Creating Passionate Users

Keep the sharp edges!

"Great software isn't created by committee." That quote came from James Gosling, at the developer "fireside chat" at the last JavaOne. And from Applied Minds tech wizard Bran Ferren, "Art isn't the product of a team." Is this true?

First, I don't believe James was necessarily talking about the functionality and code when he said "great software". Clearly, teams of great programmers can produce great code. I think he means the kind of breakthrough apps that people can become passionate about, and I also think it's less about the programming and more about the design and spec.

And we can all have our own interpretation of the word "team"--at what point does a reasonably small, synergistic group building and adding to one another's strengths turn into an idea-crushing, groupthink team? That depends... very few good novels are written by more than one person. Perhaps for novels, two is the maximum, and even that's pretty rare. And we all recognize that indie films today tend to be of much higher storytelling quality than the watered-down major studio films where there's often a huge gap between "the director's cut" and the final release edit.

But what about software or other products? What about the team responsible for decisions that affect the context in which users interact with your product, service, or company? How big can those teams be before they become completely dysfunctional? Obviously there's no absolute number... two people can cancel out each other's good ideas just as effectively as a dozen. If it's not simply about the absolute number, then what is it about?

It's about how hard the team/group works to exploit the smartest aspects of the team while maintaining the distance and diversity so artfully (and scientifically) suggested in James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds book. It's about aggregating the intelligence of the individuals rather than having the group make decisions as a whole. And those are two profoundly different things. If you haven't read the book, I made an earlier summary of one of the key premises here.

Most importantly, it's about working to keep the sharp edges instead of smoothing them all over. It's about avoiding the dreaded "morph".

You've seen the morph phenomenon, where products end up looking like a morph of all competing products until there's virtually no major distinction. Nothing remarkable. Nothing we love. Think of all the new cars you see today that look soooooo much like every other car. With a few exceptions (like the Honda Element, the MINI), most look like they've been run through a morphing program that found the perfect average. I was about to add the ScionxB to my list of examples, but then I realized that it's looking dangerously close to the Element... and if the car designers aren't careful, we'll just be exchanging a road full of lookalike rounded cards for a road full of box-like cars with very little difference between them.

This is the car I've wanted all my life:

The '64 Mustang. My dream car.

And though some of the newer Mustangs over the years have been nice-looking cars, the designs today now look like they've been morphed with that of many other cars:

Metaphorically speaking, where are the sharp edges?

Where are the strong ideas that come from either an individual or the product of true brainstorming? (Not the kind of meetings that pretend to be brainstorming, but where someone always plays "devil's advocate" and kills innovation at the roots, or where we all know that if we don't go along with "the group", we'll be in trouble.)

When people aren't brave enough for one reason or another, ideas are morphed and the sharp edges are worn away until there's little left but a completely palatable, utterly unlovable lump. (Again, I don't mean "sharp edges" literally--I happen to love my iPod precisely because it has no sharp edges... very sexy indeed.)

But then what do you do when the sharp-edged ideas of individuals are all different? You pick one. Or, applying the wisdom-of-crowds model, you take the best of several. But rather than morphing, you aggregate the ideas in whatever way is meaningful to this kind of product, service, process, idea. And you read Surweicki's book to find out why forcing out anyone who doesn't "fit" with the group can be not just unproductive, but in some cases deadly (read his discussion about the Space Shuttle).

And I'm going to keep posting this picture, way past the point when you're sick of seeing it:

If we allow groupthink/consensus to win, smoothing over all the pointed edges, we'll indeed have something that nobody hates. How many of us can afford to be there today?