Every business is a people business – including software!

A management consultant friend of mind always says, “every business is a people business.” 

Now I find myself in an industry (software) where most people, based either on their perception or their experience, would not believe this to be true. It's easy to point to industries like retail or health, and tell stories about how a personal interaction either gave us a great or terrible experience. But what about software? I have had, and heard, my fair share of frustrating stories.

Some could point to the sales department or customer service of a software company, and argue that those fulfill the people aspect of the company. But there has to be more than this, right? Aren’t applications designed, in the end, for people?

Most people’s frustrations with software stem from two things: 1) It doesn’t do what you want it to do, or 2) It does what you want it to do, but the process to accomplish the task is painful or annoying. In my view, the latter frustration comes from the fact that the designers and builders of applications do not see their industry as being a people business.

It has always been surprising to me how big of a disconnect there is between the people designing and building the systems and the actual end user.  No questions, no collaboration, no anything.  So many applications are built to simply get a job done - why would the end user come into play? The focus needs to be shifted back to the simple realization that the applications being built are actually being used by real people.  And these real people actually want to get their job done with as little pain as possible. Therefore, we should design our applications with them in mind, right? It seems obvious, but in this industry, that kind of thinking is pretty revolutionary.

With QuickBase, applications can be built easily and economically with the end user in mind. And if something is not working at the start or along the way, guess what?  It can be easily changed. It is fun being able to build applications that the end user actual likes. 

I have used enough software systems in my life (non-profit software, oil & gas software), where everything in me wants to resist opening up the program; it’s simply not inspiring to work with. But there is a better way.  Let’s make software a people business. 

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