…don’t go the way we want them to.

Case in point, we here at Avalon Labs have been pushing to do a feature update to the Fellowstream closed beta for the last week.  We’ve burned some midnight oil, tested and re-tested our next batch of features, but it’s still not ready to go live.  For one, creating new features often affects others in ways we didn’t anticipate (such as breaking ticket creation).  Also, when we’ve tested these features among a smaller subset of people, they’re not intuitive or don’t add value like we thought they might, forcing us to go back to the drawing board and re-think implementation.

It’s frustrating, to say the least, but consider the alternative.  We’ve all used products that disappointed us, even though with a little more work, they could have become staples of our lives.  I switched to Google Chrome recently because updates to Firefox were buggy, but I’ve found that Chrome works well except with the Group Chat feature of GTalk – one of Google’s products.  Now I’m back to using Firefox.  In another example, I really got hooked on a Facebook game called Packrat, but nearly quit when the game locked up on me and essentially wouldn’t allow me to play.

It’s hard to revise your plans.  It’s even harder to admit that what you’re dying to release into the wild needs more work.  But usually, it’s the right thing to do.

Because you only get one chance to make a good first impression.

-Deborah Fike

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