4 ms·

Ask HN: Need help classifying my software

3 points by sdesol 17y ago

I know it's a bad sign if you can't classify your software, but this is the situation that I'm in right now. The problem that I'm faced with is it's designed to address a broad scope of problems associated with developing software. My goal was to produce an out of the box solution that would leverage my expertise in designing and building software development environments. I believe I have the right framework and the tools that I've implemented so far, does address a lot of the issues that I've encountered in my career. The problem that I'm faced with now is trying to explain what it is that I'm offering. It can be interpreted as a bunch of things. Some may see it as an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool. Some may see it as a collaboration tool. Some may just see it as a replacement for a software control management web interface like Gitweb. I personally want to describe it as an out of the box software development environment solution, but I don't think this will make sense for a lot of people. Unless you have intimate knowledge with designing and implementing software development environments, this term will probably be as clear as mud. I'm currently looking at positioning this as an enterprise framework, but I think this I may scare away some people. Plus I want to emphasize that it's much more. I've just finished creating a video that is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3FJ10V1_c8 which I hope will provide a bit more insight. Edit. Make sure you watch the video in HD and if possible, full screen to see the smaller details. If you were me, how would you tackle the problem of explaining a product that is designed to address a fairly un-thought of subject like ones software development environment ecosystem.

noodle 17y ago
software development productivity tool? something generic to describe something that does a lot.
- sdesol 17y ago
  Unfortunately I think calling this will create an equal amount of questions.
  - noodle 17y ago
    if you're trying to sell a product, isn't this what you want, though? the open door to talk more about your product?
    - sdesol 17y ago
      That is true, but I'm more concerned about the skeptical part. Take "ismarc" comment. Clearly this is a problem that is not fairly understood and it's something I'll need to better explain. The challenge is comparing it to something, but the closes thing that I can think of is it's an ALM but I really don't want to sell it as such.
    - SwellJoe 17y ago
      No. Describe something too generally, and too much outside of the scope of existing understanding, and people will not only not be able to find you (because they were searching for things they know and understand that might solve their problems), the folks who accidentally do find you will move along because they already tend to know what they're looking for, and a vague description won't match that. We know all about this problem. Our products cover a ridiculously wide array of problems, and they're named a bit confusingly (historic reasons, and several years too late to change), and we have a lot of problems with folks not understanding what our products do. And, somehow we often end up getting tons of questions about a very small subset of related things that we don't do (at OSCON we heard "so how is this better than Nagios?" about 25 times a day, and our products don't really compete or overlap with Nagios in any significant way). Be very specific. If it means you have several landing pages that cover various aspects of your products capabilities, so be it. If it means you break your product up into modules so that you can be specific about what each one does, so be it. You cannot win if your product description is too vague for people to know exactly what you do. People are looking to solve problems; they are not generally looking to learn new things. Besides all that, if you can't describe what you're doing in a few words, and have most folks understand it, you are probably doing a lot of work you don't need to do (yet). Focus on solving real problems that real people have. When you have real customers, you will then find that they provide the guidance you need to keep moving forward without losing your focus or your ability to communicate with new customers. Reinventing an entire market, and rewriting the language people use to describe things, is generally not something that you can do solo.
ismarc 17y ago
So it's just a web based commit tracker? Unless there's a large number of menus/menu items not shown, there's nothing new, fanciful or in need of "categorization". If you call it anything but a "web based commit tracker" to people who work with code very day, it's not that they "don't get it"...it's that they're laughing at you when you leave the room.
- sdesol 17y ago
  There is a large number of tools that I'm not showing. I just want to show the framework side of things. Basically how easy it is for you to integrate it into your own environment. There is an indexer side. To put this into perspective, it takes me 12 hours to index the the Linux Kernel Git repository on my icore 920 system with an Intel X25-E SSD. The indexer is not parallelized right now, which is why it takes so long but I figure it would still take 4 hours to index. So there is more than meets the eye right now. Unless you've designed software development environments for 100+ software designers, spanning multiple continents, it's a bit hard to explain the other implementation details and why it matters. I appreciate your skepticism as it usually takes me a half an hour to properly explain what it is meant to do. And this is only because the person understands the pain. To see it as just a Gitweb replacement is my problem because I clearly did not show enough.

3 points by sdesol 17y ago

noodle 17y ago

software development productivity tool? something generic to describe something that does a lot.

sdesol 17y ago
Unfortunately I think calling this will create an equal amount of questions.
- noodle 17y ago
  if you're trying to sell a product, isn't this what you want, though? the open door to talk more about your product?
  - sdesol 17y ago
    That is true, but I'm more concerned about the skeptical part. Take "ismarc" comment. Clearly this is a problem that is not fairly understood and it's something I'll need to better explain. The challenge is comparing it to something, but the closes thing that I can think of is it's an ALM but I really don't want to sell it as such.
  - SwellJoe 17y ago
    No. Describe something too generally, and too much outside of the scope of existing understanding, and people will not only not be able to find you (because they were searching for things they know and understand that might solve their problems), the folks who accidentally do find you will move along because they already tend to know what they're looking for, and a vague description won't match that. We know all about this problem. Our products cover a ridiculously wide array of problems, and they're named a bit confusingly (historic reasons, and several years too late to change), and we have a lot of problems with folks not understanding what our products do. And, somehow we often end up getting tons of questions about a very small subset of related things that we don't do (at OSCON we heard "so how is this better than Nagios?" about 25 times a day, and our products don't really compete or overlap with Nagios in any significant way). Be very specific. If it means you have several landing pages that cover various aspects of your products capabilities, so be it. If it means you break your product up into modules so that you can be specific about what each one does, so be it. You cannot win if your product description is too vague for people to know exactly what you do. People are looking to solve problems; they are not generally looking to learn new things. Besides all that, if you can't describe what you're doing in a few words, and have most folks understand it, you are probably doing a lot of work you don't need to do (yet). Focus on solving real problems that real people have. When you have real customers, you will then find that they provide the guidance you need to keep moving forward without losing your focus or your ability to communicate with new customers. Reinventing an entire market, and rewriting the language people use to describe things, is generally not something that you can do solo.

ismarc 17y ago

So it's just a web based commit tracker? Unless there's a large number of menus/menu items not shown, there's nothing new, fanciful or in need of "categorization". If you call it anything but a "web based commit tracker" to people who work with code very day, it's not that they "don't get it"...it's that they're laughing at you when you leave the room.

sdesol 17y ago
There is a large number of tools that I'm not showing. I just want to show the framework side of things. Basically how easy it is for you to integrate it into your own environment. There is an indexer side. To put this into perspective, it takes me 12 hours to index the the Linux Kernel Git repository on my icore 920 system with an Intel X25-E SSD. The indexer is not parallelized right now, which is why it takes so long but I figure it would still take 4 hours to index. So there is more than meets the eye right now. Unless you've designed software development environments for 100+ software designers, spanning multiple continents, it's a bit hard to explain the other implementation details and why it matters. I appreciate your skepticism as it usually takes me a half an hour to properly explain what it is meant to do. And this is only because the person understands the pain. To see it as just a Gitweb replacement is my problem because I clearly did not show enough.