3 ms·
Yes. While it’s less common, I’ve seen orgs struggle because they didn’t have enough imagination. Every feature is done quick’n’dirty and eventually you have p
by mildavw 3y ago
Yes. While it’s less common, I’ve seen orgs struggle because they didn’t have enough imagination.
Every feature is done quick’n’dirty and eventually you have people whose full time job is to respond to customer complaints and fix data straight in the production database.
- catmanjan 3y agoBad engineering but potentially good business if it’s all billed to the customer…
- lll-o-lll 3y agoNo, it’s bad business because it doesn’t scale. Software is lucrative because you make it once and sell it to thousands of customers. If you’re making every customer their own bespoke thing, you’ll spend all your time for little return.
- travisjungroth 3y ago“Billed to the customer” means you’re charging the customer by the hour / project. You can get plenty of return selling bespoke things this way. Accenture is a $200 billion company.
- lll-o-lll 3y agoThat’s called Professional Services. Professional Services assemble a solution for a customer from a variety of components and maybe build some glue or the equivalent of a dashboard. This is not the same as having a ton of “if” statements in code to handle customer X vs customer Y. The secret, as a software vendor, is to generalise these bespoke customer requests so you can sell the solution to all your customers (and get more customers!). If you are really cheeky, you can even get that customer to help fund the development that will make your business more money (hey, it’s win-win). You need to ruthlessly follow this approach though, as the rot of bespoke code will quickly become an insurmountable quality nightmare that can sink your business.