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From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] >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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