June 29, 2005

Expanding Functionality

How do know when you should buy additional software or upgrade your current environment. How do you know when you Information Architecture is appropriate? How do you know if you products within the collaborative space needs expanding?

Simple! Let the customer tell you. While there are many other ways, the customer is really the one that drives your technology decisions (Customer and the Business are the Same Thing). If no one is complaining about your application then focus on deployment not functionality. If 100% of your customers are complaining then focus on the functionality, the ship is sinking. Ideally, I would like to see around 20% of the customers complaining in order to alter my product or service portfolio. 20% complaints seems high, not really. There will always be people that complain and look toward the cynical side of the world. And by complaining, I don’t mean screaming that the system is down or not doing what it is suppose to do. I am saying expanding the functionality requires the buy in from the customer community.

Apply this rule to Information Architecture, Enterprise Metadata, or Collaborative Computing, you will see it works equally well an any area.

Posted by Todd at 12:47 PM