RSSDoes calling it ice cream make it less garbage?
Microsoft’s new CIO Tony Scott likes the idea of using the company’s in-development products operationally within the business as they are being developed, but hates the traditional label attached to the practice, “dogfooding.” “I decided very quickly that dogfooding just didn’t sound very appealing,” says the incoming Disney veteran. Scott, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, says he would like to re-label it as “ice-creaming.” Because Exchange is so smooth and flavorful now, one presumes.
Cue Scott Adams… this is clearly a Dilbert moment.
But I know there are people who would argue, quite strenuously, that the name matters, and that there is some psychological benefit to imagining oneself, as Scott puts it, turning products into “ice cream that our customers want to consume.”
This sort of verbal sleight-of-hand, however, drives most techies nuts. If it were ice cream, I can imagine them saying, why aren’t we releasing it now and going snowboarding tomorrow instead of working on bugfixes? It’s called dogfood because it ain’t steak quality yet, and if you have to eat sub-standard quality stuff, that’s to encourage you to make it into something that you would actually want for dinner.
With those opposing views, it turns into a cynical competition between management and engineers, and we all know who loses in that battle… customers. So is it worth the fight? Or is it beside the point? What approach do you use in your own departments, the perfume to cover the stench of the dead woodchuck, or the raw alcohol of telling it like it is?
