February 7th, 2014 by Adam Sandman
Sometimes the hardest thing you can do is to exclude
innovative ideas from your product, but success requires focus, and focus
requires you to say 'no'.
A famous director who shall remain nameless, once said
that just because you have an incredible shot, doesn't mean it should be in
your movie. You may have the most stunning metropolitan rain sequence, but it
may not enhance your city-based love story. With that one incredible shot you
may lose or confuse your audience. The scenes of a movie need to work with and
not against one another.
This principle can be applied equally when building a
software product, where options and menus can be added and removed faster than
most films can be edited. If you are a Product or Project Manager, you may find
the following scene rather familiar.
Scene : One of your software engineers has come up
with a truly innovative feature and is trying desperately to persuade you to
include it in the next release of your software product.
Engineer: “This idea is so
cool! Let's add it!”
You: “No. It's not in
the product roadmap.”
Engineer: “But it's something
none of our competitors have done. Let's add it!”
You: “No. And we don't
want to differentiate ourselves with spurious capabilities, no matter how cool
they are.”
Engineer: “We really could
attract a lot of business if we position this properly.”
You: “No. It's really
outside the scope of the corporate strategy. We are not that company.”
Engineer: “This was very
difficult to achieve. Can't we use it somehow?”
You: “No. Your ingenuity
always impresses me, but if we're to continue to be a success we need to put
our effort into items in the plan.”
Engineer: “But I did this in
my own spare time. Isn't it worth including?”
You: “No. I appreciate
your enthusiasm but we would need to allocate more effort to testing,
documentation, internal training and a whole host of other needs to support
this moving forward.”
Engineer: “Trust me, our
users will love it!”
You: “No. It's a cool
idea, but it's not why our users buy our products. It could very easily confuse
our users instead.”
Engineer: “But...”
You: “No!”
It may be difficult, but sometimes you must just say
'No!'
Alternate ending for those who like to have their cake
and eat it:
Engineer: “But...”
You: “Don't worry, put
the code under configuration control. I'll enter the proposal into the ideas
section of our requirements database and link the idea to the code in the CM
tool so we won't lose track of the work. We'll review it during the next cycle.
Good work!”
It may be difficult, but with robust ALM tools you can
just say, “Maybe”.