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RE: Dog Food

TravisDBA — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:28:39 GMT

[quote][b]jbnv (10/8/2012)[/b][hr]I once held a job where I was *forbidden* from using my employer's services: a Native-American casino. (They didn't have a problem with me gambling elsewhere.)[/quote]Employees working and gambling at their casinos are a different story. If you run up a large debt or lose an a lot of money at a casino where you work then you are more susceptible to possibly resort to using inside information you may have access to and thus commiting illegal acts at that casino that you work at. Makes sense. Casinos also don't typically hire people who very bad credit for basically the same reason. It's a temptation factor. At least that is the way most casinos see it anyway.:-D

RE: Dog Food

jbnv — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:01:10 GMT

I once held a job where I was *forbidden* from using my employer's services: a Native-American casino. (They didn't have a problem with me gambling elsewhere.)

RE: Dog Food

tabinsc — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:55:28 GMT

[quote][b]TravisDBA (10/4/2012)[/b][hr][quote][b]tabinsc (10/4/2012)[/b][hr][quote][b]TravisDBA (10/3/2012)[/b][hr][quote][b]tabinsc (10/3/2012)[/b][hr]I once worked in IT for a retail company that would all but require us to shop at our own stores, but would turn a deaf ear at any complaints or suggestions we would make about our shopping experiences at our stores.There is an advantage to working for a software company that doesn't create software for the average user, but for a specific user group.[/quote]How can any company require you to shop at their store? They can suggest it sure, but they can't require it. They suggest that we support United Way here with regular donations, but many don't, and I am one of them. :-D[/quote]It wasn't a written requirement, but we would certainly be frowned upon if we were spotted shopping at a competitor. Some areas of retail are very cut-throat, fighting for every penny. I am glad to be out of that environment![/quote]"Frowned upon"? :-P If i had a nickel for every time i was "frowned upon" in my life i would be a millionare. It wouldn't have bothered me in the least. The last time i checked we live in a free country and i can spend my money where i please. If the retail industry is that petty, I would not work for them in the first place.:-D[/quote]I fully agree with you. But this particular company operated in some ways that may have been legal, but certainly not ethical.

RE: Dog Food

TravisDBA — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:21:21 GMT

[quote][b]tabinsc (10/4/2012)[/b][hr][quote][b]TravisDBA (10/3/2012)[/b][hr][quote][b]tabinsc (10/3/2012)[/b][hr]I once worked in IT for a retail company that would all but require us to shop at our own stores, but would turn a deaf ear at any complaints or suggestions we would make about our shopping experiences at our stores.There is an advantage to working for a software company that doesn't create software for the average user, but for a specific user group.[/quote]How can any company require you to shop at their store? They can suggest it sure, but they can't require it. They suggest that we support United Way here with regular donations, but many don't, and I am one of them. :-D[/quote]It wasn't a written requirement, but we would certainly be frowned upon if we were spotted shopping at a competitor. Some areas of retail are very cut-throat, fighting for every penny. I am glad to be out of that environment![/quote]"Frowned upon"? :-P If i had a nickel for every time i was "frowned upon" in my life i would be a millionare. It wouldn't have bothered me in the least. The last time i checked we live in a free country and i can spend my money where i please. If the retail industry is that petty, I would not work for them in the first place.:-D

RE: Dog Food

tabinsc — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:01:30 GMT

[quote][b]TravisDBA (10/3/2012)[/b][hr][quote][b]tabinsc (10/3/2012)[/b][hr]I once worked in IT for a retail company that would all but require us to shop at our own stores, but would turn a deaf ear at any complaints or suggestions we would make about our shopping experiences at our stores.There is an advantage to working for a software company that doesn't create software for the average user, but for a specific user group.[/quote]How can any company require you to shop at their store? They can suggest it sure, but they can't require it. They suggest that we support United Way here with regular donations, but many don't, and I am one of them. :-D[/quote]It wasn't a written requirement, but we would certainly be frowned upon if we were spotted shopping at a competitor. Some areas of retail are very cut-throat, fighting for every penny. I am glad to be out of that environment!

RE: Dog Food

TravisDBA — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:46:42 GMT

[quote][b]tabinsc (10/3/2012)[/b][hr]I once worked in IT for a retail company that would all but require us to shop at our own stores, but would turn a deaf ear at any complaints or suggestions we would make about our shopping experiences at our stores.There is an advantage to working for a software company that doesn't create software for the average user, but for a specific user group.[/quote]How can any company require you to shop at their store? They can suggest it sure, but they can't require it. They suggest that we support United Way here with regular donations, but many don't, and I am one of them. :-D

RE: Dog Food

tabinsc — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:37:38 GMT

I once worked in IT for a retail company that would all but require us to shop at our own stores, but would turn a deaf ear at any complaints or suggestions we would make about our shopping experiences at our stores.There is an advantage to working for a software company that doesn't create software for the average user, but for a specific user group.

RE: Dog Food

Carla Wilson-484785 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:50:47 GMT

[quote][b]TravisDBA (10/3/2012)[/b][hr]It should be "Eating your own caviar". I don't know about everyone else but I don't produce "dog food" class software. [/quote]+1

RE: Dog Food

Miles Neale — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:35:25 GMT

Years back there was a commercial on TV here in the states where an automotive repair company said that "We stand behind our brake jobs!" They took a lot of flack because they would not stand in front of their break jobs. If memory serves me right the got thousands of calls and emails. If you cannot use your product or you do not trust it enough to depend on it, how can you justifiably try and market it? "Please buy our product, we do not trust it enough to use it ourselves, but we are certain it will work for you." Now that is a great marketing strategy!

RE: Dog Food

Dalkeith — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 08:21:44 GMT

Travis makes a good point.Most of us are here because we wanted a deeper understanding of how things work that often results in us making some of our own tools often because we think we can do a better of job than what is available. I have several applications now that I caviar and they are my prize possessions. I like using them and I like other people using them.I am never scared of any questions about them and can generally answer questions about them without hesitation. My knowledge of them is in depth and complete. I also know when they are not suitable for a job (as important as knowing when they are good)This is a massive advantage if you happen to be encouraging others to both use them or sell the product.A cold lager your caviar anyone?

RE: Dog Food

TravisDBA — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 08:11:18 GMT

As usual, you are looking at it again from the wrong angle. It should be "Eating your own caviar". I don't know about everyone else but I don't produce "dog food" class software. Do you really know what's in that stuff? It's not what they tell you in the commercials, believe me. :-D

RE: Dog Food

Dalkeith — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 07:41:04 GMT

I have a few applications now and I dog food some of them and others its not really possible.I think when specing out a system I'll try if at all possible to have a go at working through some of the work of the clients to get a feel of what they are needing in a try someone else's dog food scenario. I think this is important to do rather than a pure tell me what you want meeting.Frequently they have no understanding of the table structure of their existing systems and it can be extremely useful to sit over the shoulder of an in house super user and just let them take you through their daily work and let them describe their frustrations and the points they consider good.But generally I would be a massive fan of dog foodingI would say that it is a massive advantage to be a developer and user of software. If you really believe your software gives you an advantage in your day to day business then using your own software should be a given.

RE: Dog Food

Ernie Schlangen — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 05:54:44 GMT

I work for a medium sized engineering company which only has a couple of applications that are used outside of the company. And both of those were actually developed in-company first and then marketed outside the company so we definitely do eat our own 'dog food'. This is both good and bad, as our internal users are very conversant with the backing theory used by the software but our external users fall into two categories: 1)users that know MUCH more than our average internal user (an 'industry expert') or 2)'casual' users that just want to know enough to use the software for their limited purposes. We get very good feedback from internal users and external 'industry expert' users but the real gold is from the 'casual' users because these users show us where we've assumed knowledge on the part of the user just because that knowledge is common internally. It's important that the feedback from these 'casual' users is not treated lightly by thinking 'oh, that's stupid, everyone knows that'. So, while it's very useful to have the internal use and I firmly believe that companies should use their own products, don't ignore the feedback from the 'real world' either as they tend more to think outside the internal user's 'box'.

RE: Dog Food

Chris Metzger — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 05:29:18 GMT

We write several products and don't use any of them for our own purposes (one is a payroll product and my understanding is you shouldn't use your own software in some instances - creates a conflict of interest). But for our flagship product, in the medical records field, we test it as best we can then go through a beta period and deploy it into the field for select clients so they can test usability on a large scale. There's only so much internal testing that can be done but by getting participation from users and clients you can get feedback from the folks that use it most thus put out a product that tries to take into account what the majority of users want (or how they wanteed something to work). As long as we're meeting regulatory requirements everything else is gravy - and that gravy only gets made with help from others (and we'll never please everyone).Keep it up guys - you'll never please everyone all of the time.

RE: Dog Food

rf44 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 05:04:55 GMT

Things would probably be better is the software vendors big or not so big (this is true for MS too), would care for correcting every known bug in a version of their product before releasing the next version.As an example, I'm an intensive user of MS Access. With the .NET languages (C# and VB), it's my usual development tool (I don't use it for storing data, just for building front-ends). In Access there are well documented bugs that were already present in the version 2.0 of the product (1993) and that are still there in the 2007 and 2010 versions. Every new release introduces new bugs while no one bothers to fix the existing ones.And yes, as 90% of the programs we build are for internal use, we have to eat our dog food if it's what we cooked.

RE: Dog Food

andrew.mcgrath — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 04:19:15 GMT

So we have built a platform on top of Visual Studio and SQL Server - and the output of that platform (standalone SaaS systems) uses the same generic codebase as the platform tool itself.And then we have generated our own SaaS solutions for managing aspects of our own business using the platform, so it all gets tested and developed on many fronts simultaneously.This has been developed over 7 years now.One of the tools for example is to catalog interesting links we find on the web - so we have a category called SQL Server and SQL Scripts for which most of the content comes from SQLServerCentral :-)CheersAndrew McGrathworkslink.com.au

RE: Dog Food

Tim OPry — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:30:37 GMT

As to the main question - Should companies 'eat their own dogfood' (use their own products) - absolutely. If they are not using their own but something else, then as a customer (or potential customer), I would likely ask them why I should not use that other product as well. (assuming they are comparative)There are some pitfalls with doing this if you come to think of your internal user base as indicative/representative of your users in general. Normally, this would be inaccurate - unless your userbase is primarily other software development firms (unlikely for most). Using your internal users as additional testers is fine, but not to the exclusion of traditional focus groups, useability testing and other requisite methods.The biggest challenge I continue to face deals with what is now called the Paradox of Choice (which leads to feature creep). Many seem to think in terms of 'more is always better' - when in many(most) cases, streamling or even removing some features is better than adding 'stuff'.

RE: Dog Food

Ivan el terrible — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:06:35 GMT

Well problem is that majority of time the customers do not know what they want, so me and my team sit and develop a whole pipeline for months to come back when it’s done that they really not need that but the other and all the meetings and prototypes apparently I have been talking in vain. On data design, system architecture and all the rest I can do it in no time, but as soon as it comes to gui and workflows for it everybody has an opinion and every time it’s different. Last time after 5 people dedicated to ui workflow alone for 2-3 months, I sit down after it is released to find out that they are not using any of it and they just needed one simple thing, and our software does all but that not because it systematically not support it, but because of the workflow of the ui.

RE: Dog Food

Katie Walker — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:09:29 GMT

I have worked for companies that do use their own systems and ones that don't. I have found that everyone has their own idea of how the system should work. And they aren't always the same. Even after the site has been tested and retested, there is always someone who says, oh that's not what I meant. I meant this. I do use a system that a client built, and I have found more bugs than they have. I have often teased that I should bill them for every bug I find. But I also realize that they test it the best that they can and sometimes things come up. We are all human and we are bound to make a mistake or two. The biggest bug I ever found was when I worked for a physicians group. We were using software that another company had written. It was the fiscal end of year which ended June 30th. I ran my reports and discovered we were off by $34.50. My boss was very upset and demanded that I fix it. I tried everything I knew and I came up with that we were off by the cost of a flu shot. My boss wanted me to call the company and have them help me fix it. Of course it was 4th of July weekend and the company was off Monday the 3rd even though we weren't. I called Tech Support and my call was answered, but there was literally no one around to help. My boss didn't take that answer and eventually the VP of the softward company called me from the golf course. I explained that my boss wouldn't back off. The VP ended up talking to my boss who at that point was at the verge of firing me. We all came back Wed morning and a developer called me and they had it fixed by lunch. It was a bug that no one would have forseen unless they had set up the reports exactly as I had set them up. Sometimes there are too many if, ands, or buts to figure out every possible way that a user might use the system. Even with a Quality Assurance Team, things still get out.

RE: Dog Food

noeld — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:46:09 GMT

There is IMHO nothing like eating your own dog food to prove your clients how much you trust the product you sell. I know that not all cases are in the same situation but every company in the sofware business should try to do it as much as possible.Cheers

RE: Dog Food

Charles Kincaid — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:32:11 GMT

[quote][b]Ivan el terrible (9/28/2007)[/b][hr]I do a lot of internal development for my company, since we are in the entertainment business everybody has something to say regardless they know what is going on or not. ... [/quote]Thank God I'm in industrial stuff then. I go out and look at the job that the users are doing. I map out what data the users have, when they have it, and in what sequence. I then make the software ask for it [b][i][u]that way[/u][/i][/b].The other stuff around here is sales order entry and direct store delivery. We told our sales folk to put in our products and services into the test database, take a device home and pretend to use it to make sales the way they would when selling software, barcode supplies, and services. They came back and told us [b][i][u]exactly[/u][/i][/b] what changes we needed to make in order entry. We then had one of our developers go ride in the delivery van. That fixed the delivery end.If your users tell you the truth then take that as a guide. If they don't the use YOU best judgement. I've been asked to write software for political campaigns. I won't do it for either party. I just can't trust the client.

RE: Dog Food

Ivan el terrible — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:58:24 GMT

I do a lot of internal development for my company, since we are in the entertainment business everybody has something to say regardless they know what is going on or not. Releasing software and applications is the hardest part here and one of the reasons that I have been successful in doing it is that I can ignore the senseless parts and focus on the basics and then fix the miscellaneous stuff. This is hard to swallow for a lot of people as they think that software development is as easy as 1, 2, 3 and a lot of developers don’t know how to get the whole thing done. Now the bad part about it is the comments of people that “it sucks” “can’t you get it right”; you know what is way complicated to make applications these days there is a lot of parts to it and putting it all together is not straight forward as it looks from the outside.

RE: Dog Food

Bob Hoffman-209065 — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:48:26 GMT

I guess it would depend if I was importing offshore material to use as filler in my product. Then I definitely would not use my own "dogfood".I have always enjoyed trying out new software and finding creative ways to break it from what I perceived as normal user interaction.Back in the old days when software came with printed and bound manuals, they were usually written by the same developer/programmer who was deficient in conversational language. In other words, those writers automatically assumed you already understood certain aspects of the program which of course was not true.If I could figure out how to make a decent living doing the beta testing, I would do it but it appears to be much cheaper just to throw the product out there and fix it until the next revision comes along and you no longer have to support the old one.

RE: Dog Food

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:56:00 GMT

Charles,That's great and it's a wonderful example of thinking outside the box and looking for reuse. Probably beats buying anything else or tracking bugs in Excel.

RE: Dog Food

Charles Kincaid — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:20:30 GMT

At the dental company we used our own software. It's strange but follow along. Each practice became an account (family). Each person at the practice who could call us became a "patient". Now the fun starts. Each incident type became a procedure. When someone reported an incident we "charged" them for it. The more severe the incident the higher the "charge". When we resolved and incident we posted a "payment" against the "charge" A partial resolution got a partial "payment".Now an ageing report showed which practices had outstanding issues, how bad, and how long. To schedule service work and callbacks we used the appointment scheduler. The productivity report (dollars by procedure) showed the frequency and severity of issue types.Our dental practice management software instantly became our software issue tracker. Yep. Use your own stuff when you can. You already paid for it.

RE: Dog Food

webrunner — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:00:21 GMT

[quote]Should software companies "dog food" their own products?[/quote]Interesting question. It made me wonder whether the same questions are asked of other industries - do people who work at car companies drive the cars they make? Do people who work at cereal companies eat that cereal? I bet the "eat your own dog food" expectation is higher for software than it is for a lot of other companies. It may be that people are still wary of a company that doesn't use the software it makes. But cars and cereal are so perfected and assembly lined, so to speak, that I bet few people question whether those companies do the same thing.But maybe I'm wrong. It's a fascinating issue.

RE: Dog Food

Michelle Ufford-459603 — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:56:10 GMT

My company actually does use its own software internally. One of its offerings is a web-based e-mail and calendar system, and all employees are "strongly encouraged" to use the application and report on any bugs. It's not as good as Microsoft Outlook (yet), but I can say that by having so many employees use the application, is has definitely increased the quality of the product. For my company at least, "dog fooding" the product has been a smart move.By the way.... I like the new site. Keep up the good work. :)

RE: Dog Food

Cathy DePaolo — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:40:33 GMT

Steve,I have mixed views on the subject. In one sense, I think a company is almost obligated to use its own software if it makes sense for the company. For example, if PeopleSoft is going to market PeopleSoft Financials, it should also be using it. Otherwise, why would an external customer be interested? If PeopleSoft wasn't using its own product, it could indicate that its product is lacking.On the other hand, the requirements that go into the software being developed by a company are not always the requirements that actual users of the system would submit. Just because a company is developing an application, doesn't mean it will meet the needs of all communities. Perhaps the application being built is great for one type of organization but not for another. In this instance, I would say that it would be a poor business decision to try to fit the process into the tool. I believe the tool should always support the process, not the other way around.~Cathy

RE: Dog Food

Jim Lang — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:33:58 GMT

Funny you should mention it. My boss and I are discussing roll-outs and the best way to get it done.We don't eat our own dog food. We develop software for insurance companies, and wind up having our users test the software for us. The trick is to be sure that the critical parts (the money) is right, which eats a lot of testing time. The balance (usability) is what we hear about most.Usability is a tenuous thing. What makes perfect sense to one is "junk" to another.You're doing a good job. It works.

Dog Food

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:33:30 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Dog Food[/B]