AboutUI

What Enterprise Software should learn from Wordpress 2.7

Last week we saw the release of version 2.7 of the popular blogging platform Wordpress (which is powering this blog as well). Many has been said and written about the new release (see some links below) and I think that Robert Scoble was the most eloquent by simply saying: “It Rocks“. I tried to take a look at the new system through my day job glasses – i.e. What Enterprise Software should learn from Wordpress in General and from its 2.7 version in particular. Top three things are these:

1. Lifecycle Management
2. UI Flexibility
3. Listen to your users

Trivial? Hah.

Upon upgrading the blog I decided I wanted to be able to notify Twitter about each new post I have. Lets count how much steps I had to make:

1. I went to the Wordpress plugins site (“3,589 plugins, 17,036,738 downloads, and counting”)
2. Found the Twitter Tools plugin
3. Uploaded a zip file to my blog via FTP
4. Went to Wordpress administration console, enabled the new plugin
5. Went to the Options tab and configured the plugin to work.
6. Tested. Everything was ok.

Veteran wordpress users will at this point ask – “Eh, So what? This is how the thing works”. For customers of Enterprise Software this is pure science fiction. The ability to find a piece of functionality, download, install and test it in a matter of minutes is non-existent. Sure. This is different, Wordpress plugins can not (yet?) delete all of your business’ financial data if not properly installed. However, we need to be able to start segmenting Enterprise software into several layers. The first layer, which is your day to day data/transaction integrity should be easily upgraded or manipulated with. It has to be heavily regulated, if only for legal purposes. Its ok to assume you do not upgrade software which handles that layer more than once a year / 18 months. However, on the upper layer, we really want fast paced advances, scrap that – we need fast paced advances, rapid developments coming in not just from the monolithic vendors but from the ecosphere around them. As long as we keep these changes and tools on the UI level, there is no reason why this can not be achieved.

I believe that the key ingredient for this is Lifecycle Management. Why? Lets take your run of the mill IT department within an LE company. They usually have a three tier landscape, the infamous DEV-TEST-PROD paradigm. You start with your development machines, finish the next version of your ERP/CRM/etc. implementation, upgrade to TEST, unleash the Q-gods’ fury at it and then hopefully, upload to PRODuction. Maybe once a year, maybe twice. Its just so costly to test and validate these super complex systems, that it is impossible to innovate on a faster paradigm.

One could come and say – hey guys, its easy. Just enable the IT guys to install plugins in your enterprise software. You have that in Firefox, yuo have that in Wordpress. (Its a safe assumption that the guy saying that would be a LINUX guy). Now lets assume you let some guys start installing plugins / add-ons / thingamajings on your PROD system. Lets say – on the “process order form” page of your call-center application. And lets say that one of them is not performant – you end up killing the scalalbility of your Finance system, it takes your call center reps 5 more seconds to process a request, you lose your money and subsequently – you lose your job. FAIL. BTW, for that matter – there is no difference whether this is an on-premise software we are using or it is hosted. Same problem applies.

Somehow we need to find the golden path enabling us to rapidly innovate on the UI layer of our sofware. Shipping these pieces of software around from system to system, from Vendor to Solution Integrator to Customer is key to achieve this flexibility. Enabling end-users and ‘adapters’ along the value chain to customize and adapt their UI is the second key. This is what is often referred to as “UI Flexibility“. The WP dev team got hit by the half of the users which DIDNT like the new admin interface in WP 2.6.5. I thought it was really cool, but thats ok. (Murphy’s law for UX states that whatever improvement you do to the UI, at least half of the users will hate it. Some will like it. The only important factor is in which camp does the CIO reside). What did they do? They Listened to their users and with WP 2.7 allowed you to customize your Admin interface in an iGoogle/NetVibes drag-and-drop paradigm. Cool, no? Why dont we have THAT in our enterprise software?

Well, Because when IT managers look at such a cool thing, they immediatly have the following scenario in their head:

• User A takes his SCM home page and starts playing around.
• User A is a manager, hence not the sharpest crayon in the box. He removes one of the important panes from the page.
• User A realizes that an important pane is missing. He calls support.
• Support engineer B has no idea what User A has done to his screen. It takes her X more minutes to support User A. Multiply these X more minutes by the numbers of managers you have in your company and you a hefty addition to your TCO.

So how do we solve this? How do we give end-users flexibility without paying adittional support costs? I’m not sure, but I’m working on it… WP 2.7 has solved it nicely. However – the end user for this is not your everyday user. Its someone who is able to operate a wordpress blog and hence is a ‘power user’ by corporate standards. How do we solve this for Joe Manager? Good question.

Bottom line – Makers of Enteprise Software have a lot to learn from the people behind WP 2.7. How they enable fast innovation, UI flexibility and how they listen to their users are three amazing traits. Unfortunately, the enterprise world is complicated. As always – there is no Silver Bullet.