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HOME >> OPINIONS

Guest View: What's so scary about a featureless future?

By Simon Galbraith

February 15, 2009 — (Page 1 of 3)
For decades, most software companies have taken a specific approach to creating new versions of their products: Pile on additional features, market them as the newest and greatest, then sit back and hope the revenue comes pouring in.

In the best case, before starting development, the vendor surveys users to find out which features top their wish lists. In other cases, the approach can be a casual one: getting a few sales people into the office and asking, “So what do these people want?” And, of course, there’s the “developer knows best” approach, which bypasses any polling or information-gathering in deference to the developer’s superior knowledge of what makes a product great.

Once the feature list is prioritized, developers go to work ladling these new features into the software framework, trying to fit in as much as possible within the promised delivery time. If they can’t deliver a feature list that looks good on a spec sheet, website and press release, they might delay delivery or compromise on a reduced feature set that will stem the tide until the next product release.

If users get what they think they requested, and the features actually do what they are purported to do, then this feature-driven approach works fine. Users can justify upgrade purchases to their bosses based on waving the spec sheet and reiterating the vendor’s promises of better performance and quality.

From the vendor side, it works wonderfully. A new version of software with additional features typically opens up a fresh revenue stream, giving an existing product new life and making a substantial contribution to the vendor’s bottom line.

So, if the user is happy and the vendor is happy, what’s the issue?

The issue is one of missed opportunity: the opportunity to do something that users have never seen before and could never even imagine, much less request in a feature survey or discussion. It's something that gets a job done in a way that makes their lives better.

Related Search Term(s): professional development, Google

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