The number one competitor we have in our business is not Microsoft, Google, or some other startup somewhere. The number one competitor we have is simple things, like email…
People are organizing through email. They’re keeping track of their notes through email. They’re doing all this stuff through email. And email is incredibly simple, basically just a text box that you can send to other people or receive.
We have to be just one step above that. Most software developers in our space think they need to be far, far beyond that. The more complex they can be, the more features they list on the back of the box, the better it’s going to be — without realizing that’s not how most people operate. Most people operate just with email. So if we can just be one step above that, then we’re doing pretty well.
Audio of DHH speaking to A Better Way Of Work on the theme of simplicity
Girish Pathria
on 24 Nov 10A pragmatic marketing article http://bit.ly/grtOQ3 mentions that we must understand the G-E-L or “good-enough-line” for our products. The basic premise is that customers base purchase decisions on the concept of what is good enough and over time “good enough” increases gradually. If the technology in your product is above the G-E-L, don’t expect the sales to sky-rocket in proportion of depth of technology. In essence, deliver to customers what they value the most.
brad
on 24 Nov 10This is so true. I’ve been working with teams of people for 12 years now using a variety of group collaboration software products (Lotus Notes, Basecamp, Joyent, Sharepoint), and in every case people have reverted back to email eventually. Email is familiar, efficient, requires no learning, and encourages autonomy. If one member of your team won’t run with the pack and insists on using email instead of the collaboration site, the system gets complicated and opportunities for error and missed communication increase because you have to accommodate everyone. And people drift back to email because it’s comfortable and familiar.
I was talking with a Sharepoint engineer recently, who said that Sharepoint was about “process change.” But why force people to change processes when their current process works for them? If they want to use Sharepoint only as a central storage library for commonly used files, they should be able to do that. Requiring them to use Sharepoint for team discussions, and/or for calendar and task management, isn’t necessary if those functions are already being filled adequately by Outlook or whatever email program they’re using. We shouldn’t be forced to alter our workflow and work habits to fit the requirements of the collaboration software.
Lapeira
on 24 Nov 10Well, sharepoint tries to promote the way you work because they want you to be loyal (dependant) on their product… it is no secret that the momento you get developers to depend on any given tech you have won a loyal customer.
It is a developer responsibility not to be “captured” by this kind of retention policies, even if Microsoft, Google or whoever is your partnert… things always change with time.
Tim
on 24 Nov 10It is true, however what people do and what they say they want is very different. If you ask a person what they want with a task manager they will give a list of features. What they really need and what they would actually use and be effective using is different then the list of features they asked for.
The trick is to get people to understand how they behave within and application/process etc.
Marc Hedlund
on 24 Nov 10What an awesome quote, and way to think about your products. Thanks for calling it out.
Ryan
on 24 Nov 10Here is an MP3 of the talk, from the original site (which only offers a flash play button, for some reason):
http://abetterwayofwork.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/simplicity.mp3
Mark
on 24 Nov 10If email is your competition, then don’t you want to ‘under do’ them? What happens if you take a step down from email?
Scott
on 24 Nov 10@DHH I think Google Wave proves your point pretty well.
Keith Suckling
on 25 Nov 10I think Mark hits its on the head about “under do”ing email.
All these other tools that are more than/ better than/ more collaborative than…have a massive disadvantage in that they need to be taught and embedded for other users. I think the tools that will gain share will be the most simple to use that people are already in (eg. Facebook) and have barely enough features.
Paul Singh
on 26 Nov 10This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this particular quote but I should admit that I didn’t give it much credit until just a few months ago.
I build a small CRM product for notary publics - a very specific niche - and I repeatedly find that my #1 competitor is Excel Spreadsheets. I’m quickly learning that more features are not necessarily better. I simply need to be “just a little bit” better than spreadsheets and I inevitably win.
Thanks DHH!
Neil
on 26 Nov 10Email (especially Outlook) is hopefully something which will die out, but doesn’t look like it’s fading!
GVIrish
on 27 Nov 10I think it is a mistake to equate “simple” with a “lack of features”. Simple just means that it is easy for people to use. So the goal shouldn’t be to cut features until it is functionally close to email. It should be to design a product so that it is as easy to use as email. Making something that simple does involve cutting superfluous features but it also involves careful and thoughtful design. “Features” are not inherently evil. Difficult-to-use ones are.
G.Irish
on 27 Nov 10@brad Why change the process when they already have something that works? Because ad hoc processes don’t scale. Because maybe the old process lacks accountability or transparency or repeatability. Because the old process wastes a lot of time. In these cases designing an application that addresses those issues can deliver significant business value.
The problem comes in when usability and user experience is not a priority in the design of a new system. Or when scope is not properly defined and controlled. Those two things alone lead to great deal of the difficulty with implementing Sharepoint or any number of technologies [disclosure: I am a Sharepoint developer].
brad
on 28 Nov 10@G. Irish: I’m not sure ad hoc processes don’t scale. We have 3,000 employees in my company, and we all do just fine with Outlook and Exchange for managing communications, calendars, and task lists. We have Sharepoint but almost nobody uses it for those functions because our current system isn’t broken. The sole value of Sharepoint for us is as a central repository for files, and for it’s check-in/check-out capabilities.
Sharepoint could work if all of your communication was internal, but I can’t think of many companies that never communicate with the outside world. We’ve tried having clients collaborate with us on Sharepoint sites, and the barriers of network access and password management are too onerous for them so they revert to email.
Karim A.
on 28 Nov 10I remember watching a presentation by the Project Manager for Google’s Calendar and he was saying something similar. He said their main competition is not Outlook or any other online calendar service. Their main competition is the printed calendar. People still like seeing the monthly calendar with squares for each day and filling it out by hand. He said their job is to figure out how to make Google’s calendar as easy to use as the printed calendar.
anonymous
on 29 Nov 10sounds good, it would be great to see a 37signal basecamp and highrise setup with features and pricing a step above email. Right now these offerings are many steps above email.
GVIrish
on 29 Nov 10@brad Maybe for your organization you don’t have a need to build out a lot of functionality in a content mgmt system. I can certainly think of lots of applications where you can get away with doing things ad hoc. But as you add complexity and more different actors to a process ad hoc becomes increasingly unwieldy. I think in your case where you have to collaborate a lot with external customers Sharepoint could be a bit difficult to use.
In the cases I’ve worked on people sending emails all over the place tends to create confusion and stuff gets overlooked, lost, misrouted, etc.
Anyway one size does not fit all. Some enterprises can just use email to conduct business, others cannot.
This discussion is closed.