One might claim that users can be a real pain - they have requests, find bugs and cause you deal with boring maintenance tasks rather than developing the next version. It is probably true, but…
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
So – “If a product was developed and no one uses it, does it exist?”
Following the previous post (coding is fun), I believe it is much more fun when real users use what you coded (and of course like it).
A few days ago I found out that my ‘first Facebook application’ was downloaded and used by ~100 people. It was a very pleasant surprise.
This is one of the advantages when targeting end-users and not huge companies (consumer vs. enterprise) – the cycles are very short and you can have your product being used by users very fast.
Leveraging this advantage, we are going to ship in a few weeks our first Android application.
To double the fun, the idea of the application is based on my other hobby – running. More details to follow…
Happy Hanukkah, Mary Christmas and Happy New Year!
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1 comment:
I think you addressed two different questions in your post:
1. developers don't just want to solve problems. they want people to benefit from their solutions. this raises the question of where can you access more users building a consumer oriented product/service or building an enterprise solution.
2. would you rather be part of a huge project that takes years to build and another few years to roll out to customers/users. or would you prefer to be part of a project that has short iterations and you get immediate feedback from users?
each person needs to answer the first question based on their personal preferences. but i think there is only one answer to the second question. any company that does not adopt short iterative development and release cycles will find themselves obsolete. in the current technology lifecycle patterns there is no way to predict the needs of the future. you therefore need a mechanism for realtime feedback which get translated into fast product iterations.
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