Champions pay the price

Champions pay the price David Jul 26 2007

18 comments Latest by LNN

Who knows what the impact of a new feature will be. Will people understand it? Are we going to get swamped with support requests? Will it be a drag on performance? You can always count on uncertainties to scare you off. There are plenty of “What ifs” that can kill a good idea through fear, doubt, and uncertainty.

What you need to climb that wall is a willingness from someone to accept the risks and pay the price. The champion. He who wants this bad enough to be willing to deal with the initially confused customers, answer support emails related to the feature, and put in the work to make it fast and solid.

With a champion in place, most of the counter-arguments lose their appeal as they’re usually born from a perceived discrepancy between cost and reward. As in “sure you want this, but I’m going to be the one who has to deal with the mess”. When cost is assigned to the bulls, the perceived discrepancy of the bears dissipates.

The working title for this story: “How 37signals adopted OpenID”

Looking for a job? Got a position to fill? Check out the Job Board.

Got a web design project in mind? Find a web designer on Sortfolio. Browse by visual style, portfolio, budget, and geographic location.

Over 1 million people use 37signals' simple web-based software to collaborate on projects, track contacts, and organize their business with an intranet.

18 comments so far

Dhrumil 26 Jul 07

Stated like a true champ. SVN is my Wheaties.

Justin 26 Jul 07

David- We’re all glad you guys went whole-hog with OpenID, and rolled it into Rails proper. Now the entire Rails community gets it “free”. This will always be the beautiful benefit of using an open-source framework.

McFadly 26 Jul 07

OpenID has doubled my satisfaction with Basecamp and Highrise. Thanks for championing the cause, hopefully you guys will encourage more companies to adopt.

Josh 26 Jul 07

Great post. I guess that title could be extended to Champions pay the price, but it’s worth it. Like everyone else, I’m really pleased with the Open Bar and OpenID support, and the ‘working title’ and the end is proof that it works.

Walker Hamilton 26 Jul 07

Yes, openID. Amazing stuff. Thank you Jan Rain, et. al.

Tim 26 Jul 07

So who is the champion for OpenID in 37signal services?

Jacob Patton 26 Jul 07

He who wants this bad enough to be willing to deal with the initially confused customers, answer support emails related to the feature, and put in the work to make it fast and solid.

This part of your post really hits it home. When some parts of Highrise’s OpenID implementation were a little bit flawed (getting locked out of your account if you signed up with the wrong OpenID delegate URL , for example), David, you went to great lengths to not only get the problem fixed but to also respond to folks’ emails about the problem. That’s the sign of a champion right there.

“This part of your post really hits it home. When some parts of Highrise’s OpenID implementation were a little bit flawed (getting locked out of your account if you signed up with the wrong OpenID delegate URL , for example), David, you went to great lengths to not only get the problem fixed but to also respond to folks’ emails about the problem. That’s the sign of a champion right there.”

So I assume David championed OpenID for 37signal services.

sho'fr 26 Jul 07

wise words indeed!

Rather than champion new features, over at sho’fr, finding a champion for individual vehicles (Corvette, Jeep, VW) was a wise decision. Same concept, slightly different use.

As always, passionate employees are far more productive than a guy punching a time clock.

JF 26 Jul 07

Yup, David was the OpenID champion. I was initially against it on the ground that it was weird and techie, but have since come around.

Apostrophe 26 Jul 07

So, when’s it gonna be in a production release of Rails? I’ve been writing a new app and waiting for this to stabilize.

DHH 26 Jul 07

Apostrophe, the OpenID support for Rails is a plugin. It’s plenty stable. It’s not headed for core.

Planet Joe 26 Jul 07

Open ID is actually what convinced me to sign up for HighRise…the thought of yet another password to remember and/or store in Firefox on ALL my computers knotted my intestines :-)

37 signals is a shining example of paying attention and getting it RIGHT . you all are amazing on all fronts; keep it up.

Anonymous Coward 26 Jul 07

DDH , but your plugin still requires edge Rails, no?

mid-waltz 27 Jul 07

Plus, it takes a lot of guts to refer yourself as the champion. :D

But then, who can blame you? ;)

Anonymous Coward 27 Jul 07

Are we going to get swamped with support requests?

I would have thought the solution would be to not respond to customer emails. I rarely get a response these days and I’m a paying customer.

JF 27 Jul 07

AC, we respond to every email—usually within a few hours. Unfortunately since you’re anonymous we don’t know who you are.

LNN 01 Aug 07

Are you for hire?

Seriously – do you have an area for “champions” of web programming to be hired?

This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

Jobs: