Groupware Still Sucks

21 Aug 2007

Rule #1 in nerd blogging: jwz said it first. If you enjoyed The Enterprise, Apple, and Insufficient Ambition last week, you'll want to read Jamie Zawinski's essay that was so burned into my subconscious that I forgot it influenced me.

If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

When words like "groupware" and "enterprise" start getting tossed around, you're doing the latter. You start adding features to satisfy line-items on some checklist that was constructed by interminable committee meetings among bureaucrats, and you're coding toward an externally-dictated product specification that maybe some company will want to buy a hundred "seats" of, but that nobody will ever love. With that kind of motivation, nobody will ever find it sexy. It won't make anyone happy....

So I said, narrow the focus. Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

That got me a look like I had just sprouted a third head, but bear with me, because I think that it's not only crude but insightful. "How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).

"Social software" is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.

Any more quoting than that, and it's just wholesale plagiarism. Go read the original, including the definition of "workflow".

Posted on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 4:34 AM

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Mitch Wagner has a provocative, comprehensive, and entertaining look at the recent conversations about Apple and the enterprise over at InformationWeek entitled "Does Apple Have A Moral Obligation To Serve The Enterprise Market?" Though some part of th... Read More »
Not a Moral Obligation, a Social Obligation | August 23, 2007 10:30 PM

8 Comments

How come you didn't link directly to his essay? Or did I miss the link?

Stewart Johnson | August 21, 2007 5:40 AM | Reply

@stewart http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

rey | August 21, 2007 6:28 AM | Reply

Whoops! The link should be restored right at the top of the post now.

Anil | August 21, 2007 1:09 PM | Reply

Anil, I'm a little confused. It would seem that your post on Apple and the enterprise is saying the exact, opposite of what Jamie Zawinski's groupware essay is saying, warning that "... the problem here is that the product's direction changed utterly. Our focus in the client group had always been to build products and features that people wanted to use." It would seem that's the exact pitfall that Apple is sidestepping, resulting in your criticism. Given jzw's essay, in what way is it a cop out for Apple to say, "We just don't see a way to chase the enterprise market without compromising our focus on the user?"

Todd | August 22, 2007 1:35 PM | Reply

I agree with Todd -- it seems that you have stood Zawinski's meaning on its head to serve your own purposes. At the very least, you have shown how easy it is to interpret someone else's work to mean whatever you want it to mean. It would be trivial to construct an argument at least as strong arguing exactly the opposite of what you have argued, and still quoting chapter-and-verse from your 'inspiration'. Who wins? I dunno. But I know who loses: Zawinski.

DBL | August 22, 2007 4:14 PM | Reply

I don't think there's any contradiction in the two points. JWZ pointed out that the product changed direction, which I took to mean it changed away from being focused on an experience users were interested in. That's not intrinsic to business software, that's an artifact of (apparently) Collabra's culture. I'm assuming Apple won't lose its culture of focusing on user experience, but that they could bring that culture to an enterprise environment.

Put more simply, Jamie never argued that web browsers don't belong in businesses -- he argued that by losing focus on making really user-focused technology in the course of creating an Enterprise product, they lost the heart of what they were doing.

Netscape didn't have to change course completely to make their products work in business, it was a mistake that they paid the price for. What I'm encouraging is for people to have the ambition Apple has in its cultural impact, as well as the understanding that some at Netscape had in trying to meet business needs. Why can't we have both?

Author Profile Page Anil replied to comment from Todd | August 23, 2007 11:36 PM | Reply

If the definition of groupwear is "there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?", then it looks like Facebook was created to solve that exact problem.

People seem to think they're doing a mighty fine job, and I'll know to short them the day they provide an LDAP interface.

Adam Trachtenberg | August 25, 2007 1:13 PM | Reply

The focus of the software must be on the individual user, or the software will feel like a lead weight rather than an extension of the user's body. That being said, Thunderbird for my taste is a fine email client for home and work with a transparent LDAP interface. LDAP-supplied names look just like Personal Address Book names in Thunderbird. The important factor is the focus of the design, not whether it also provides enterprise-y features.

Mark Leighton Fisher | August 29, 2007 7:00 AM | Reply

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