Work on feature requests or try to code that really cool idea?
Posted by Tate Hansen Wed, 28 Feb 2007 03:32:00 GMT
How do you balance a giant list of customer feature requests with your in-house splashes of innovative ideas?
It seems really hard not to get buried coding incremental improvements while keeping your head above ground. With your head buried, you’ll eventually lose sight of the vision and get blindsided by competitors.
Several start-ups I’ve played at were driven almost entirely by customer requests. I’m not debating the value of that. But when it is used to control all the development cycles you begin to create a culture allergic to creativity and risk.
Good team dynamics can help tremendously for encouraging members to be creative – I think the challenge is keeping it that way while championing a customer driven style of development.
