Comments on: Five Things Software Teams Can Learn From Build-A-Bear Workshop About Customer Relations

By: Tucows Farm: The Tucows Developers' Hangout

Tucows Farm: The Tucows Developers' Hangout — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 04:03:00 +0000

[Misc] So Many “Top X” Articles!

Maybe it’s the new “considered harmful”. Over the past couple of months, there’s been a number of articles on various blogs with a title of the form “n ways to achieve goal x” or “n qualities of thing y. All the articles below were written in …

By: Bizinformer

Bizinformer — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:19:55 +0000

Carnival of Business

Bizinformer is proud to be hosting this 15th edition of the Carnival of Business. Click HERE learn more about how you can contribute or host the Carnival of Business. Next weeks big show will be held at Consumerism Commentary. Now…

By: Indefinite Articles » Carnival Of The Agilists - July 27th, 2006

Indefinite Articles » Carnival Of The Agilists - July 27th, 2006 — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:50:34 +0000

[…] J Timothy King writes a great summary of the Build-A-Bear workshop story, and applies some of the lessons to customer relationships in software construction. […]

By: J. Timothy King

J. Timothy King — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 02:15:23 +0000

Hi, Charlie. That’s a cool story. And a great thing when it happens.

I worked in a company that develops electronic musical instruments. Most of us were not only engineers but also musicians. We won a few awards, probably more than such a small group deserved.

WRT your current assignment, it sounds more like you provide a service, not a software product. The software you developed helps you in providing the service. That can be a great place to be, because your customers, the people paying for the service, may not realize how valuable the software is. You can do seeming magic, adding tremendous value, with a small software change.

Take care,
-TimK

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:43:56 +0000

Sounds like a great and fun book.

As for getting the customer involved, one of the MOST successful projects I’ve every been on was for an “internal customer” (gad I hate that phrase). One of the Sr people in that department had gotten tired of working there, and had been studying software development. Guess what we did? Yep, asked him if he wanted a job as a programmer! It was “win/win” for sure. He got to become a programmer (turned out pretty good BTW), and we actually got the person who was to be our “point contact” for the customer to be on our team full time - he had 15 years in that department, and knows their business inside and out.

Needless to say, that team (I’m on a different one now) has extremely happy customers!

I’m on a totally differnt kind of project now - backend data retreival. I have no customers except a TCP/IP stream on one side, and a database on the other. I’m the only person who uses the program that I developed, but it’s so mission critical that they want the developer on it full time when it’s in use