Perfectionists Despair: Digital World "Always in Beta"

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  ema@...10/05/07 Report as spam
  1

  ESTABLISH A TRESHOLD

  Sure, there is need to beat the already out-of-fashion excuse of 'let's get it right' (with resultant bottlenecks) if you are to be relevant in present competitive markets. But, so you don't release substandards there is need to establish specific thresholds (minimum standards allowable). Otherwise, competitors can develop on what you imperfectly released and then snatch the markets.The idea is to blend both - perfection and speed- and strike a balance.

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  TheOpsMgr10/05/07 Report as spam
  2

  RE: Perfectionists Despair: Digital World

  I think that Jakob Neilsen made this point about six years ago (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/it-nielsen3/) but he makes one (crucial) distinction - "mudslinging" doesn't work (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000402.html).
  
  Launch a site with poor usability will alienate the early adopters - the very trend setting people you want to attract to generate "the buzz".
  
  So Ema (in the early reply) is totally right - you have to set a threshold.
  
  But more importantly "what is your feedback mechanism?" - unless you have very good mechanisms to gather the feedback from your beta testers, and the ability to react to the feedback fast, you might as well still to traditional development techniques.

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  shubhrakant10/08/07 Report as spam
  3

  Also depends on the category of customer

  My observation says that if the innovation is being rolled out to an existing customer then thresholds are not important because they trust you. But if you talk of new customers then you do need to specify some thresholds.

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  william.chong@...10/07/07 Report as spam
  4

  Even More Dispair in Corporate IT Shops?

  As more consumers/users think "I'm ok with trying this but my feedback must result in +ve change in the product in the very near future", they will start to expect the same of corporate applications.
  
  But many corporate IT shops (IT PMO, apps etc) are neither geared nor mentally conditioned to handle this mode of operation. To many a PM, change is bad, iterative change a killer and moving targets are a no-no. Then there is the issue of security, compliance etc. All important.
  
  It seems to me the Internet folks has already accepted the "moving target" notion (as noted in the article above) and is adapting well to it, and users are reciprocating by acception things will never be 100%.
  
  Is there a need to change the IT project management model? Instead of targeting "100% On Time, On Budget" should it be "90% On Business Outcome"? The notion of "Moving Target" is becoming a reality in business - shouldn't we also adapt to it?