On Friday, we published a post entitled, “Think for a moment…” which posed the question of whether we might be better-served looking back at our most important existing features and streamlining them rather than inventing new features to solve that have little impact.
Over the weekend, a promotional email landed in my inbox from Nightingale Conant. It is completely unrelated to OSS, yet the steps outlined below seem to be a fairly good guide for identifying what to reinvent within our existing OSS.
“Go out and talk to as many people [customers or potential] as you can, and ask them the following questions:
1. Do you have a nagging problem you cannot solve?
2. What is that problem?
3. Why is solving that problem important to you?
4. How would solving that problem change the quality of your life?
5. How much would you be willing to pay to solve that problem?
Note: Before you ask these questions, make sure you let the people know that you’re not going to sell them anything. This way you’ll get quality answers.
After you’ve talked with numerous people, you’ll begin to see a pattern. Look for the common problems that you believe you could solve. You’ll also know how much people are willing to pay to have their problem solved and why.”
I’d be curious to hear back from you. Do those first 4 questions identify a pattern that relates to features you’ve never heard of before or features that your OSS already performs (albeit perhaps not as optimally as it could)?