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Tudor Davies
Tudor is a techie turned manager who fights like mad to keep his tech skills honed and relevant. Everything from web hosting, networking, *nix and the like. Constantly developing and co-ordinating with others to make the web a better (and easier to use) place.
Thursday, 25th Jul 2013
Posted @ 08:46
After reading this article it got me to thinking not only about startups but also about developing internal applications.
How much of what we as programmers produce is actually used?
My direct line manager (henceforth known as "Mecontent"), for example, requests multitudes of features for any application he sees as required (and also fails to recognise that he is the worst offender when it comes to feature creep and creating technical debt). The main issue is that generally the apps he wants are not used by him but by other in the company, so plenty of things that we build are never used.
There is a prime example of this in our current internal CRM system - there is a button in the ordering system called "Create Manual Order" - a feature requested by Mecontent. It took almost 2 years for someone in the dept that would create manual orders, to ask "What is this button and when did that appear?"
This has made me rethink some of the features I have been planning for a couple of web apps I have been working on (one of which could actually work pretty well and give me a salary). I think they are damn useful features but would they be used?
Maybe the answer is closer cooperation with beta testers. Get the MVP up and running and let select individuals loose on it. Then guage what parts they use, what they like/dislike and ask them what is missing (not what they would like).
Suggestions / thoughts?
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