4 ms·

Nothing like broad sweeping generalizations to make a good story. I have a few points to make : 1. End users have an incredible ability to complain that softw

Nothing like broad sweeping generalizations to make a good story. I have a few points to make : 1. End users have an incredible ability to complain that software doesn't meet their very specific and peculiar requirements at any point in time. "Why can't I print this expense report landscape on a5 paper, we have run out of normal paper" - "Why doesn't this expense report sub-total by supplier and week, but only in leap years?" 2. If the people using the software were the business owners I think they would sing a different tune, or go out of business because they spend so much money optimizing for user experience. 3. Enterprise software tends to be infinitely more complex than most Saas projects. It is hard to budget and focus on the user experience when you are processing billions of dollars in transactions, with complex business rules, complex tax rules, complex laws, integrating with legacy systems, changing business conditions and strategy. Most businesses will put compliance and accuracy ahead of user experience. 4. Non-enterprise developers seem to think they are shit-hot and have a chip on their shoulders about enterprise developers for some reason. So you get an endless stream of articles along these lines.

vacri 13y ago
I'd add that I have seen some endusers complain because we implemented features they were asking for. Not because those features were done poorly, but because the change requires a slight change to the user's workflow (software is many things, but it's not psychic). I also remembered a new hardware product going out to a satellite office in $other_country, where the favourite sport of the sales staff was coming up with excuses for not meeting targets. This next-gen bit of hardware had everything they'd asked for and used as an excuse for not meeting those targets, and it was a nice bit of kit that would sell well (I'd previously worked in the industry it was targeted at and wished I'd had it then). Supplied with the first production model, they were asked for comments. The sole comment that was returned was "well, at least it's not green". That company also gave me an insight to your #3. We had SAP-like software but the company treated us like shit so we were looking to replace them. It turns out there are (were as of 2009) no cheap options - they all failed at nested bills-of-material. A product might be a full box with manual and other parts. That product holds the assembled product and a couple of other assemblies. That assembled product holds several boards and subassemblies. Those subassemblies then require other parts. Rinse, repeat over several products and you have a system where there's nothing useful on offer at the cheap end of the spectrum (without heavy/clunky modification). Most of the cheap stuff was entertaining a retail mindset - "item A comes from supplier B/why would you need to ever put A and B in a kit?". Even the vaunted Salesforce needed customising to handle the idea of kits - and that is only a single level of nested BOMs.
ucee054 13y ago
"most SAAS projects" are not the ones setting the bar. The video games people set the bar. And they are shit-hot. And they produce stuff that even a 4 year old can use. And the problems the video game people solve are more complex than your typical schlubby entreprise app. In the case of MMORPGs, infinitely more so - and they have to deal with compliance and accuracy as well, because they are dealing with stuff like credit card data. The problem is that the entreprise software buyer is not the user, he just gets to inflict the stuff on others - a perverse incentive. I've worked on entreprise software in more than one big-name company, and I'm embarrassed by what they ordered me to deliver. One time a friend of mine, who had to use my company's malfunctioning stuff, even phoned me up at work to curse me for it.
- rjempson 13y ago
  I don't really get your point. Its obvious that game developers would produce better interfaces / experiences, because that is what they are selling. Enterprises are selling a product or service, and the customer paying the bills doesn't see the internal software that facilitates some part of the process of delivering that product or service. You could dream up a few examples where the end customer might be impacted by a poor UI used by internal staff but it would be an edge case. If every enterprise software project attempted to produce game quality interfaces and experiences to the user, the costs would explode. The only benefits of producing better interfaces / experiences / workflows for an enterprise are user moral and user efficiency. The latter is quite often addressed in my experience, as it affects the bottom line.
  - ucee054 13y ago
    You were shooting down the article by disparaging web and app developers, claiming that entreprise apps were ooh so haaaaard, implying that they required lots of expertise to build. Bullshit. In actual fact, entreprise software can be little more than a trivial skin over a database, with a sprinkle of domain logic. The games example was just to show something that is really hard. I don't need the UI to be game quality; I'll settle for just the same quality as Excel. And by the way, there is some unusable entreprise software out there. You seem unconcerned with the unhappiness its piss-poor UI causes for users so long as it's "efficient". Take a look at Lotus Notes and tell me just how "efficient" it is.

vacri 13y ago

I'd add that I have seen some endusers complain because we implemented features they were asking for. Not because those features were done poorly, but because the change requires a slight change to the user's workflow (software is many things, but it's not psychic). I also remembered a new hardware product going out to a satellite office in $other_country, where the favourite sport of the sales staff was coming up with excuses for not meeting targets. This next-gen bit of hardware had everything they'd asked for and used as an excuse for not meeting those targets, and it was a nice bit of kit that would sell well (I'd previously worked in the industry it was targeted at and wished I'd had it then). Supplied with the first production model, they were asked for comments. The sole comment that was returned was "well, at least it's not green". That company also gave me an insight to your #3. We had SAP-like software but the company treated us like shit so we were looking to replace them. It turns out there are (were as of 2009) no cheap options - they all failed at nested bills-of-material. A product might be a full box with manual and other parts. That product holds the assembled product and a couple of other assemblies. That assembled product holds several boards and subassemblies. Those subassemblies then require other parts. Rinse, repeat over several products and you have a system where there's nothing useful on offer at the cheap end of the spectrum (without heavy/clunky modification). Most of the cheap stuff was entertaining a retail mindset - "item A comes from supplier B/why would you need to ever put A and B in a kit?". Even the vaunted Salesforce needed customising to handle the idea of kits - and that is only a single level of nested BOMs.

ucee054 13y ago

"most SAAS projects" are not the ones setting the bar. The video games people set the bar. And they are shit-hot. And they produce stuff that even a 4 year old can use. And the problems the video game people solve are more complex than your typical schlubby entreprise app. In the case of MMORPGs, infinitely more so - and they have to deal with compliance and accuracy as well, because they are dealing with stuff like credit card data. The problem is that the entreprise software buyer is not the user, he just gets to inflict the stuff on others - a perverse incentive. I've worked on entreprise software in more than one big-name company, and I'm embarrassed by what they ordered me to deliver. One time a friend of mine, who had to use my company's malfunctioning stuff, even phoned me up at work to curse me for it.

rjempson 13y ago
I don't really get your point. Its obvious that game developers would produce better interfaces / experiences, because that is what they are selling. Enterprises are selling a product or service, and the customer paying the bills doesn't see the internal software that facilitates some part of the process of delivering that product or service. You could dream up a few examples where the end customer might be impacted by a poor UI used by internal staff but it would be an edge case. If every enterprise software project attempted to produce game quality interfaces and experiences to the user, the costs would explode. The only benefits of producing better interfaces / experiences / workflows for an enterprise are user moral and user efficiency. The latter is quite often addressed in my experience, as it affects the bottom line.
- ucee054 13y ago
  You were shooting down the article by disparaging web and app developers, claiming that entreprise apps were ooh so haaaaard, implying that they required lots of expertise to build. Bullshit. In actual fact, entreprise software can be little more than a trivial skin over a database, with a sprinkle of domain logic. The games example was just to show something that is really hard. I don't need the UI to be game quality; I'll settle for just the same quality as Excel. And by the way, there is some unusable entreprise software out there. You seem unconcerned with the unhappiness its piss-poor UI causes for users so long as it's "efficient". Take a look at Lotus Notes and tell me just how "efficient" it is.