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Ending The Features Arms Race
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Kathy Sierra argues that we should ignore the competion and stop worry about feature comparisons.
The almost-always wise Kathy Sierra makes a powerful argument for Ignoring the Competition and checking out of the Features Arms Race.
It's The Feature Arms Race that leads to the bloody kicking and clawing and fighting for market share. The Feature Arms Race is a form of group think, and we all know that design-by-committee does not produce art. We must wean ourselves off the obsession with the competition. If we're constantly trying to one-up them--or even just stay up with them--how does this really serve the users? How does it help the users kick ass if we're so focused making sure our feature lists kick ass? But it's hard to do.
So much of Plone's philosophy is expressed here.
I think the real challenge with this approach lies in the fact that so many clients do in fact shop off a (frequently poorly-constructed) checklist. As a commenter says,
[We] fear... that we'll be sitting in a sales meeting with a big, prospective client and they'll ask "Do you do X?" and, instead of talking to them about X and why it might be valuable to them and how what their real issues are, we want to be able to say "Sure, of course we do X."
It's a tough balance.
