Defeating the evil that is Marketing <g> (Take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Just to be perfectly clear on this, I'd thought that the <g> (grin) in 
the subject line combined with the tone of the message would have made 
it clear that I wasn't fully serious in my original post on this 
subject. Evidently not. A few points now, more seriously:

Marketing is clearly essential to setting any company's product release 
schedule because if customers don't know about a product and feel 
convinced they should buy it, there's no income coming in to pay 
_anyone's_ salary. But because marketing is forced to focus on the 
urgency of shipping a product to provide income, they often lose sight 
of more important factors--in the example I provided, the fact that the 
finest marketing in the world can't sell a product that sucks, and that 
short-term thinking can lead to long-term failure if you establish a 
reputation for cruddy products.

Engineering and other "development" roles are clearly crucial to any 
company's product release, because without them, there'd be no products 
to ship, and because only the developers know when a product is ready 
to ship. But developers often have the user-empathy of a clam*, most 
have no training in usability or interface design, and in the face of 
tight deadlines (often but not always marketing-driven) and incompetent 
management, often have to cut corners they'd rather not cut.

* There's an old joke: What do engineers use for birth control? Their 
personalities. (Speaking as a former forester, and thus a tree-hugging 
engineer...)

We techwhirlers, proudly bearing the flag of user's advocate, often 
think we're the solution to both problems. "If only everyone listened 
to us," we opine, "software would be perfect, and would ship on time." 
There's some justice to that attitude, since at least in principle, 
we're the ones whose sole purpose in life is to help people use the 
product--and we all complain loudly at the drop of a hat that we can't 
do that with crappy products.

The reality is more complex. The correct shipping date is one that lets 
the engineers develop a usable, safe, and stable product, accompanied 
by good documentation, in time to meet the payroll. It seems obvious 
that the only way to set such a date is for all three of us (marketers, 
developers, and user advocates) to work together to set an appropriate 
date that balances all three sets of needs.

Unfortunately, a combination of incompetent management (cf. Dilbert) 
and a lack of willingness to work together often mean that one of the 
three (never us) dictates the schedule to everyone else. I suspect this 
is the real reason so many products suck.

Here's a crazy notion for how things could be better: Marketing tells 
us when the product needs to ship so that we can meet the bills. The 
developers focus in on the key set of features they can deliver by that 
date, and estimate that feature set very conservatively, so when the 
inevitable surprises arise, there's still time remaining before the 
deadline. The techwhirlers (or usability experts) help the engineers to 
polish the interface ("measure thrice, cut once") so that the interface 
freezes right from the start; the developers then focus on the actual 
plumbing, and leave the interface alone so it can be documented. No new 
features are added ***ever*** before the shipping deadline. "Cool new 
ideas" get added to the wish list for version 2, and are ignored until 
version 1 ships.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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