Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009

I enjoyed her articles too, so I know where you're coming from. However I feel she did not handle things well when it came to the "crazies" and that greatly damaged her credibility in my eyes.

My loss I guess, since she can be very thought-provoking.

thesethings2• 16 years ago

This is a great talk. Though unrelated to Lean, Kathy Sierra's philosophy is similar in that it describes a "simple" mindset that has the potential to change the way you think about your product and business process for the rest of your days.

My only complaint is that there isn't a pithy catchphrase to describe it, or a larger cult evangelizing/writing about it, like Lean has.

When attempting to encapsulate Kathy Sierra's ideas, I often use the phrase "customer-centric," but I think people misinterpret it. (That said, "Lean" has a similar problem, people often think it means "budget" or simple.)

People often take Customer-Centric as a value judgement, that it means be nice to people or something like that. (By all means, we should be nice to people, but Customer-Centric is not about something so subjective.)

Just as Lean is a How, so is Customer-Centric. It's basically about focusing on how your business transforms your customer, not your product/brand (these things get worked on of course, but in the name of results for the customer).

I also think that Lean and Customer-Centric are greatly compatible, and focus each other. Anybody into Lean should check this talk out.

Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009

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