(OK, another 5 minute Power Post. An attempt to break through the procrastination and writer’s block that has been plaguing the author of this blog.)
The Cranky PM has recently become obsessed with the TV Show Hoarders. If you are unfamiliar, it is a reality show that profiles people who hoard stuff — tons of worthless artifacts and even unsanitary crap (literally crap! think rotten food! old diapers! full cat boxes!) — until the point that they are buried under 10′ mounds of germ-ridden garbage, their homes are rotting underneath the filth and about to be condemned, Child Protective Services is about to take their children away, and Animal Control is confiscating their pets.
It is super depressing.
Why the Cranky Product Manager watches, she does not know. She doesn’t exactly “like” the show. But it is kind of addictive.
She guesses some of the allure is that it makes the Cranky PM feel like she’s pretty damn organized and productive compared to these people. Isn’t that cruel, though? Taking comfort in the misery of others? Plus, really, what is the great achievement in keeping a nicer environment than people who have a bona fide mental illness? So, the fact that she watches this show should tell you, Gentle Readers, something not-so-nice about the Cranky PM’s lackluster character.
But ANYWAYS… Like EVERYTHING (pretty much), it reminded the Cranky Product Manager just a teensy bit of life at DysfunctoSoft.
(Watch with utter amazement, as the Cranky PM attempts to segue – like a crappy local newscaster – to a completely unrelated topic).
How? Because DysfunctoSoft has NEVER, EVER thrown out a feature, truly de-supported a platform, or dropped an obsolete product. No matter how decrepit, bug-ridden and just FOUL that hardly-used-but-now-completely-obsolete feature is. No matter how ridiculously costly it is to continue supporting that horrible Active X plug-in from 10 years ago. Who really cares if the thing integrates with Adobe Reader 4 anymore????
The product documentation is clogged up to the point of complete obscurity with all this crap. You can’t read it and understand what the product actually does! The price list is out of control and so freaking confusing because it has tons of space devoted to products and licensing options that no one ever uses (or if they do use them, let’s face it, they’re freaks). The automated test suite – which is supposed to run every 6 hours — now takes over 30 hours to run.
WHY? Because DysfunctoSoft is a HOARDER. Not all Software Companies are. But there are more than a few out there.
Just remember, if you refuse to pick up your stinkin’ house now and then – and clear out the dead products, obsolete and bug-ridden features, and unsanitary filth out of your product line – well, one day it will collapse under its own weight, with you inside.!
(well maybe not, but didn’t that sound dramatic)?
(OK, actually went 10 minutes on this one. So not quite a Power Post, but whatev….)
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
New cranky post! Power Post #2: Hoarding Features & Products – http://tinyurl.com/yb7gto6 #prodmgmt
RT @crankypm: New cranky post! Power Post #2: Hoarding Features & Products – http://tinyurl.com/yb7gto6 #prodmgmt
The @CrankyPM is on a Roll: http://tinyurl.com/yb7gto6 #prodmgmt — clean up!
RT @Federico_II: The @CrankyPM is on a Roll: http://tinyurl.com/yb7gto6 #prodmgmt — clean up!
Unemployed Miss Bender recently interviewed at a software joint that was supporting SEVEN versions of its product — supporting, making bug fixes on, adding enhancements to… seven release versions. As Miss Bender was applying for a release mgt role, she suggested that her first recommendation would be to stop that practice. She was not invited into the finalists’ circle. She is so very happy.
Actually most of software companies are hoarders. I remember working on ERP system where for some reason we had to remove one configuration option. It went through endless discussions and at the end we just sent out a note with a question if removing the feature would hurt any of our clients.
No surprise there, no one answered. After releasing new version no one complained. In other words no one has ever used the feature.
I try hard but this is probably the only situation I remember when feature was cut out consciously. I don’t count all these situations when it happened by accident because this is different case.
RT @crankypm New cranky post! Power Post #2: Hoarding Features & Products – http://tinyurl.com/yb7gto6 (hmmm…)
RT @enwafor: RT @crankypm New cranky post! Power Post #2: Hoarding Features & Products – http://tinyurl.com/yb7gto6 >> bang on!
The Cranky Product Manager – Power Post #2: Hoarding Features & Products http://bit.ly/5UTcQl
Power Post #2: Hoarding Features & Products: Shared by Travis
What a great analogy for why it is important for … http://bit.ly/6Kuk9l
Cranky PM – Hoarding Features & Products http://bit.ly/939O2s – no one sees a product/feature till it is removed :) #pm
ok, so this one is solveable. You’ve gotta find a way to instrument data collection about your product’s usage by customers. In a SaaS environment, a relative layup: run reports on stuff like web server & app server logs and databases and anything else you can get your hands on. For customer premise deployments: pre-package reports that describe customer usage patterns and get customers to email the reports to you. Better yet, use some sort of “phone home” connection to do the same. You’ll get all sorts of wonderful by-products: user personas will emerge, performance test scenarios will emerge, etc.
Is convincing engineers to add instrumentation code hard? Can be. Getting customers to give you the data? Sure. But without this fact base, as my colleague noted, you’re arguing with someone else’s hypothesis, and they don’t have any data to base it on. Cause you don’t either.
Great post. Timely for those of us who are still fighting, but growing weary of our campaign to FINALLY stop supporting IE6 (the pile of crap it is and always has been)… I once read that the true mark of a mature product manager is that they take stuff OUT of the product.
I think you hit the nail right on the head – there is this hand-wringing paranoia about “OH what if someone uses it and we turn it off?” Even though we all know that anyone old enough to have a compatible OS for it moved to Florida at least 5 years ago.
Don, I tried your approach and it was not as successful as I expected. Our products are well instrumented, and nearly all our partners are compliant in regularly feeding the data to us.
What I discovered, however, is that:
1. If you have millions of users, some idiot uses every feature and every platform. There’s no (cheap) way to prove that the 0.2% of users used a particular feature by mistake rather than on purpose. And which executive is willing to piss off the one big client where 5% of users are still on IE 6?
2. I have to admit (because it is demonstrated clearly by the win/loss reports) that a few features get very little use in the field but are still very important in the sales process; buyers apparently think they might really need those features someday. But once I acknowledge this for a few features, it is hard to use the product usage data to prove that any feature can be done away with.
Ha! One true measure of a good PM is that ability to kill (er… EOL) a product that is no longer profitable. Good question to ask when interviewing prospective PMs – “Have you ever EOL’d a product? If so, how did you do it?”
My experience is that taking away a feature is just as much work internally as adding a feature. It’s usually much more rewarding to add functionality to a product because that usually better solves customer problems. At some point in the maturity of the product, however, the most important story is to prune rather than to add. And then sell that change as usability.
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