“Editioning” is good in general for the outside world, this way a given prospect customer is most likely to get what he needs or close to it. However, what can end up happening in that once the precedent is set, every junior/ middle level manager worth his ambition decides that he has identified a market innovation opportunity with which he is going to bottom feed. And organizationally, there are not many ways to stop that.

I have heard of CEOs who zealously guarded their basic value prop and basic product offering and simply allowed competition to come in, sometimes even overtake them from positions of strength in other segments.

So it is not a no-brainer, is all I can say – but like most things in life, a good discussion topic!

As usual, Cranky Product Manager, you’ve put your finger on an important issue in an acidly funny way. A lot of tech companies just can’t see the value of simple products, and their response to the demand for simplicity is more often than not counterproductive. The fun begins with denial that customers really want something simpler than what the company offers.

That’s one of the reasons licensing software that turns features on and off based on the parameters defined in the key has been so popular.

It’s also a reason why smart product marketing people articulate a brand architecture up-front, not after-the-fact. Knowing what feature set your low-end user wants and how that compares to your high-end user allows you to create products that version easily using tools like entitlement keys.

I agree that “one-off” products are bad. The only thing worse than selling no licenses is selling one. But that’s why you specify your versions and the feature sets that are associated with each of them – so you can balance manufacturing convenience with market requirements for relevant versioning.

Great post!

After a couple of years of this madness, we need more head count than these “fixes” are worth. I am not surprised. So, last August, the new Development Director and I (newly assigned to this product) declared that no new one-offs will be entertained. We put up a wall.

Since this edict, there have been no new one-offs. We have produced more output from Development in these last six months than any 12 months prior. The distractions are gone, and we are focused. And Sales still made their number. Sort of makes you go hmmmm.