As we work on our Phoenix Web Services and portal initiatives, we are faced with many challenges. The biggest challenge is how to deliver useful software to you today instead of forcing you to wait for us to deliver a “complete” product at much later date. Fortunately, one of the benefits of software is that can be useful before it is considered complete.
“Complete” is an interesting term in the software business. A book is complete when there is a beginning, middle and an ending. Who would want an incomplete book? When software products are released, there is invariably a laundry-list of features that did not make the cut. That does not mean that the software is unusable, it only means that some features that you might like to have simply will not be available – at least not until another release of the software.
The major trick for those of us writing software is to wisely choose what features will be included, the goal being to satisfy a need in the marketplace – ultimately providing the customer with value for his or her dollar. After all, in the software world there is always another release. (I was forwarded an “end of life” notice for a product several years back, which is the exception to the “next release” philosophy; there are times when products die.)
For my money, there are three key ingredients that must be present for software to be considered usable:
Value must be provided to the user.
The features provided match what the user needs to do. Ideally, a software product (like any other product), should differentiate itself from its competition, providing distinct value that separates itself from similar products, but in ways that align the product with the needs of the marketplace… Well, you get the idea. (Who said product management was easy?)
The software must be a good quality.
Excellent quality is the standard to strive for, but in the real world there is always schedule pressure being applied to release dates. The software world is also a world of changing requirements, which means those of us in development are continually chasing a moving target. These two factors can create quality challenges, but in the end the quality must be high enough to satisfy the users of the product.
The software cannot be cumbersome to use.
Software that provides great value from a feature list perspective can still fail if the users have to work too hard to realize that value. A poorly-designed user interface that is not intuitive or forces users to take too many steps to perform a desire action will place a high-quality product in the less-than-useful category. The same can be said for Web Services. If other developers cannot fathom how to access the Web Services or they are too difficult to make use of, then the Web Services are not providing the desired utility.
As we approach the Phoenix User Conference where we will be talking about Phoenix Web Services and our portal technology, and I would like you to consider what you would truly value as you look to exploit web-based technology. We will be delighted to talk to you about these needs!