A quick check surprised me that my colleague Joe hadn’t already covered this topic. It reinforces the ‘rebuttal’ I was suggesting in my last post. Dion Hinchcliffe illustrates his view of Product Development 2.0:

Applications Development is a specific realm of Product Development. With clients, I’ve suggested that they need to restructure all development to be open and collaborative in nature. That’s not to say that we eliminate the typical project/funding model, but that developers do what we as designers have already been doing for over a decade, share in our design problems. It’s not design by committee, but informed design with the benefit of a collective of experiences. It’s the productivity reality check that turns ’stealing from others’ into open sharing (you can’t really steal what’s already there for the taking). Now, let employees in on the evolution of the product and we completely change the AD model. I wish I’d had at that time O’Reilly’s model for Programming 2.0.

But more to the point of the model Hinchcliffe suggests, it’s about concise focus, small release cycles and constant improvement. It is the total embracing of the two realities: there is no such thing as perfect and right is a moving target. These concepts are entirely foreign to classic AD cycles with a focus on a completed project.

76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?

77. You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.

78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

2.0 can truly begin to tap the Human Potential (capitals intentional), but only if we let it. We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.

[Aside to Mr. Weinberger: I was listening to the audio version of Cluetrain Manifesto this past week. Each day I'd come into work even more incensed, with the thought in my head: "I KNEW I was right." That was just a reaction that I'm sure could be repeated instictively by almost any carbon-based entity. I suggested to a Bay Area colleague that they go through the audio experience (I really think that it's considerably different in effect than the written version) to provide them some much-needed inspiration. I insisted that, other than the names of companies and other time-specific references, it coulda, shoulda been written last week. Rather than the burning/ripping parties that your colleague suggested, I think that it's time for a good-old-fashioned retro party. And I'm starting the celebration by getting my own copy of the CDs, and maybe swap them with my friend who shared them with me — since someone inadvertently sat on the box cover last evening (something about jumping into the car while being pelted by hailstones with a tornado right behind...I think it was a sign). So we at least exercised a feeble squashing of the materials. For the paltry price of the materials on the resale market (that's a long tail you should find a way to get a piece of — too bad Amazon thought of it first), I'm half tempted to follow the street-corner market introduction model of old, and just stand on the corner handing out copies in the downtown business districts (other than cigarettes, I think the last time I witnessed that model was the distribution of FON cards in downtown Seattle...maybe 15 years before Cluetrain was written). A round of gratitude to all.]