The Heretech

Heretech podcast on vacation this week

But we'll be back next week, as usual.

The difference between enthusing and embracing

Games without frontiers
I've said before that other parts of the technology industry could learn a lot from the computer game segment. Hollywood-sized budgets and revenue, real deadlines for getting product sold through retail channels, short shelf-lives for products, very high quality standards--these characteristics of the game biz tend to focus the mind on what's important.

But they don't immunize you from mistakes. Case in point: the game Demigod, which you may have seen in your local Target (that's the retail reach of the computer game industry, after all). Demigod's publisher, Stardock, designed the game around the assumption that a big chunk of the customers will want to play online. They also made some technical assumptions about how that should work, which proved to be wrong.  "One bad design decision and one architectural limitation" nuked the servers supporting online play. Ouch.

Shock the monkey
When all the electronic dust settled, Stardock had time to review some important statistics about Demigod's customers. In their annual report, Stardock's CEO admits their collective surprise that only 23% of their customers ever tried to log into the online servers. Of that fraction, a smaller fraction played at least one game online.

Unfortunately, that meant Stardock's investment in the development, testing, marketing, and support for the multi-player "experience"--to some extent, at the expense of the single-player way of playing the game--was reaching only a tiny minority of their customers.

How could a company make such a bone-headed mistake? By listening to industry gurus.

No self-control
In 2008 and 2009, computer game industry people were, by and large, fascinated by the brave new world of online gaming. After all, who wouldn't want even a tiny slice of Blizzard's mega-million dollar success with World of Warcraft?

The excitement over multi-player, online gaming grew to such a pitch that various industry professionals and luminaries started talking as if single-player games were already a thing of the past. (Here's a mild example, and here's a more feverish one.)

In hindsight, it's pretty obvious why single-player games haven't died. Not everyone wants to play online. Not every type of game is particularly well-suited for online play. (Here's a good example.) And certainly, few games are designed exclusively for online play, in the way that World of Warcraft is.

Some companies tried to explore the opportunity without the same "burn your boats behind you" approach that Stardock took with Demigod. The fourth version of the hallowed Civilization series put a great deal of emphasis on online play...But it was also a damn fine game in single-player mode, too.

Shaking the tree
As it turns out, the Internet connection from your console system or PC does have other important ramifications for the game industry, without having to believe in the Borg business model (always connected with other people, all the time). Many game companies are trying to make money through "downloadable content" (DLC), which open up new game options if you pay a couple of bucks. This season's mega-game release, Dragon Age, is a good example of how vendors are trying to make additional money, on top of the initial game sale, through these micro-transactions.

What's the broader moral of this story? Not surprisingly, as I write this post, I'm thinking about the buzz concerning social media. Certainly, there's some market for a particular kind of social media, such as micro-blogging, or a certain way of using them, such as customer service.

That being said, you have to be very wary of leaping from that use case to unspecified new ones. They may exist...Or we may have reached the current maximum volume of reasonable use cases for that medium.

That conclusion doesn't diminish the power of social media, or its future potential, one iota. Only the truly doltish among us would argue that social media have changed nothing. In fact, the use cases that we haven't considered—in the way that people hypnotized by World of Warcraft weren't thinking of new ways to make money, such as DLC—may even have bigger, more lasting, and more profound effects that the first one we imagine.

[P.S. Thanks to the Flash of Steel blog for the pointer to Stardock's annual customer report.]

[P.P.S. In case you're puzzled by my subheads, they're all the titles of Peter Gabriel songs. If there ever was a recording artist fascinated by new media, Gabriel's the one you'd have to cite.]

Next PM open house: Agile in tech companies

Since our first Forrester open house for product managers and product marketers was a success, we're going to start scheduling them regularly. Like, say, once a month.

The topic that has received the most votes in our topic survey is, How does Agile affect the company, outside the development team? Other leading topics include:

• What's the state of the art in requirements?
• How are other companies structuring their PM teams?
  
• How do companies make a successful transition to a new business model?
• How do other teams handle sales support?
• What are some strategies for handling the product roadmap?

We're leaving the survey open, so please, vote for the topics that most interest you.

Meanwhile, here are the details for the next session. This time, we'll make sure to leave a good chunk of time just for conversation with your peers and colleagues.

• WHEN: Thursday, December 3, from 4:00 to 5:30 PM.
• WHERE: 950 Tower Parkway, Foster City, CA. The Forrester office is on the 12th floor.
• WHY: Have an informal conversation with other PMs about a topic of mutual interest, with a Forrester analyst providing some supporting information from our research.

Later, I'll post a calendar with future dates and topics. Please pass the word to your friends and co-workers in the Bay Area. And if you're thinking of attending, please RSVP to Marsha Versen. The RSVP isn't mandatory, but it does give us an idea how many people may be attending.

[Cross-posted at The Forrester product management blog.]

I love you guys

I was extremely grateful to meet, in person, my fellow product management/product marketing bloggers who attended the PMEC 2009 event. What a great group, the Oceans 11 of PM blogging. April, Brian, Michael, Ivan, Ivan, Alison, Marsha, Gavin, Janey, and Ethan, don't be strangers. You're always welcome to pay us a visit at the Forrester office in Northern California, perched in the clouds above Foster City.

And many thanks, too, for AIPMM for organizing this event. Great idea, and nice work putting it together.

The Heretech, episode 28: April Dunford on product marketing

April Dunford, who writes the blog Rocket Watcher, explains the product marketing challenges in the tech industry, and the special problems facing startups. We also talk about how PMs can embrace social media without a huge hit to their schedule. Plus, a juicy tidbit from the upcoming research document on requirements. (c) 2009 Tom Grant

There can be only one!

Just a quick reminder that I'll be at the "Battle of the PM Bloggers" next week, as part of PMEC 2009.

Also, be warned, the intensity with which I compete is inversely proportional to the actual stakes.

Sad, but true.

Remember the KISS principle?

This morning, I had a briefing with McObject, a tech vendor that specializes in embeddable databases. From cars to set-top boxes to web sites, there's a near-universal need to put data somewhere, retrieve it, and manage it. In these use cases, the simplest database technology is the best.

Their product strategy is interesting to the readers of this blog for at least a couple of reasons. First, there's an unstated assumption in many technology companies that complexity is inescapable. If you want to keep pace with your competitors, you have to keep pace with their feature set.

Keeping the roadmap simple
Pshaw. If you look carefully at McObject's roadmap, you don't see crazy amounts of new features. Instead, their product strategy focuses on the essentials. Provide logical database devices as a layer of abstraction above the actual storage (on disk, in memory, etc.). Take advantage of the performance improvements in 64-bit architectures. Give the developer an optimistic concurrency option.

The acceptability parameters aren't too hard to figure out. Prevent database corruption. Don't screw up performance. Don't baffle your customer with new  options they can't figure out.

I'd like to think that every technology company understands these principles, but, alas, they don't. For example, I've seen product marketing materials for cloud-based data management that possess none of this clarity and simplicity. In a few extreme cases, I've been unable to decipher what the vendor was claiming they could do, even though I've been working with databases and file systems for a long, long time.

Keep it simple for your customers
Clarity in your communications starts with your own clarity about your customers. Steve Graves, the CEO of McObject, made an important observation about working with developers: they're really smart people, on average. However, they don't know everything, and they often don't understand databases.

That should be no surprise to anyone who has ever worked on a development team, which, like the Dirty Dozen, is often a collection of specialists (demolitions, build scripts, sniper, Ajax...). In no small number of cases, the team may have no one who's a seasoned hand at databases, or other important domains (performance, security, etc.). Therefore, vendors like McObject have to be ready to educate and advise, not just sling technology at them and hope for the best.

Sure, we've all had a good chuckle at that guy who rampaged across the stage like an enraged mountain gorilla, screaming "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Unfortunately, we've behaved equally ridiculously, assuming that all developers are the same, or they're always willing to tinker with technology until it works, or that the differences in job function in the same development team don't have any effect on buying and adoption behaviors. Are you marketing to rank-and-file developers, or development managers? That can be as significant a question as, are you marketing your CRM system to salespeople or sales managers?

The simpler your product, the easier it is to understand its value.  Doing a very good job in your niche, such as embeddable databases, is far preferable to throwing in every feature that might have value, or inventing strained explanations of why your technology is part of the latest trend.

[Cross-posted at The Forrester product management blog.]

Sometimes, you measure commitment by the hour

During a breakfast meeting this morning, someone asked a very sharp question: Are businesses really operating differently because of social media? I then jumped in the car, drove from San Francisco back to our Foster City office, and heard how Cisco has used social media to change product launches.

The obvious change, of course, is lowering the cost, if you're not renting out the Moscone Center for a big launch party. Slightly less obvious changes include the ability to reach more people in more countries. , the virtual launch also makes it possible to reach more people, in more countries, than Cisco could with traditional face-to-face events.

So far, we're just considering changes in capability. Doing product launches cheaper, faster, better is an important innovation, but it's not a sign that a company is operating or thinking in a significantly different way. You might buy a cheaper, better, and faster car, but you might not change your driving habits one bit, or take more care to follow the traffic laws.

Therefore, during this conversation with Cisco, the one change from going to virtual product launches that really stuck out was operational: the marketing effort continues beyond the big ballyhoo day. Cisco employees remain engaged in conversations with customers through social media channels.

Contrast that with the old Moscone Center-style launch events. Everyone shows up for the big photo op, and then they go home. Sure, leads get entered into the CRM system, but that's hardly the same as continuing a conversation with the people you met at the launch event.

Of course, that means that some people at Cisco have to dedicate time to that continued conversation, instead of racing off to the next big launch event. There's a business decision behind allocating resources in this fashion, based on a different set of assumptions and calculations than the "marketer with a megaphone" launch events of 15 or 20 years ago.

Are social media for real? Yes, when they effect how companies operate.

[Cross-posted at The Forrester product management blog.]

What was Technorati thinking?

Here's another item to file under Changes that customers didn't ask for: Technorati's recent makeover. The official "Welcome To The New Technorati" blog post trumpets how great it is that the company has put a big effort into different content channels (sports, entertainment, etc.). Unfortunately, for the bloggers who use Technorati to measure their popularity in the blogosphere, the New Technorati is, for the time being, a big step backwards.

And yes, I'm one of those irritated bloggers. I'm not that interested in the numeric "authority" ranking of my blog, though it's nice to see it get a bump every once in a while. I do care a great deal, however, about spotting the people who link to this blog.

For reasons unclear to practically everyone outside Technorati, the company decided to break those two features when it launched the New Technorati last month. Scroll down to the comments section of this follow-up post to hear the complaints. Some blog rankings mysteriously dropped to the lowest possible rankings (including mine). Others disappeared altogether. For some problems, the only workaround is creating a Technorati entry from scratch, which turns out to be impossible, since you can't delete an existing blog. And the backlinks feature, which identifies places where people have linked to your blog, has disappeared altogether, with no announced date that I can find for its replacement.

All of which makes the following comment from the Eric Olsen, Technorati's "publisher," exceedingly frustrating:

Now, as to the conceptual matter of original content on Technorati itself, I utterly reject the notion that Technorati has somehow betrayed bloggers. I am clearly biased here, but I see it diametrically the opposite - we are providing a new set of tools to help bloggers achieve their goals: readers, branding, exposure, community, and even more goodies coming. Of course, it's up to each individual blogger if he/she chooses to avail themselves of this opportunity, but I think it's a bit solipsistic to denegrate the entire movement just because one chooses not to be involved.

Which is a lot like saying, "We gave you a hacksaw and a box cutter, while taking away your hammer and breaking your screwdriver. Hey, we're not betraying you by making this move. We're just providing you with new tools."

Of course, the fact that Olsen's title is "publisher" implies that the corporate strategy is a lot like Yahoo!'s, several years ago: invest a lot into becoming a content provider, while putting less effort into your online tools. Could someone remind me how that turned out...?

P.S. I'm not being less forgiving of Technorati than I was of Oracle recent site upgrade drama, just because it's my proverbial ox that's gored this time. At least there were customers who were complaining about the old Metalink support site, and wanted a replacement. (For example, many Siebel customers, post-acquisition, asked for a better site than Metalink.) As far as I can tell, no Technorati customers were clamoring for the site to roll out a bunch of new content channels. I suspect that decision had more to do with how they thought they might "monetize" their directory of blog content.

Jeff Lash says, drop the shotgun!

Jeff Lash has a great post on why product managers should resist the urge to stuff as many features as possible into a single release. You might call this the blivet model of product development, but I prefer the shotgun metaphor: Load the shotgun with as many features as you can, fire it at the customer, and hope that you hit the target.

The Heretech, episode 27: Rob Koplowitz on SharePoint adoption

Forrester's Rob Koplowitz tells us how organizations adopt SharePoint, and the lessons learned for other technology vendors. But first, a recap of last week's open house on "social product management," and some musings on the product strategy for Google Wave. (c) 2009 Tom Grant.

And when Mr. Customer gets angry, PEOPLE DIE!

Not every unwelcome change is necessarily a fiasco. It's how you handle the transition that determines, to a large extent, whether people perceive it to be a fiasco.

Case in point: Oracle's transition from its creaky but familiar Metalink support site to the new support portal. I'm sure that anyone who has ever been involved in the transition from one web application to its replacement has learned just how many unexpected glitches can creep into the process. Certainly, Oracle has faced similar scenarios, such as when it switched the main corporate web site from a custom-built content management system to a new infrastructure based on Oracle Portal.

Unfortunately, the corporate web site, where people go to find high-level marketing information, is not the same as the support web site, where people go to get problems with mission-critical applications resolved.

Some of the new support site's problems, such as slow performance, are to be expected when you're putting a web application through its real-world paces for the first time. Others, such as the Flash UI that won't work in organizations that block Flash, are regrettable design decisions that should have been avoided. The team behind the new site can certainly fix these issues.

However, as Oscar Wilde once noted, "In matters of great importance, style, not substance, is the vital thing." Considering the style with which Oracle has handled the blowback from the My Oracle Support launch, they might take a few moments to ponder Wilde's maxim. For example, this snarky post from an Oracle support manager is getting linked pretty widely. In fact, the phrase, "Get in front of this one…seriously," might appear on a few T-shirts and bumper stickers, once the dust settles.

To their credit, people at Oracle are trying to both be responsive, and appear to be responsive. This detailed post on how Oracle handles usability issues in the My Oracle Support portal may include way more information than the average customer wants to read. But heck, when you're explaining the categorization and prioritization of usability issues, you're definitely being transparent to your customer.

Nonetheless, some Oracle customers are still alienated by the It's coming, deal with it message of the initial launch. And certainly, the industry is littered with examples of (allegedly) improved user experiences that either didn't improve anything, or that weren't marketed effectively to the people affected by the change. And, of course, there's the unfamiliarity factor of any new UI, which offends people who have built their daily work around the old, familiar UI. Why Oracle didn't heed these cautionary tales is anyone's guess.

Whenever anyone designs a user experience, they're well advised to remember another Oscar Wilde maxim, "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter." The natural tendency is to build a UI that makes sense to you. Whether or not it makes sense to the person using that UI is another matter entirely.

[Cross-posted at The Forrester product management blog.]

A book of my tweets

In case you missed it, last week's Doonesbury series (starting here) was pretty gosh darn funny for anyone who follows social media. Or leads it. Or thinks they're leading it. Or even wants social media to go away.

Mad Men and PM

Not completely off-topic, last night's season finale of Mad Men was excellent. What's the connection to this blog? Most of the reviews of the series have focused on the relationships of people outside of work (husband, wife, lover, child, etc.), but at least half of the show is really about relationships at work.

And about work itself. Without giving anything away, last night's episode featured, in a big way, what it takes to run a good business.

(In the middle of this season, I was annoyed at the series for the slow pace, in which lots seemed to be building, but little was actually happening. Boy, did that change in the last two episodes.)

Topics for future PM open house sessions

Last Thursday's inaugural "open house," an informal get-together in Forrester's Foster City, CA office , achieved what we had hoped: lively conversation on a topic of immediate interest for product managers and product marketers. We're definitely planning to do more of these events, so the critical question now is, What topics should we cover?

To the extent that the format drives the questions, here's what it means to do an open house:

• Somewhat unstructured conversation about the topic. (We'll continue to tune how much structure to impose.)
• Forrester analysts provide occasional data points and insights from our research to inform the discussion.
• Some time for attendees to talk with each other, outside the group discussion. (Something we didn't do last time, but definitely want to add to the next session.)

Here's a link to a Survey Monkey questionnaire where you can vote on some hot topics, or suggest other ones. There are always more topics that we might cover, so let your imagination run wild.

What kind of innovation should you pursue?

This morning at the Business of Software 2009 conference, I heard an excellent talk by Geoffrey Moore on (surprise!) how technology company should use innovation to achieve company success. The emphasis in the previous sentence is important, since a lot of companies struggle, or even fail, because they don't make the connection between the idea and the company.

The core idea of Moore's talk was, Not all forms of innovation are the same. For example, some innovations help companies differentiate themselves from the competition. Other innovations keep companies in play, when prospective customers are pondering which vendors they should take seriously. Finally, there are innovations that increase operational efficiencies.

You'll notice that the way in which Moore is using the term innovation has less to do with the idea itself, and more with the outcome of bringing the idea to market. That shouldn't be surprising, if you've kept the difference between invention and innovation clear in your mind. The idea--big or small, prosaic or revolutionary--is the basis of invention, not innovation.

People in the business of innovation management tools certainly are getting this message. Accept Software, for example, is certainly one of many ISVs in this area who realize that the innovation process that they model, support, streamline, etc.  is bigger than just the idea. Suggesting and voting on ideas is a process worth supporting, but so too is quickly translating the idea into concrete requirements, and fitting the idea into the larger portfolio. That, according to the people at Accept, is why they have products in all three areas.

Unfortunately, in the technology industry, we're still a significant distance from a collective understanding of what innovation really means. The speaker right after Moore, Paul Graham, asserted that the founders in technology companies will play a stronger role, over time. Even if it were true, as Graham argued, that "hackers" can understand business more easily than business people can understand "hacking," it's not the case that the same people should focus on generating new ideas and nurturing the business. Even the greatest minds among us aren't good at everything, and they definitely don't have time for everything.

Companies that make the right guesses about the type of innovation they should emphasize, build the strategy that spells what to do next, and succeed at executing this strategy, are the collective triumph of some people who generate ideas, others who fit them into the company strategy, and make sure that the company acts quickly and successfully on all fronts.

No cranky for you!

Apparently, the Cranky Product Manager won't be presenting at the Business of Software conference, alas. You can console yourself with this interview with Her Cranky Nibs from earlier this year.

I heart BPM modeling tools

No, I don't really love BPM modeling tools. I doubt that anyone does. If you're the exception, by all means, speak up, I'd love to meet you. Maybe we could talk about how long it has been since you had a vacation.

As April Dunford argues, technology doesn't have to be exciting to be useful, or even attractive for people to buy: 

I'm not saying that it's impossible to have successful products without inspiring people.  It's possible and I know it because I've done it.  I launched a product that generated $80 million in its first year that was as dull as paint and I couldn't find a single reference to it online outside of our own website.  It did useful yet really boring thing very well at a time when no other product did so people paid money for it.  I don't think believe that's changed and there will always be some markets where sheer utility works.

Sheer utility does have its own coolness factor, though. Exhibit A is the Eclipse IDE. For a lot of developers, once you start using Eclipse, you don't want to change, regardless of what competitive IDE your new employer has made standard in the development team. Ditto for people who graduated from computer science programs with an attachment with Vi and Emacs.

On the consumer side, sheer utility also has its appeal. Just visit your local hardware store this weekend to see how people can develop a passionate attachment for something as unlovely to the eye as a compound miter saw.  (I admit, I'm one of those people. I'm just like Hank Hill, but without the competence.)

Sure, there are pieces of technology that can arouse people's passions. But, if I forbid you to mention any Apple product, how many examples can you think of?

In fact, efforts to wow people with flashy UIs often fall flat on their faces.  For example, at bottom, users seem to want a webmail client that just makes it easy to write, read, file, and delete e-mail. Efforts to jazz up the web UI with Ajax- or Flash-based eye candy don't seem to make people fall in love with their e-mail client. E-mail is a necessity, just like your last visit to the DMV. Interesting architecture and expensive wallpaper won't make you want to hang around the DMV any longer than is necessary to renew your driver's license.

In fact, it might be worth pursuing the idea that "sheer utility" is, on average, the most important factor in adoption. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to importing some BPEL-based workflow templates.

Crankiness out of the closet?

In case you missed it, The Cranky Product Manager is going to give a talk at the Business of Software conference next week. Really.

By the way, I'm not speaking at that event, but I'll be attending. By all means, find me and say hello if you're also there.

Is "social product management" for real?

Here's an important rule of thumb, if you're a researcher such as myself: Don't name something unless it really exists. That sounds fairly obvious, but unfortunately, in the history of the technology industry, there's a sad history of failed neologisms. In some cases, these phrases exaggerated the importance or complexity of some relatively mundane aspect of the world. That's how the superheated usage of the term knowledge management turned into a four letter word. In other cases, people use neologisms designed to describe things that might (or might not) exist in the future as if they already existed now. I've heard some presentations about the Semantic Web that certainly fall into that category.

Therefore, when I use a phrase like social product management, believe me, I'm using it very carefully. Over the course of the last week, I've had occasion to use it on several occasions, most recently at last night's open house for PMs in the Forrester Foster City office. (Thanks to all who attended, by the way.)

Social product management passes the sniff test for neologisms because it describes something that's really happening: social media are changing the way that product managers and product marketers work. Here are a few manifestations, excerpted from the research I've been doing for the last several months:

• Social media figure increasingly in the to-do lists for PMs. Whether it's answering forum postings or monitoring "chatter" about your company on Twitter, PMs are spending more time using social media to get some aspects of their job completed.
• Social media demand new skills to master. It's abundantly clear that using social media, in either an inbound or outbound capacity, takes real skill. Unfortunately, not everyone has learned how to  spot the social media outlets where particular kinds of stakeholders congregate, or how to collect and interpret a representative sample of aggregate social media activity.
• Social media frequently require investment. It takes time and effort to figure out which social media channels are worth your attention. In some cases, new tools, such as listening platforms, can be a big force multiplier in these efforts.
• Social media require new attitudes to work. Everything falls apart if the company isn't ready to take social media seriously. Strangely, customers expect social media to be the place where conversations happen, instead of providing yet another brand of megaphone for vendors to announce their greatness. They also expect you to follow up on these conversations. Weird, but true.
• Social media foment professional crises for PMs. The natural consequence of the previous bullets are some tough conversations between PMs and their managers. Topics include How the hell do you expect me to do this in my free time to Why use these new sources of intelligence if we continue to make the same mistakes in the decision-making process? However these conversations turn out, the fact that they're happening at all means that social media are having a real effect on the PM job.

Let's be clear: I'm not saying that social media obliterate everything that PMs used to do. Far from it. In pretty much every aspect of the job where social media are relevant, they supplement existing PM tasks, deliverables, or resources. For example, as useful as innovation sites may be (users propose features, comment on them, vote on them), you still need to have occasional face-to-face conversations with people in customer organizations. If 5,000 people vote for a great new feature, Ion flux regulator, that doesn't tell you why it's important to them, how they expect it to work, and other critical details that bear directly on prioritization and design decisions.

Therefore, the phrase social product management does have weight and purpose, to the extent that social media are changing the way that PMs in the tech industry work. Me absolvo, it's not just another meaningless buzzword.

[Cross-posted at The Forrester product management blog.]

Reminder, open house on social PM is tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that the "open house" for product managers and product marketers is tomorrow at 4 PM PST at Forrester's office in Foster City, CA (click here for a map). As my earlier post explains, the intent is to kick off a series of informal conversations about topics of interest.

For this first open house, we'll be discussing how social media are changing the job descriptions, priorities, deliverables, and required skills for PMs. All are welcome, the event is free, just come on down.

Beastly blogger battle

The AIPMM has invited me to be part of its "Battle of the Bloggers" panel at the Product Management Education Conference two weeks from now.

Frankly, I'm torn. I like all the fellow PM bloggers that I've met. I can't imagine getting my jollies from crushing Brian Lawley or Alison Charter-Smith. On the other hand, I find it hard to resist my competitive urges, even if the stakes are nonexistent.

Or maybe I'll take this way out of the conundrum...

The Heretech, episode 26: Brian Drummond on Agile at Yahoo!

Brian Drummond tells us how Agile adoption worked at Yahoo! How did it start? How did different teams share best practices? How do you make Agile the status quo in a big software company? Plus, news of the first PM open house at the Forrester office in Foster City, CA. (c) 2009 Tom Grant

The PM blogroll

Saeed Khan has done us all a great favor by compiling this compendium of PM-related blogs.

The widget test of non-value

I almost wish that this excellent post from Tyner Blain wasn't titled "Agile Prioritization: Which Widget?" If you left out the word Agile from the title,  you'd still have a good cautionary tale about how you prioritize features and capabilities. More importantly, something phrased as a development project ("Build the following widgets...") doesn't necessarily convey what a feature does does, how it provides value, and why the team should build it in the first place.

On the other hand, to give Agile its props, user stories have moved the quality of requirements forward. By their nature, user stories force people to make at least some minimal effort towards explaining how someone will use a piece of technology. Depending on the quality of the user story,  plus other supporting references (personas, etc.), the user story can explain rather easily why the technology has value.

Of course, you can write bad user stories, or fail to build the conceptual bridge between the human activity it describes and the technology that might support it. If everything in your backlog (or other requirements content, if you're not using that particular Agile medium) has titles like ERP widget, or even File upload widget, you're probably not building that bridge.

I'm sorry...Not!

Christopher Cummings raises a good point about customer experience: Since goof-ups and accidents are inevitable, you'd better think about how you handle apologies. There's nothing more annoying than the non-apology, which are endemic in both politics and business. (To feast on a smorgasbord of non-apologies, listen to the "Apologies of the Week" segment of Harry Shearer's weekly podcast, Le Show.)

Back from a break

I gave the little grey cells a vacation, for the most part, last week. I'm back to blogging, podcasting, and general yakking today.