Dropping Keys

Anyone who has ever worked for a software company has probably experienced this: sales and marketing don’t understand why the developers make the product a certain way, and the developers are building things based on a spec (or even worse, a hallway conversation) that is open to interpretation.

Half the time, the developers don’t even know what it is they are building or why.

In the middle of all this is the customer who is not getting what he or she was promised.

I call this the Software Yell Cycle, which you can see here with my grade 2 level drawing skills (clearly I am not a Technical Writer).

I bring all this up because I really liked the quote that Dave Friend, the CEO of Carbonite, had in the September issue of Inc. magazine:

Before you build the product, write the ad.

In case you are wondering what on earth he is talking about there, he followed it up with a blog post on the Carbonite blog.

Unfortunately, a lot of products get built before their inventors really stop to think about who’s going to buy them, or even why anyone would buy them. My mantra to engineers - “Write the ad!” forces them to think about who we’re going to sell our product to, what problem the product solves, and why someone would want to buy it.

I absolutely love this. If everyone (and I mean everyone) is forced to think about the actual use of the product, it will go a long way to solving a lot of problems in the Yell Cycle.

Of course, I can see it causing a bit of discomfort for some people, but in my opinion it is good discomfort. Great quote.

(Photo: MShades)