Boring Software Is Good

- Product

Last night I was wandering around the internet reading a bunch of articles, and I ended up reading Basecamp’s blog. For some reason, this part of this random post really struck a chord.

We pride ourselves at Basecamp on being “boring software” because it just works and it’s always available.

This quote made me think. Each service/software has one or more pieces considered the core of this service. The main value of the product.

Now here come the questions:

  • Do you know which parts of the product are your core value?
  • If you could give a version number to each one of these parts, what would it be? And remember, it doesn’t matter how many iterations you’ve done. What matters is if you consider it to be stable, “boring”. If it just works.

Like you do, your customers have ROI (Return of Investment) in their vocabulary. They may join and pay for your product if you have some shiny things or extra features, but they will not stay if your core service - your main value proposition - is faulty.

Are you sure you are moving in the right direction?

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