Having spent the past decade or so on the dark side (Product Management/Marketing), I get User Story stories like this in my LinkedIn feed all the time. Chatting with the tech world about "what" & "why" was never as tough to me as chatting with the business world about "how". Engineers, as people, make more sense to me.
In fairness, though, if I were to go over to Pragmatic Marketing, then they would howl over the content of, say, the P2 forums. Presenting cost structures openly? Feature requests without capturing the incremental realized revenue? After years of development effort, asking where the product could be marketed? While I dislike grammatical and vocabulary misuse, I see things that make the business half of my brain cry. The forum is a funny thing - the bar scene from Star Wars, really. At best, I am the curious furry creature in the back of the cantina that ignores most of the conflict.
Parallax is a very customer-focused company so allowing customers direct input to the design process makes perfect business sense. How many other companies do that?
My focus in engineering but I have always been interested in the business side especially marketing and it's the sales and marketing people to get customers to buy the products and services that make the company money.
All the paper that engineers generate doing their jobs isn't of much value to a customer except maybe the government or an investor.
My personal observation though is that people in management with a business degree seem to only understand sales volume and revenue. I have met a few though who know how things are done.
@Genetix - no doubt that Parallax is a great company (or that they have a great forum community, else I would not spend precious moments here).
Literally every significant company involves customers in the decision about what to bring to market. Some companies deeply engage with specific customers, calling the result "co-innovation". Add that to the buzzword list.
There is a real danger in engaging a wide swatch of customers in how to make a product. In the semiconductor space (which I left a few years ago), there are literally a handful of experts on any given process. Many of our customers were very technically knowledgeable, but none were the experts. Even something as simple as transitioning to an adjacent voltage class required different experts, because it could cost you years to learn the physical nuances of boundary cases and best practices.
In my bachelor days, I would say that customers are like ladies - I listen to them, but I sure as heck don't take them literally. The goal is to recognize the underlying concerns and only react to those. Now I am married and I have to do both (literal AND the underlying concern).
Customer service is more art than science.
I've worked at several companies where the biggest customer was also the biggest pain in the butt, while other customers were much easier to deal with.
Some people will never be happy no matter what you do so when you find out who they are then just let them be.
Isn't a "use case" just another name for a decision tree?
Isn't a "use case" just another name for a decision tree?
I guess not.
The use case for Google search is:
1) User goes to google.com in their browser.
2) Google shows text entry box and search button.
2) User types search term
3) User hits return or clicks the search button
4) Google displays the search results.
That would be some decision tree behind that!
It kind of misses everything about google bots following links all over the web, downloading pages, parsing them all, extracting links, indexing it all somehow, ranking all the pages that match the search string in some useful way, sticking ads in there, etc, etc.
I agree. We are not the Corellians in the bar that Jabba owns. (Did own.) (However I don't know about the rest of you.) But we are not a "Focus Group". We are the people who apply Parallax gadgetry who sometimes need help.
A "Focus Group" is usually a group of people who are interviewed to give an opinion on a reasonably logical basis, but more then likely provides completely useless information, as evidenced by the dearth of intelligent programming on the telly on most nights, except after two hours on one night, and nothing on one, and again on one more two days later.
But that's besides our point. What say we wrap this up before the thread finds itself visiting the bottom?
Comments
Having spent the past decade or so on the dark side (Product Management/Marketing), I get User Story stories like this in my LinkedIn feed all the time. Chatting with the tech world about "what" & "why" was never as tough to me as chatting with the business world about "how". Engineers, as people, make more sense to me.
In fairness, though, if I were to go over to Pragmatic Marketing, then they would howl over the content of, say, the P2 forums. Presenting cost structures openly? Feature requests without capturing the incremental realized revenue? After years of development effort, asking where the product could be marketed? While I dislike grammatical and vocabulary misuse, I see things that make the business half of my brain cry. The forum is a funny thing - the bar scene from Star Wars, really. At best, I am the curious furry creature in the back of the cantina that ignores most of the conflict.
Parallax is a very customer-focused company so allowing customers direct input to the design process makes perfect business sense. How many other companies do that?
My focus in engineering but I have always been interested in the business side especially marketing and it's the sales and marketing people to get customers to buy the products and services that make the company money.
All the paper that engineers generate doing their jobs isn't of much value to a customer except maybe the government or an investor.
My personal observation though is that people in management with a business degree seem to only understand sales volume and revenue. I have met a few though who know how things are done.
None of this kindergarten "User Story" and "Use Case" gibberish.
No, we are a "focus group".
Literally every significant company involves customers in the decision about what to bring to market. Some companies deeply engage with specific customers, calling the result "co-innovation". Add that to the buzzword list.
There is a real danger in engaging a wide swatch of customers in how to make a product. In the semiconductor space (which I left a few years ago), there are literally a handful of experts on any given process. Many of our customers were very technically knowledgeable, but none were the experts. Even something as simple as transitioning to an adjacent voltage class required different experts, because it could cost you years to learn the physical nuances of boundary cases and best practices.
In my bachelor days, I would say that customers are like ladies - I listen to them, but I sure as heck don't take them literally. The goal is to recognize the underlying concerns and only react to those. Now I am married and I have to do both (literal AND the underlying concern).
Whilst anyone can suggest anything here none of use can be sure who is in the ficus group and who gets ignored.
I've worked at several companies where the biggest customer was also the biggest pain in the butt, while other customers were much easier to deal with.
Some people will never be happy no matter what you do so when you find out who they are then just let them be.
Isn't a "use case" just another name for a decision tree?
I guess not.
The use case for Google search is:
1) User goes to google.com in their browser.
2) Google shows text entry box and search button.
2) User types search term
3) User hits return or clicks the search button
4) Google displays the search results.
That would be some decision tree behind that!
It kind of misses everything about google bots following links all over the web, downloading pages, parsing them all, extracting links, indexing it all somehow, ranking all the pages that match the search string in some useful way, sticking ads in there, etc, etc.
I agree. We are not the Corellians in the bar that Jabba owns. (Did own.) (However I don't know about the rest of you.) But we are not a "Focus Group". We are the people who apply Parallax gadgetry who sometimes need help.
A "Focus Group" is usually a group of people who are interviewed to give an opinion on a reasonably logical basis, but more then likely provides completely useless information, as evidenced by the dearth of intelligent programming on the telly on most nights, except after two hours on one night, and nothing on one, and again on one more two days later.
But that's besides our point. What say we wrap this up before the thread finds itself visiting the bottom?
Yep, we are a focus group.
Do people still watch telly? I found some years ago that I could easily spend the rest of my life watch Youtube, never mind anything else.
Help...we are sinking!