I had to chuckle when I saw the title of one of my past team member's blog entries...ugly babies & agile development. Having had the opportunity to manage Mr. M and others like Wheatstraw I understand exactly where he's coming from.

Bear with me as I reflect...As I look back five years or so to when our small little team was together hammering out online experiences in our small corner of the MBS (now Microsoft Dynamics) office in Fargo, ND, I realize how far ahead of our time we were with what we were developing. I'm not saying we that much smarter than everyone else...we were just trying to tackle something that many are still trying to do today. And guess what? We did it. One of our tasks as the web development team in a division that focuses on ERP solutions was to help prospects rationalize which of the four ERP products met their needs so we provided a profiling tool that looked at industry, business needs and a number of other factors. From that, due to the logic people like Mr. M, Wheatstraw and one J. Newell wired together behind the scenes we were able to at least narrow down their search and head the prospect in the right direction. And we didn't stop there. Based on the path they took we also started to recommend business partners (MS Dynamics products are sold through an authorized partner channel) in their area they could work with to evaluate the solutions further. That was the prospect facing effort.

 Because the partners play such a huge role in the business model, we also wanted to develop some cool stuff for them. So...we created this tool we lovingly called Active Content. It was really an RSS feed (befor it's time) that the partners could pull into their own website. They'd basically "subscribe" to product information developed by MBS so they knew they'd get the latest and greatest. The coolest part about it is the content would appear on the partner website and if anyone came through the partner website and landed on the MBS site, we attached that partners unique ID to the query string so that customer would remain associated with that partner.

 Pretty cool stuff. But you know what? Unfortunately it was truly before its time. The functionality of the code was great. It was solid. Partners and customers thought the vision sounded great as we talked them through it prior to development. But...we ran with that initial glimmer of interest and unfortunately the business models and process around it weren't as ready to adjust as we had thought. So...the effort by no means failed...it just progressively was scaled back until it returned to our target audiences (and internal process's) comfort zone. Although people saw the cool factor, they weren't ready to step out to the more personalized, dynamic experience.

OK...enough of the reflection. Back to Mr. M and his ugly baby issue. Although we weren't in agile development mode back then some of the characteristics are similar. Although developers want to be working on latest, most innovative stuff, and get their code released frequently rather than at a snail's pace, deep down they still know that unless customers actually use their product as they intended...and it makes a difference in the customers' lives...the coolness factor is very isolated.

It's all about making a difference for our customers. I'm happy to be on the side of the fence where I'll help drive business and customer requirements/feedback into the group that Mr. M is part of. I look forward to driving real life scenarios into their work so collectively we can make the incremental releases as effective as possible vs. developing for perfection and never getting anything out the door.

Rock on, Mr. M and the rest of the CTT group! Agility + wide open ears to customer feedback = success.