Malcolm Gladwell’s talk on spaghetti sauce got me thinking about things that are wrong about software development. In his talk Malcom describes an epiphany that led to a revolution in the way the world thinks about spaghetti sauce, and most other consumer products for that matter. He describes the process that led to the realization that the pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce was pointless because what we really want are spaghetti sauces. We want choice. We want chunky, garlic, vegetarian, mushroom, meatball and so on and so on.
We take this for granted today but in the not so distant past this represented a paradigm shift if the way we thought about product development and it explains how it has come to pass that our grocery store shelves are lined with dozens of varieties of spaghetti sauces. The principle applies to a very wide variety of consumer products; colas, crackers, shoes, tires, electronics. One industry remains for the most part unaffected by the consumers desire for choice ? Software. With the possible exception of accounting system we don’t seem to get it yet or if we do we don’t know how to do it.
What Malcom’s story teaches us is that we don’t need a better spreadsheet tool. We know that most of us use only a small percentage of the features we already have. We also know what few of us use the same set of features. What would happen if we grouped spreadsheet users by the product features they most often use. Would we see alignment by profession, job type or style. Perhaps what we need is specialty versions for accountants, for managers, for engineers etc… Would the features be dramatically different from on version to the other. Not likely, rather I think the presentation of those features would differ by emphasizing and making more available the features that are most commonly used. The bottom line effect as Malcom’s talk teaches us is that the consumer would be delighted and the perceived value of the product would increase. An when you consider that 20 years ago Spaghetti sauce sold for about $2 compared to $5-$7 today and also consider that sales of Spaghetti sauce has increased by orders of magnitude you begin to see a compelling business case to begin applying this principle to software.
I have used spreadsheets to illustrate my point but the principle could be applied to a very wide variety of software products including: Word processors, Drawing tools, CAD, GIS, Contact management. Virtually any shrink wrap software product stands to benefit.
I said earlier that software companies just don’t seem to get it but there are exceptions. One of our customers develops Biometric systems for authentication and related functions. They develop commercial products and are successful at bringing these to market. By listening and working with their customers they have also realized that their customers are using their products in many different ways. As all good companies do they are responding by developing new features and APIs. They have also recognized the opportunity to create specializations of their products that allow them deeper penetration into specific markets and have engaged us to help them with that. They have realized that it is better to ThinkWrap than ShrinkWrap.
