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How enterprise software is like baby clothing
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoOh I thought this was going to be along the lines of Michael Dell's assertion. He said ever time Dell doubled in size, he needed to revisit all the processes. Automate things that used to be manageable by hand. Customize processes that used to be one-size-fits-all. Because a bigger company has different optimal solution points for nearly everything. (Which could be taken to heart by people insisting that government should go back to some imagined simpler past. Those old processes are obsolete; there's no going back. But that's another tale.)
- haolez 2y agoI'm curious in cases like this if it's worth growing so much as a single company. It feels more efficient, in my mind, if the company splits up in smaller pieces everytime that demand grows and products change. It's just a feeling.
- eep_social 2y agoI don’t have a link but go read about Gore, Inc (of gore-tex fame) which did/does something along these lines.
- XorNot 2y agoIt's relevant that more people in software tend not to understand this either, despite our entire profession being rife with these sorts of problems. The non-linear scaling of sorting algorithms is a classic one, and even the different optimization points is baked into the "optimal" solution - i.e. quicksort when your number of elements is below a threshold is better replaced with an insertion-sort, and indeed this is what most implementations do. Which is an algorithmic example of solution overhead dwarfing problem size (and yet if you're above that threshold, the more complex solution will always win).
- hobobaggins 2y ago> Which could be taken to heart by people insisting that government should go back to some imagined simpler past. Those old processes are obsolete; there's no going back. But that's another tale. It isn't imagined, and there's no reason government ever needed to turn into a giant, bloated bureaucracy that's more interested in sustaining its own existence and growing ever-larger. In the United States, for example, the federal government alone is the largest employer in the entire world. Yes, bigger than the governments of countries that have three times as many people. Loved the rest of your comment though :)
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoA giant country needs more governing. Dreaming about 'going back' is fantasy. Sure there's plenty of things to improve. Just don't break everything before fixing it; people's lives depend on it.
- Terr_ 2y ago> a giant, bloated bureaucracy [...] In the United States, for example, the federal government alone is the largest employer in the entire world. That's misleading: You are asserting "lots of pencil-pushing bureaucrats", but the numbers you're touting instead rest upon "lots of gun-holding soldiers." Depending on how you crunch the numbers, India or China may have taken the #1 spot by now.
- Terr_ 2y agoP.S.: In contrast, consider the OECD stats for "Employment in general government as a percentage of total employment" [0], where the USA ranked somewhere like *squints* ~22nd in 2019, below the OECD average. [0] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/75f92d89-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/75f92d89-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/75f92d89-en/index.html?i... , graph 3.1
- zamadatix 2y agoThe supermajority of employees of the federal government are from military/defense growth explosion sustained since WWII. The US is also not top of the list these days, India's department of defense has taken the crown. I.e. being a top employer is and has been mostly due to having a massive military, not bureaucratic growth, even outside the US. It's also worth noting federal employment numbers peaked 30 years ago, when there were 25% less people living in the country, so it's by no means been continuously growing ever larger. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-federal-government/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-f...
- dec0dedab0de 2y agoWhich could be taken to heart by people insisting that government should go back to some imagined simpler past. Those old processes are obsolete; there's no going back. But that's another tale. We definitely could create smaller governments to slow the consolidation of power. Splitting the more populous states in half or whatever, and treating the remaining states more like the EU treats it’s states would be a huge step in the right direction. but as you said it’s another tale.
- o11c 2y agoWhy would adding more moving parts help? Standardization is a good thing, and America is very bad at it if you ever try to do anything that crosses state borders.
- uoaei 2y agoBecause "machine" is a poor analog for government activities.
- dec0dedab0de 2y agoThe goal is not efficiency, the goal is to minimize the amount of damage that can be done by a single person or group with evil intentions.
- diego_sandoval 2y agoOn that vein, we could also say that if Elon Musk was capable of firing 80% of Twitter and keep the company performing the same functions, maybe the same could be done to governments.
- dghlsakjg 2y agoTwitter today could hardly be described as performing the same functions as pre-Elon. The fact that the entire thread is not readable without an outside app or an account is but one of many things that has changed.
- diego_sandoval 2y agoHalf of the time, I wasn't able to read threads (or even the linked tweet) without an account even before Musk's acquisition.
- neonate 2y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182635589604171776.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182635589604171776.html
- bena 2y agoOh, you’re counting clicks. That tells me all I need to know about the author’s UX knowledge. Some things do need friction. Just like with baby clothes. Something too easy to remove will leave you with a perpetually naked baby. And that’s what the tweet thread is about, she doesn’t like Blackboard’s UX. And that’s fair, it might not suit her particular needs. However, a bespoke solution is going to cost far more than any number of Blackboard licenses. And Blackboard is going to gun for “mostly ok” for “most teachers”. It’s essentially the Word paradox. Everyone only uses 10% of its features, but everyone uses a different 10%. You can’t optimize for that.
- rgmerk 2y agoI used Blackboard for a decade. Trust me, it's awful.
- NegativeLatency 2y agoAs a student who used blackboard in college it was terrible
- esafak 2y agoHave you used Blackboard? Did you feel it was so full of features that you only used 10% but the parts you used were solid? I remember disliking it thoroughly. I think the other posters have correctly identified the problem as the principal-agent dilemma.
- bena 2y agoBlackboard could be awful, but not for the reason she states. That’s the issue here. Her giving UX advice would be like software developers making education software without input from educators.
- esafak 2y agoMinimizing the number of clicks -- work required to accomplish a task -- is actually a valid focus of UX, called information architecture. It even has a pithy rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-click_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-click_rule
- bombcar 2y agoAs a parent I can say the magnet clothes is amusing and interesting and insanely expensive and not worth it. Because just like enterprise software, the users are just going to shit all over it anyway.
- odysseus 2y agoI wouldn’t say they’re insanely expensive - we got 2 magnet sleep suits for $40. They’re super soft and really easy to put on the baby. Check out consignment stores specializing in baby/kids clothing for a good deal, or just buy new for $20-$40 each. So far, no blow-outs.
- mjevans 2y agoHow bad are those in the washer / dryer and how soon does the magnet abuse kill the magnets?
- abenga 2y agoFeels like this is a pointless techy solution to problems already solved by Velcro. I don't have kids, am I wrong?
- odysseus 2y agoIf you wear pajamas to bed, imagine all button holes on the pajamas were replaced by Velcro. Now imagine the sound and comfort of the Velcro as you roll over at night.
- bombcar 2y agoVelcro is ok but snaps that rent too strong/tight are just as easy. Velcro can “misalign” if it’s too long.
- exolymph 2y agoVelcro is actually substantially more annoying to launder because it can clings to fabric.
- SashaSirotkin 2y agoThe baby clothing analogy doesn't quite fit because the people buying the baby clothes as a gift are in a relatively close position to talk to the parents (i.e. the end user). They just didn't do the work. The buyer/end user seperation in enterprise has more layers of separation (it can be an entirely different department) and stickiness (you are forced to use the terrible baby clothes).
- acdha 2y agoI wouldn’t dismiss it that quickly: I think it works when you consider the kind of buyers like grandparents who are decades removed from the day to day work but still consider themselves experts. I’m also reminded of a few executives by comparison to grandfathers who assumed it wasn’t that hard because their wives did it.
- OccamsMirror 2y agoThe administrators are also in a relatively close position to talk to the users. They share a campus with them. They just didn't do the work. The analogy holds.
- dec0dedab0de 2y agoAnyone else get flashbacks of evaluating software purchases for a company, only to be completely overruled by someone who was clearly getting some kind of kickback from the vendor? I kinda wish someone would set up a class action lawsuit for all the stress caused by having to deal with Jira, HPSM, and the like.
- syntheticcdo 2y agoI work in K-12 EdTech and this hurts to read. Every sprint spent working on a "check the box feature" that administrators want to see is time not spent improving the effectiveness and usability of the product for teachers and students. Worse, sometimes the features or changes administrators think they want actively work against the interests of the users. Edit: And god forbid you end up working on a core curriculum product that needs to be reviewed by each state's board of education. In that case you end up building a product that appeals to state-level bureaucrats, just to get get the privilege of selling to administrators, with little thought left for the actual students.
- sega_sai 2y agoI am not sure I got the baby clothing analogy, but I support the statement that Blackboard is pretty bad. It works, but for many things you need an instruction telling you exactly what to do as otherwise it's very difficult to find what to do/do the right thing, given how many menus/options there are. On the other hand having experience with Canvas, that was pretty good and painless.
- rsanek 2y agoI've heard this same thing said about Workday. Great for HR, terrible for everyone else. it's wild to me that my company uses it and doesn't find it insane that they need a multi-step "how to" doc on how to find your own performance review, one of the 3 things that the software is used for.
- ec109685 2y agoAt least with the workday, you aren’t in it all the time, but yes, it reminds me of phpmyadmin over a database that needs a 5 hour maintenance window every week.
- xtracto 2y agoHa! Workday, datadog, salesforce, Odoo, aws... etc All software with huge amounts of functionality suffers from this. And some of them even charge you extra for their "learning programmes".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- securingsincity 2y agoConcur fits this analogy well. I'm sure it was great for the accounting team but using it to do expenses (at least couple years ago) was painful. Having used Brex and Ramp they both seem to be the Magnetic Me baby clothes versions of expenses
- gumby 2y agoI hate most simplistic metaphors but this one is insightful. This is a big reason why Microsoft blew the mobile phone biz: their customers were not the users; the customers are central IT. The iPhone was such a revolution at the time that it was enough to force IT to allow the alternative. And from that MS had no feedback system to learn what they were doing wrong.
- ec109685 2y agoExplains how ServiceNow can be so popular yet so awful. They sell to the IT department who staffs up a team of solution architects and lock themselves in. Usability of the software be dammed (it took years before even urls were shareable). Slack was a revelation where its pricing model encouraged bottoms up adoption (only pay for seats used) and they encourage feedback from everyone (unlike Google docs where it takes an admin to report a bug, maybe).
- cdchn 2y ago>where it takes an admin to report a bug Unfortunately most products seem to conflate "report a bug" with _enterprise support_.
- rocmcd 2y agoIf you think ServiceNow is awful, then you clearly haven't used the alternatives. Believe it or not, there are users (not buyers) that _love_ ServiceNow for what it can do. Usually because what came before was a mixture of manual process, spreadsheet hell, or some living nightmare like BMC Remedy (at least for ITSM use cases).
- afarviral 2y agoServiceNow is great if your project/architecture people are really great. The mistake is expecting that OOTB features will be enough (with only a few tweaks) or that the product itself will steer you toward best pratices (NOPE!). Its a bag of great parts which require extremely careful assembly and a disciplined approach in implementing the simplest, and most elegant build. YAGNI. Case>Req>RITM>SCTASK is a lot of layers of bloat just for a single user request.
- galaxyLogic 2y agoI used to work for a company producing E-Learning software, and also content. The customers were never people who wanted to learn something, but companies who wanted their employees to learn something, and often companies who had to comply by government mandates about making sure their employees were aware of some things, like money laundering laws for instance. In my observation the companies were not really interested in teaching their employees how to prevent money-laundering, but how to prove to the government that they (the bank etc.) were making a serous effort to combat it by training their employees.
- julianz 2y agoHow things change - I remember when the university I'd previously worked at finally managed to kick IBM out and replace the universally reviled Lotus Learning Space with... Blackboard! I guess it metastasized over the years and is now the big bad one that gets replaced by something else.
- polotics 2y agoOn a side note, you do not want the convenience of baby-clothes equipped with magnets for easy-on easy-off. Baby's also got an easy-to-the-mouth to consider...
- mamcx 2y agoThis is true. I have a niche e-commerce in this space. People loved it so much that the app went down for a few seconds and then we got A LOT of angry calls! The app is made for on-the-street salesman so it is optimized for fast invoicing. To avoid the problem that the manager's needs for reporting and dashboards overshadow everything else we split that from the main app. i.e: we have no report capabilities in the transactional. app interface and have instead integrated metabase for the managers. So, we split OLTP/OLAP as ux measure.
- xp84 2y agoHe makes what I assume is an estimate that Bb is “20 years old” and I find that amusing because I remember using it in 2003 and it was definitely already creaky and old then!