Joel Spolsky’s focus is NOT on the customer
Posted on November 15th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 5 CommentsHere’s another back-dated post, with a date chosen shortly after Joel’s post to which it refers. I’ve done this to ensure that these comments are read in context.
My apologies to those for whom this practice offends – as noted before, I believe ICT is an enabler, not an ends in itself (or, to put it another way, I am not interested in form without substance).
.
1) Introduction to Joel’s Post
Back on November 1st, Joel Spolsky made a post for Inc magazine entitled “Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?”.
One of the guys in the office found this, and it stimulated a bit of discussion internally about where our bus is headed (on a restricted post). This was good, as we had commenced our Autopsy 2 process.
One part of this planning process has involved one of the coaches we have introduced (Shirlaws) leading us through a process whereby we have clarified, and more clearly communicated, what my vision for the company is.
(a) This is timely, as we are now at our 10th birthday, and the company is at a bit of a crossroads, in terms of where it can head for the future (similar to, but not the same as, Joel’s decision point).
(b) In particular, having clarified and communicated our vision, we will be in a much better position to attract the right people to the bus, in terms of the key hiring decisions we need to make in 2010.
I have made this post now, as we are about to commence our recruitment process for a Chief Software Engineer, to provide more background information about the type of person we’re looking for (and the type of team they will need to develop).
2) Observations, from Joel’s Post
I have tried to include my comments below in some semblance of order.
(a) Joel has built a lifestyle business
In one of the comments made on his post, “Don Phin” (18th Nov 12:52pm) concludes that Joel has built his business around a lifestyle ideal. I tend to agree with this view, based on my very incomplete understanding of Joel, and his business.
i. My take on Joel’s point of view
My inference is that Joel’s company is significantly over-represented by people possessing what Scott Berkun calls the “technology perspective” and not enough people who think with the “business perspective” or (most importantly) the “customer perspective”.
Certainly Joel (as CEO) seems predisposed towards the “technical perspective”. My recollection, in the posts I have read from Joel over the years, is that they have been predominantly inwards-focused (e.g. his quote that “Open space is fun but not productive”) and not outwards-focused (e.g. I can’t recall a single post about “how to find out what customers actually wants”). When Joel has posted about the customer (such as his good post “Seven steps to remarkable customer service”, it has seemed to have been on the presumption that customer service is what happens after you have done the real work of putting the next release together).
This is not dissimilar to a number of businesses I have worked in, or observed (i.e. the operations/production people say “just let me produce, I know – or don’t care – what’s best for the market/customer”).
ii. My alternate view
We are in a similar position (in that we don’t have enough people internally who think with a “customer perspective”). Our case is a little different, however, in that:
1) My focus is not technical, it is very much on delivering real value to our customers.
2) Furthermore, we’re continuing to reinforce this customer-focus throughout the organisation, with the hiring of our “Chief Software Engineer” whose responsibilities will include discerning what the customer wants.
Yes, we can still be a “Product Leader” – but we will need to do it, in future, by developing systems to rapidly/iteratively incorporate customer feedback (that’s more scalable than relying on me to come up with new product ideas, which is largely what we have done to date).
(b) Changing will be difficult
Should Joel choose to change his focus – for instance, to put customer experience at the centre of his company – he will find it not an easy change, because of all the processes that have been developed, and culture that has evolved over the first 9 years of his company’s operations.
A number of the comments added to Joel’s post (such as “jgodse” at 10:53 on 7th November) talk through the challenged in making this change. In a nutshell, if Joel decides to change where the bus is driving, then it may be the new destination is incompatible with the paradigms of some existing staff (including Joel).
We’re grappling with some of the same challenges ourselves.
i. We understand that we need to be more agile (i.e. small “a”), but are taking more time in adopting an Agile mindset than should be the case.
ii. In this, and in many other cases, we have suffered from the loss of shared “institutional memory” of how things have been done when our initial team of developers progressively took extended leave of absence for backpacking and other foreign adventures.
(c) It’s NOT a two-dimensional choice
In Joel’s post, and the commentary it has spurred, I am reminded of the principle that it takes experience/maturity to recognise that choices are oftentimes not a two-dimensional either/or.
For instance, Joel quotes the often-mentioned mindset that:
“Speed to market usually involves a direct tradeoff with quality”
My counter-posing view is that speed-to-market actually provides a better chance of sustained, higher quality, in the end.
Of course, this is based on my paradigm which holds that the customer is the ultimate arbiter of quality/value.
Sure, we can make guesses ahead of time (some product ideas of mine have succeeded, some are still “works in progress”), but the ultimate litmus test is how they are received in the market – hence we need to get feedback, and fast!
One of our guys, for instance, made this comment:
Oracle won the market with a really crappy product because they had great marketing. The same approach has been taken by a number of other companies. During Microsoft’s meteoric rise they had a “bugs be dammed” policy where they would just get the product out and fix any mistakes later.
Again, this is another example of people believing that the choice is either/or:
i.e. EITHER you have a crappy product and big market share
OR you have a “good” product (presumably with “good” being measured by some internal measure) and low market share.In truth, it is NOT Either / Or:
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras termed this not stooping to the “Tyranny of the OR” – something that is all-too-common in society, in our company, and (it seems) in Joel’s as well!
We can have both (a quality product, and an even larger market share) BUT it’s essential we get the sequence of improvements correct:
(d) Sequence of improvements
At the end of his post, Joel mentions the two steps he is implementing in order to address the issues he has raised in the post.
I largely agree with the sequence he has chosen, but not the exact focus of each step.
Step 1) Product Development
My interpretation of Joel’s comment is that he wants to make his product “perfect”:
“So that’s the development team’s mission for 2010: to eliminate any possible reason that customers might buy our competitors’ junk, just because there is some dinky little feature that they told themselves they absolutely couldn’t live without.”
For us, we need to have our delivery capability working very well. I see two key differences here between my focus, and that of Joel’s:
1) Our competitors don’t make junk
We don’t think our competition produces junk. To be honest, I think that’s a pretty myopic paradigm for anyone to have, let alone a CEO.
I agree with what was posted by “Roger” at 05:51 on 6th November:
“Atlassian are growing at an impressive rate … but if you think its a triumph of marketing with no substance in the product, then you clearly don’t understand the market you are in.”
Or this comment from “KD” at 8:22 on 5th:
“FogBugz comes across as your team not taking feedback from customers on how they actually would like to use an issue/case management system. Jira looks like there was a bit more time spent around listening to user/customer feedback.”
Our measure of quality/value is based on response in the market (everything else is supposition).
We know we have potential clients who buy from our competitor, instead of from us. We understand that they have real reasons for doing this, and we are very keen to understand these reasons. I made sure our two aspiring Product Managers spent real time with our clients in 2009 as a first step in helping them to learn of these reasons.
2) I’m focused on the process, not a single product
We need to first improve our software development capability. Moving to Agile is part of this process, as is reinforcing a strong focus on the customer.
When we have our capability working more smoothly, we will be much more able to deal with the increased contact with customers that our Marketing & Sales department will send our way
i.e. more contact with customers means more feedback – which is what we want! It also means we need to be in a position to incorporate this feedback quickly, which we are not, at present …
Step 2) Sales
Joel notes that, once he has perfected his product, he will then “build up our sales force”.
From our point of view, we will also be building our sales capability (once our software development capability is in order). However our focus will be on our sales capability, and not our sales force.
I have invested considerable time, over the past 10 years, in the development of our sales philosophy – so the answer for us will revolve more about doing things smarter, rather than having more bums on seats (after all, this is what we need to do in order to have us deliver our 20x revenue growth vision with only a 3x increase in staff numbers).
3) Why do I write about Joel?
As I have been reminded a number of times by various employees, Joel is a very widely read blogger/author. Hence, I know he does not need the added (small amount of) oxygen this post will give him.
Rather, I make this post because Joel has become a frame of reference (for better or for worse), both internally (for some) and externally (for some).
Sometimes it is easiest to provide a clear explanation of what you are, or what your company is, by linking yourself to something that is more-widely-known.
I recall reading this in one of the many books I have read in the past few years – most of which I have not reviewed online. If the source comes to me, I will duly post about it online.
Hence, in some important ways, we can be seen as “NOT Joel”.
Hope this makes it clearer for some!
4) How my perspective on Joel has been informed
I need to start by noting that I do not know Joel, and have never even met him. Hence, I know very little about what he’s actually like.
My only interactions with him, and his company (and hence the only ways in which I have developed my perspective about him) are as follows:
(a) Like many others, I’m a subscriber on his “Joel on Software” blog. I continue to read what he posts with interest – though I don’t agree with some of it.
(b) Back in about 2005 or so, we took the time to investigate several different options for bug tracking software. I can’t recall all the gory details, but we did look at Joel’s offering (FogBugz) at that offered by Atlassian (JIRA) plus there might have been others. To cut a long story short, we ended up going with JIRA, and have been happy since then. But the moral of the story is that this gave us the opportunity to have a look at how the “rubber hit the road” in Joel’s company, both with respect to:
i. The product that they eventually produced (with respect to its competition, and with respect to our needs). As noted above, we found that it did not meet our needs as well as something else.
ii. How they viewed us (and treated us) as a potential customer. It was a long time ago now, but I certainly don’t recall being contacted by anyone at the company to ask what we liked – or did not like – about their software.
(c) Sometimes (when I find that elusive 25th hour in the day) I manage to read through most of the comments posted by others about articles that Joel has posted, in order to gauge the range of feedback:
i. On this occasion I have read through 112 of the comments online on the INC post.
ii. On this occasion (as on many occasions) there is a diversity of views, some of which are aligned with my point of view.
[...] 1)
[...] instance, I have already noted my perception that this is the case with Joel Spolsky, who I presume is a former colleague of Scott’s at [...]
[...] Some books (such as “People Glue” by Ian Hutchinson) posit that Employees should come first – however
[...] I appreciate that this focus not adopted by all software development organisations (for instance, it does not seem to be front-and-centre of decisions made by Joel Spolsky). [...]
[...] I have previously posted about how it appears some other software companies appear, to me, not to be driven in this way. [...]