Read on Twitter
“Think Big should apply to data—not how long the documentation table of contents needs to be.” Fun & insightful stuff as usual from @QuinnyPig, this time on the issue of product sprawl from AWS. https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/the-google-disease-afflicting-aws/ #thread
This was an issue a decade ago, when even then customers found the product range of AWS confusing, and the subsequent years have only made this worse.
The point (rightfully) raised by @QuinnyPig is that many of these new “products” should really be new features under existing products. One view here is that the reason this happens is because launching something new is how you get internal recognition/promotion
That may be true, but I suspect it’s not the only reason. New product = big flashy keynote and the endless carnival that is re:invent. But as I’ve highlighted before, I think this is also caused by Amazon’s internal organisational structure ( https://twitter.com/samnewman/status/1202245828649332736?s=21)
Building a product suite through autonomous product teams leads to an interesting balancing act. How much do you allow teams to go off on their own? Coordination between teams slows down software delivery, but is that sometimes a good thing?
How many different ways can I run a container workload right now on AWS? Is that about choice, about being customer focused, or is it more about exposing customers to waring product visions from inside AWS itself?
I’ve said before that the usability of AWS’s products suffer because there isn’t enough outside-in thinking. Composing a complex product suite from the ground up through a set of primitives is part of the genius of AWS’s success, but it is also a fundamental limitation
Whether what we, as consumers, see from AWS is a result of a culture of rewarding the new, the outcome of focusing more on autonomy than big picture thinking, or whatever else, the net result is confusion. Great for consultancies no doubt, but is this really “Customer Obsessed”?
Falling into the trap of seeing the customer experience as a specific set of metrics on a narrow product offering doesn’t make sense when the customer experience bridges multiple products. The customer experience is the totally of the products they use - the end result.
I’d like to think that there are many people inside AWS thinking about the totally of the customer experience more broadly, at least in terms beyond their monthly spend, but outside of narrow product fields we’re not seeing much evidence of that.
It would be nice to think that being Customer Obsessed isn’t just about being obsessed with a customer’s bank balance. And yes, I fully appreciate the naivety of that tweet. But heck, it’s nearly Christmas! #end
