[Sigia-l] Exhibit A

[Adrian Howard]

On 26 Nov 2006, at 23:30, Christopher Fahey wrote:
[snip]
>  Only a single
> person can make the final decision to remove or combine features to  
> make it
> easier for some users while deliberately forcing other users to  
> adapt to it.
> The 80/20 rule is purely a business and design decision.
[snip]

Is there ever a decision that isn't finally in one persons hands to  
make or not?

The problem isn't the lack of an individual to make all the  
decisions. Otherwise the times I've worked in teams where we've all  
been focused on building the best product possible, where everybody  
worked at identifying core persona, where we all (including those  
pesky developers) cut and discarded and rearranged until our core  
users got the best experience possible for the budget available -  
that was just my imagination :-)

The problem is the lack of an environment that make such decisions  
possible. The process described by the MS dev seemed deeply broken.  
There isn't any kind of leadership. No shared product vision. No  
concept of there being a team developing a product for a group of  
real people. Teams separated by 8 layers of management that  
communicate by monthly meetings. I'm amazed anything gets done at all!

Cheers,

Adrian