Web 2.0 Lessons For Corporate Dev Teams

jcatcw writes "Quick, incremental updates, along with heavy user involvement, are key characteristics of the emerging software development methods championed by a new generation of Web 2.0 start-ups. A survey conducted for Computerworld showed that an overwhelming majority of the respondents said that traditional corporate development teams could benefit from Web 2.0 techniques, specifically the incremental feature releases, quick user feedback loops and quality assurance programs that include users. Fifty seven percent of the respondents said problem-solving and analytical skills will be key requirements for next generation developers. The bottom-line: corporate development teams need to get to know their users."

Comments

This has nothing to do with Web 2.0

[chatgris]

And is instead similar to the Agile software development process. If the average Web 2.0 monkey had some real software engineering background, maybe their work will be maintainable a few years down the road, and not just rewritten for the Next Big Buzzword.

Re:This has nothing to do with Web 2.0

[johannesg]

Agile ... the Next Big Buzzword.

The irony just drips off the page.

Prior art

[heffrey]

This is called "agile development" and pre-dates Web 2.0 by around 10 years. Taco's having a bad day it seems.

Re:Prior art

[Black-Man]

The only thing different I saw was that Wesabe has no QA staff and lets its users and CEO do the testing. What the article didn't mention was this was probably due to lack of financing to actually hire a SQ team rather than preferring to run a software company w/o QA.

 

Re:Prior art

[samkass]

Agile, "extreme", and other iterative development models go back more than 10 years... that's just when Extreme Programming was the buzzword and made it big. It's pretty much always been a waterfall vs. spiral world in software project planning.

And none of it has anything whatsoever to do with web 2.0.

Getting things in front of users fast is key to user acceptance. However, it has to be managed well. Users often don't actually know their requirements, and everyone has emotions and priorities that are disproportionately represented relative to their actual value. You can really easily end up chasing your own tail or always being behind the ball because you're always reacting instead of acting.

"Perpetual beta" = it sucks, forever

[Animats]

I'm not impressed with the "perpetual beta" and "using your users for Q/A" concept. Remember, the users can leave.

I've seen this happen with Tribe. Tribe was a nice little social networking system for people in the San Francisco area. Then, in 2007, they went "Web 2.0", with a system that let you "customize your home page".

At first, this drove the users nuts, as they tried to find a home page layout that would work. "Tribe.net bug reports" became the most popular forum. After a while, most users got their home page to some format that would work (the default was awful) and didn't have overlapping panes, then stopped using the new, fancy features. Users began to leave; some users even set up a competing system in disgust. As more users left, Tribe tried to charge for some features. More users left.

Tribe is now down to two employees and a fraction of its user base of two years ago.

Re:"Perpetual beta" = it sucks, forever

[pdq332]

One should make a distinction between software intended for general use outside of a corporate setting and software intended for use in corporate backrooms. Agile development only works when the users are invested in the software. So you're 100% right about the former case: general users aren't usually invested enough in a piece of software to stick around and help out the developers by providing usability comments and such. People get paid to do that in corporate dev shops - why does anyone think general users will do that for free?

On the other hand, user involvement and management involvement are critical to internal corporate software development. User involvement is needed to properly understand the business cases and provide usability feedback, and management involvement is needed to make overall feature decisions with an eye on keeping down costs and enhancing efficiency. Agile development helps deliver software that addresses business issues at a low cost.

As a professional developer, the main risk is that internal users will come up with a feature request only to have it watered down or rejected by management in order to keep development costs down. Then the users are unhappy with me, I'm unhappy with the managers, and I end up providing a "most-of-the-way-there" product that satisfies no one fully, but keeps savings flowing into senior management wallets. (Management can force the users to use the software, at least until someone board member's brother-in-law sells us an alternate solution.)

But I tend to favor the Agile Development process in that case too because about the only leverage I have is the fact that I've involved the users and managers at every step, documented the software as well as the decisions, and a have trail of accepted release candidates.

Not feasible in some markets

[the4thdimension]

This approach really isn't feasible in certain markets, even though I can agree it would help. For instance, my company develops health care diagnostic solutions, some of which are heavily regulated. While many of our tools and products could highly benefit from this design approach, federal regulations simply make it an impossibility.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that many other markets are regulated in a similar fashion that prevents this.

Re:Not feasible in some markets

[dubl-u]

For instance, my company develops health care diagnostic solutions, some of which are heavily regulated. While many of our tools and products could highly benefit from this design approach, federal regulations simply make it an impossibility.

You'd be surprised. There are a number of medical device people who are active in the Agile world. Yes, you can't push new code to somebody's pacemaker every morning, so there are some limits. But they are definitely applying Agile lessons even in heavily regulated spaces, so it's worth checking them out.

Just like I was tell my boss last night

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to deliver world-class e-tailers, aggregate bleeding-edge channels while growing our virtual bandwidth and benchmarking one-to-one deliverables. That is not to say that we redefine dot-com experiences and maximize B2C web services all the while revolutionizing end-to-end mindshare and monetize front-end deliverables.

WTF?

[topham]

"Fifty seven percent of the respondents said that problem-solving and analytical skills will be key requirements for next generation developers"

Really? To do development you need problem-solving and analytical skills? Since when?

CmdrTaco, what the f are you doing? I'm seriously thinking you've slipped a gear.

Re:WTF?

[D Ninja]

Kind of makes me wonder what the other 43 percent of respondents thought would be good requirements for future developers...

Re:WTF?

[Zerth]

If they thought problem solving skills were superfluous, it is because they think developers just do what they're told. So probably "listening" skills and good handwriting topped their list.

Possibly powerpoint assistance, formatting support, and powerswitch finding to round out the top five.

I would wait for Web 2.1

[mrroot]

.0 releases always have alot of bugs.

Re:I would wait for Web 2.1

[Hemogoblin]

Personally, I'm waiting for "Web for Workspaces 3.1".

Re:Noise to Signal Ratio

[pavera]

I really don't think the article is saying "we should do intranets like web 2.0 websites! and have all user generated content!"

They are simply saying, Instead of say having an internal software dev project, and having a huge design timeframe, huge development time frame, and then 3 months for test/fix/ship, the project should be built incrementally, using the same techniques as a lot of web 2.0 startups use...

release early, release often, work with the users, incorporating their feedback quickly into the project. Instead of doing 1-2 years of design, 1 year of dev, then releasing a beta that no one can use, solves no ones problems, and in general was a complete waste.

Instead, start prototyping early, releasing things to users or a group of users, and building the software iteratively with them instead of saying "this is what we built, learn how to use it" say "help us build this so it solves your problems in the best way possible"

(fr)Agile

[lateralus_1024]

I happen to be knee-deep in Agile development in a corporate environment, as a lowly junior developer. The teams are definitely meeting every day and it is hyper-collaborative in that respect but user involvement is still handled by marketing and trickles down to R&D at a slowly and ambiguously. I see this as our weak point. The slow pace could be a positive so that we don't spin out of control, but the quality of information we get is where things are most dangerous, imho. I imagine a start-up would be small enough to include developers in the customer-collaboration process.

No thanks

[Collective 0-0009]

I hate the bombardment of updates I have to run now. Windows, Adobe, some install manager, Adobe, Java, Abobe... You get the idea.

But the reality is that this "agile" stuff only makes sense if you are improving the product. I don't want to install 38 updates to get acrobat 8.1.4 and get nothing (read: improved or added features) in return! Make the product stable for 6 fscking months! Also don't realease a major update every year!

So companies that like to sell software based on 12-18 month releases will never move to a true "agile" development... that would mean upgrading features and basic functionality without the end user paying for it... GASP!

Re:oh comon

[Normal Dan]

This type of development actually works quite well in some cases. My group is contracting for a large company, and are developing/maintaining an internal website for different parts of the company. We often go to the customers themselves and see what they want. We develop something, have them test it, and request changes, upon which we implement right away.

The whole system works quite well. The major hurdle usually comes around when management gets involved. They want to see change requests and hold pointless meetings and shift people around, etc. Because we are contractors, we can usually bypass management and the system works rather well.

Re:oh comon

[dubl-u]

I wish all this was true. Incremental and fast and includes clients. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Sorry but I really have not seen development teams using such methods successfully.

Works for me. It requires supporting disciplines, though. In my view, that includes a well-meshed team, a very disciplined product management process, strong automated testing, a relentless devotion to code quality, and continual examination of your architectural choices.

It also works for plenty of other people. Flickr released every few hours, and they ended up selling for $20m after 18 months of work. YouTube releases once a week for interface changes and once a month for database changes, and they always have. At a billion views a day, I'd call them pretty successful.