On Lun 12 décembre 2005 21:32, M. Fioretti wrote:

> Maybe, in the case of corporate funded projects (oo.o and similar) the
> paid developers could be "forced" by their employer to directly spend
> time *talking* with end users in human ways (= not issuezilla and
> similar).

Honestly, in case of a traditional closed software project management
would probably try to limit these interactions as most as possible. The
conventionnal view is :
1. developper should be coding instead of interracting with users
2. features/enhancement/roadmaps should be approved by marketing (who
prefers interviewing a few highly-placed executives in well-publicised
events rather than sifting through thousands of user reports)
3. average user should be processed by low-paid call-centers people, using
scripted answers designed to minimize call length.

Of course the filter in 2. is highly selective, so 1. never gets the big
picture and 3. never gets good service.

The way OO.o treats its users is much closer to traditionnal closed
software practices than FOSS standards. FOSS often works better because
users do not feel abused, so they try to give better reports, and
user<->developper interaction is direct, which removes the distorting
effects of going through marketing (marketing will try to push big
customers requests first, forgetting that big customers do not provide
good feedback - they're paying you so much you're supposed to identify
their problems all by yourself)

I've worked in a software house where suggestions of the test team (paid
to drone through the application all week long) were ignored for the
"creative" insights of a few high-level marketoids, who never bothered to
actually use the software - when some area needed work they just had some
intern manipulate it for them instead of marking the area for fixing. They
did request some eye-candy no one ever found an actual use for though (but
it looked good on slides)

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot


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