.
As systems increased in complexity, increasing levels of detail were added between teams and individuals in a hierarchal fashion with signed hand-offs. The V model was an improvement to the waterfall model, emphasizing that change also leads to mistakes.
The 80s and 90s realized the need to track the baselines, and the constant changes needed to obtain a predictable quality. Enter the ISO 9001 Quality Management System and document overload. Teams isolated Change Management into a separate track using Engineering Change Orders.
Even in the 2020s, keeping a baseline is still the default; it is mandatory for CE certification through the maintenance of a Technical File. In regulated industries, the Engineering Change Orders are first class citizens. Failure to meet the requirements of either, means heavy fines and in the worst case, a total product recall.
Modelithe connects the highest level – the Vision Statement – with the lowest level of change, tracking and execution – Task. With that in mind, let’s dive into one core aspect of the Modelithe philosophy: why meaningful work never starts from a blank page, and how this shapes the Modelithe framework and tool.
The Vision Statement
The only blank page in Modelithe is the organization’s Vision Statement. The Vision Statement is often overlooked by small and medium-sized companies, but it is the single most important differentiator in a competitive market.
Shopify defines a Vision Statement as
“A short, compelling description of your company’s long-term goals. It describes what you’d like to accomplish and why this is significant. Vision statements are forward-focused; they look five to 10 years down the road and make bold claims about the future.”
For Modelithe, the vision statement is the starting point for every organization.
Wikipedia defines the vision statement as
“A high-level, inspirational statement of an idealistic emotional future of a company or group. Vision describes the basic human emotion that a founder intends to be experienced by the people the organization interacts with.“
Some of the best vision statements in 2026 include
Modelithe: “Let’s advance software engineering together”
Microsoft: “We strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country around the world.”
LinkedIn: “To create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.”
Meta (Facebook): “To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
Without dwelling into other companies’ Vision Statement, Modelithe’s bold vision statement “Let’s advance software engineering together” emphasizes there is no end to software engineering. This is also Modelithe’s core philosophy to product development. From the Vision Statement, the Modelithe tool enables the creation of incremental changes to the current baseline of the product. Each such change is a Task.
According to Modelithe, a Task is small enough to be completed by roughly one to five engineers in a Team within a predictable timeframe. A Task is big enough to be worth tracking and its outcome is valuable enough worth delivering as a change to the Product.
There is a lot to say about Tasks and how Tasks in Modelithe map to Backlog Items in Scrum, Work Items in Kanban and the many flavors in Jira.
Everything between the Vision Statement and a Task are tools designed to aid as the organization grows. Growth increases the need for abstraction of concrete Tasks to add meaningful tracking. Modelithe provides excellent support for industry standard abstractions into Epics, Features, Work packages, Projects, Gates and Milestones. They are added only when the organization has grown enough to need them.
All of them are worthy subjects of their own.
In the meantime, take a moment to think about your own organization. Do you have a Vision Statement? How do your colleagues interpret it? If not, what would it be? How will you include all your colleagues in defining it, based on what your organization currently does and strive to do?