4 ms·

I suspect that there are some entities that consider the slow release cycle a feature.

• Touche 13y ago
  I suspect market forces will squeeze out those entities.
  • josefresco 13y ago
    Yes because every company will eventually be a startup with only a handful of employees and little investment in technology so that they can jump on the newest technology without costing the company billions. /snark
    • Touche 13y ago
      No, what's going to happen is SaaS companies are going to stop supporting old browsers and their webapps won't work in the browser the IT department is clinging to, the IT department heads will get fired and replaced by people who do a better job prioritizing. "Let's keep using IE8 because it's the newest browser to correctly run that app we developed in 2002" is going to cost people jobs.
      • showsover 13y ago
        Or big companies just won't use SaaS products that don't support their version of IE.
        • Touche 13y ago
          Yup, that's possible. I'm betting the VP who wants to use Gmail is going to overrule the IT department head though.
          • chaz 13y ago
            You might be surprised. Supporting extra stuff can have serious IT costs. When the head of IT says it's going require x dollars, y FTEs, or z weeks in schedule slippage to bring on that support, the CEO turns to the VP and says, "Jim, is this really worth it?" But things can shift slowly. I worked at a big media company when the iPhone was launched. The next day, the CIO emailed the entire company of 20k and said that iPhones would not absolutely not be supported, and to please stop asking no matter what VP/SVP/EVP you were. It was years before iOS was permitted on the network.
            • Touche 13y ago
              This is exactly my point. This type of thinking is simply going to be weeded out. More efficient IT heads will replace the slower and costlier ones. Companies will lose potential employees who don't want to carry around a BlackBerry Curve or use Lotus Notes. The market has a way of correctly slow moving companies.
              • chaz 13y ago
                I think we agree more than disagree, but I still take issue with your statement of "more efficient IT heads" and that they need to be "weeded out." It's not a type of thinking -- there was a clear business reason. Re: my example of the large media company I worked at: In 2007, it was a very small minority of employees who could afford the $599 device and wanted extra support for it outside of BlackBerry Enterprise Server. By 2010, there were a lot of iPhones and the case could be made that it would meet the needs of a significant portion of the company while pushing device costs to the employee as a BYOD, thus saving money while still being able to enforce some security policies thanks to iOS 4. The head of IT wasn't being a stodgy old fart (ok maybe a little) -- he/she made a rational policy decision that I think was correct at the time. Today I think they're on Google Apps. The problem I'm seeing now is that dozens of employees are sharing logins for the same SaaS tools. And all the passwords are the same so that it's "easy to remember." A single password compromise could leak a lot of data and cause a lot of damage. People like you and me know encrypt drives and walk away from a stolen laptop with only the cost of hardware, but IT managers today seem like they have a bigger headache to manage.
• bradleyjg 13y ago
  Certainly I consider UX stability a good thing. Just this week gmail decided that being able to open my calendar in a single click was a horrible idea. It only took me a minute or so to figure out wtf happened. But multiplied across a large number of people of varying computer literacy and near weekly changes you are talking about a lot of lost time. Much better to have an annual or biannual training day where changes across a range of software products can be introduced. I suppose someone will be along to stamp NOT AGILE on my forehead shortly.
  • mkaziz 13y ago
    zomg your statement is a travesty on all things best practice, and you should be branded a heretic for all times to come!