Hi -- I thought it was inspiring! Why?
1. Someone makes a good suggestion 2. Others quickly see its value, perhaps in ways the original suggester didn't -- it adds a WYSIWYG editor that MediaWiki and thus Wikipedia had lacked, as well as providing a route for all the companies who want to convert lots of existing content to their burgeoning wiki sites. 3. Someone gets a first cut out quickly 4. It bounces around and evolves a lot to meet lots of peoples' objections and be genuinely useful 5. It eventually acquires the formal trappings and is canonized as a standard part of the product. Why am I impressed by such an obvious process? Because I've seen too many failures in the bad old corporate software development process that missed most or all of the above! The process was driven by widespread perception of customer needs. Nobody asked, "what will this do to the sales of our existing products?" Everyone who cared to could make suggestions and act on them. Believe me, these are huge advances! Howie On 9/29/07, Frank Wales <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The history of the new 'Export to MediaWiki' option on OpenOffice: > http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=48409 > > First, submit a vague bug report because the program you use > doesn't do what you want it to, and suggest that it should be > pretty easy for someone to fix this problem. > > Then, wait several months until someone writes a macro for you. > > Then, wait more months until someone automates things with a script. > > Then, wait as other people point out that it should be available > from a menu, and that it should be based on XML, and that it should > have a laundry list of clearly-trivial features "for extra credit". > > Ignore the web-based version as being obviously not what you wanted. > > Then, wait for some new programmers to get enthusiastic about your > problem, and finish writing all the fiddly bits of the software. > > Then, wait while they write some test case thingies and talk > about 'semikolons'. > > Then, wait while the QA department writes the specification > for the now-finished software. > > Finally, rejoice as your vague bug report has become reality in > only two-and-a-half years, without any further input from you. > -- > Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) > Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss > Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce > PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ > -- Dr. Howard Goodell http://www.lri.fr/~goodell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Scientist, InforSense LLC 155 2nd St., Cambridge, MA 02141 USA +1 617 547 2500 x243 -- Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. Ben Franklin 'Poor Richard's Almanack' June 1746 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
