The Right Priorities In The Right Order

As far as product development goes, doing the right things is really important.  But not nearly as important as doing the right things in the right order.

Case in point - I recently had a great phone call with a prospective customer that is without-a-doubt in our wheelhouse.  I'll spare you the details, but will say that this is exactly the type of customer/organization that we want to fall in love with Argyle.

Yet - after a 10 minute conversation consisting of lots of general agreement and lots of knowledge sharing - I couldn't hook her on a demo.  We don't (yet!) offer a few of the widgets that she needs to do her job.  We know we need them and they're on the to-do list...but we don't have them now.  And these aren't rocket science features, just features that we haven't prioritized

Put another way, we're probably over-represented in one functionality area and under-represented in the other.  Just so happens that the "other" is most important to this prospect.  (It is worth mentioning that 10 prospects will have 10 different "most important" things.)

Not to say that we've prioritized the wrong features - because I think we've gotten things mostly right thus far on the product side.  But it does go to show that order of operations matters when it comes to building a web application.

PS - We're not giving up on the prospect.  But that's another post for another time...  :)