Technology Notables – Part 2: Exhaustion v Numbness

This is part 2 in a series of blog post on technology notables.  Part 1 is available here.

The big truth about new product features is that they are exhausting to end users.  End users are worn out by the day-to-day battle of keeping their jobs, keeping their companies alive, and mentally managing the stress of getting things done. The average small business owner has a very limited capacity to incorporate new technology.

But cognitive overload isn’t the whole problem.  Even more important is the product-cycle.  Every business has some kind of product cycle.  In the beginning of a product cycle, a new initiative or product is specified.  Next it is designed and taken through the process of readying it for market.  Product cycles hamper technology adoption, because once you choose a technology and start a product cycle, you can’t change the technology without restarting.  New features can only be helpful to customers, if customers learn them before their next product cycle push.

Software organizations don’t realize how limited customers are in what they can use.  Software organizations assume the more features the better.  Only a few breakthrough features are needed to justify shotgun software development.  So, software organizations develop long lists of new stuff that the end user has no clue why s/he should care about.  In particular, software organizations working from open source, are prone to this habitual product development.   Release after release lists of software feature get longer and longer.  Release after release, these lists drive a wedge between software companies and customers.

It is not that software companies over-promise and under-deliver.  It is that software companies who are not daily in contact with customers become feature numb.  And feature numb software organizations do not know the difference between a big and a small features.

To a customer, a big feature is worth taking the time to understand and then, taking much more time to implement and harvest the feature’s value in use.   To a customer, a small feature is just noise.  That is: “If new features are small, please don’t tell me about them.”  But more importantly: “If this is a small feature, please do not tell me it is a big feature.”  Because, the big small feature lie can and will be held against you.  To a big well-run software organization, a big feature is: (a) a significant challenge to develop, (b) hard for competitors to copy, (c) likely to used by the entire customer base, (d) extends the architecture that is already in place, and (e) a low uncertainty requirement that is well understood.

Feature numb software organizations have leprosy.  They no longer can sense customer-induced pain from the dumb and vestigial features they dump into products.  Without the pain of the cheers and jeers of end users, software development managers begins to manage  with customer myths and self hypnosis.  Recent block buster products and markets become the the only valid target for future development.  Product development and sales both become exercises in extrapolation from the past, and the company marches into the future … facing backwards.

For example, I’m a huge fan of network attached storage, but the latest NAS feature “iSCSI” has exhausted me even before I understand it.  All the NAS companies are pushing iSCSI like Jesus freaks throwing tracts at my face.  As a customer, I have an automatic response to new features dumped over the transom into my life: benign cynicism.   Benign cynicism is where I’m going to make NAS companies pay for telling me small features are big features.   The more they lie, the less I listen.

I admit, this could be unfair to the NAS company.  I may very well need iSCSI.  But, life is not fair, and right now I’m in the middle of a product cycle and I don’t want to hear about iSCSI!   I haven’t got iTunes video streaming working from my NAS yet!  And I’m more NAS literate than average.  Way more literate.  And, by the way, if I have to erase my NAS storage volume to use iSCSI, I declare iSCSI to not exist.

Denial is much easier than backing up and reformatting 3.5 terabytes of data.

Cynics are frustrated idealists.  And even though I’m a benign cynic NAS customer, I’m still a cynic.  So frustrated idealism makes me give up on latent killer features because I’m not listening.  Notables are projectiles for piercing this kind of product cycle and cognitive overload-induced benign cynicism.

Notables follow the theory that the way to every over-taxed stressed out customer’s heart, is through superiority that matters.  It is through understanding the customer, and picking the one feature that the customer can implement in the next year, and explaining your product’s benefit superiority.  And explaining the benefit superiority … enthusiastically.   Notables enthusiastically explain benefit superiority for a few big features.

Notables renegotiate the information deal with customers.  The company says “I realize you have been lied to about small features being big.  In this short page document, I’m going to tell you about a new big feature, that will be genuinely big for you. After you read this document (5 minutes) you will know how this feature will benefit you, or you will know the feature is noise.”

Technology notables over come customer feature exhaustion by the promise of a much higher signal to noise ratio than advertising.  And notables overcome feature numbness, by making software organizations aware that each feature needs a value proposition.  When you think about it, software organizations could do their own market research by writing notables for proposed features, and then listening for the cheers and jeers of users.

Notable Lessons:

1. Notables are a great customer development tool because you write them and send them out of the company, and they give you a feature-specific signal to listen for customer bounce back.  Notables are sonar for marketers trapped inside a company.  Customers will respond to big benefit feature notables.  So will field sales.  So will product managers.
2. Most software organizations are sleep walking on autopilot.  They dump features into products and hope for the best.
3. Feature lists drive a wedge between software companies and their customers.