How do I explain that we're wasting developer time adding unnecessary features?

Question

So I've lead the charge with my fellow engineers to, at the very least, start "thinking" Lean. We hit on a few major areas of waste, and 2/3 lead to the exact same point..."Extra Features". We dogfood our own software on two fronts, sales and project management. It works great for sales, because that's what a CRM is great for. It's not so great for managing projects, and we're often tasked with adding extra features to make it work for this use case.

Does it make more sense to continue adding features that don't add any customer value, or should we accept that having our sales team using our own product is "good enough" and perhaps look for an off-the-shelf solution?

Answer 1

I don't agree with your initial assessment.

First of all, it's highly unlikely that your company is so unique or unusual that your customers might not also benefit from your customized features.

Dogfooding (even if you have to customize the software to make it work in your company) is one of the best ways to get a "reality check." The inconvenience would have to be especially egregious to overcome the benefits you get.

Besides, it's cheaper to use your own stuff than it is to buy something else to use internally. If you're not using your own stuff, then what confidence do you have giving it to your customers?

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That said, if your application doesn't lend itself well to dogfooding (i.e. it's not a Project Management application, but you're trying to use it for Project Management), you have to decide whether or not adding features to it to make it work in a Project Management role (when your customers don't use it that way) is worth the trouble, additional expense, and complexity.

Dogfooding features that the customer will never see doesn't make much sense, unless it saves you enough money by not having to buy an off-the-shelf solution that it overcomes all of the drawbacks.

Answer 2

Draw up all the requests for features from your company as if they were for a customer and show the cost of doing so. Then do a side-by-side comparison with an off the shelf piece of software.

Next, highlight your companys features that are hidden from other customers as there isn't a net benefit unless the feature saves more time / money than it took to produce.

Whoever does the budgeting should immediately see the value of spending the time on the dog fooding as time that could be spent on work producing revenue.