Just Say No
I really enjoyed reading Ask 37signals: Installable software?, in particular I enjoyed reading the comments.
(I think) many of the commenters just don’t get it. I’m talking about the people who said things like…”yeah, but what if you supported feature X? My company really wants that feature! Or what about features Y, Z, and Q? Then you could get a whole bunch of new customers!”
Learn to Say No
I recall reading an article about Google’s constant internal battle to keep crap OFF the home page. Every department wants “just one more link…”. The problem is, catering to this sort of request — trying to please everybody — results in slop that delights nobody.
I think 37Signals is right. Their software is not right for everyone, but if it were, it wouldn’t be great for anyone.
I’ll say one more thing. The original author replied a few times, with a very patient explanation something like “yes, we understand, and we don’t want to do that. That’s not our business model and we are fine with that.”
And then people just keep piling on, and on, and on…asking for feature after feature.
This is what happens when you involve too many people in the design process. The “design by committee” syndrome makes it REALLY hard to avoid adding too much junk. No single raindrop thinks it is to blame for the flood.
Right on brother. If one wants to understand the dangers of not being able to say no, all one has to do is go look at the amazon.com page for a popular book. Have you SEEN that page lately?? It’s un-freaking-believable.
From one of our late, great, blogs “Creating Passionate Users” were the topics Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak and Listening to users considered harmful?. The later linking to a 37Signals post from 2005, Getting Real: Forget feature requests. So this is an old problem and requires the support of a decision maker high enough that they have a final say. Maybe this is a symptom of society. The tendency to work so hard for a consensus that the final product is like an energy bill at the Congress of these Unitied States. Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong. (sorry Dennis Miller)
As Always…