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From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]
>To the extent that customers buy technology by wandering through a
>checkbox-list of features, it doesn't work.
They issue an RFP describing the features of system they
want to purchase. We respond to that with capabilities
we provide. That works.
>Telling customers "no, that's bad for you" is something that
>needs to happen more often.
Could be. Try to do that in an RFP reponse or a BAFO. Be
very careful of telling a customer that their business is
bad for them. We do a good job of declining requirements
we can't meet or know are not effectively met with our system
as described in their requirements. We do a good job of offering
alternatives. We pick technologies that make that doable
and implement them for specific requirements generalized
in the application itself. We don't sell XML; we implement
XML applications. As far as XML tools go, I am your customer.
>I wish it was that simple. An application is good for chopping down
>technologies to fit that application, but the prospect of multiple
>applications leads to feature creep - all those use cases must be
>answered.
Yes.
>XML 1.0 did a wonderful job of saying "these are our goals" rather than
>"these are our use cases", and that actually worked. Now that the use
>cases are back on the scene with claims of "our customers want to do
>XYZ", the features are piling on.
Yes.
>I'm not content with selling the world an enormous mash of features and
>possible combinations of features and leaving it to developers of
>particular applications to sort out which parts are valuable and which
>are trash.
They have to sort out which features will solve a problem for them
and which are not of use to a particular application. You can't do
that for them. I am your customer.
len
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