You Moved The Button

Most enterprise software gets worse because of the "you moved the button" problem.

Software evolves over time. You answer customer requests with new features, extend workflows and add new columns in reports.

But your training department are struggling to show customers how everything works. Your documentation team can't find a way to explain anything. Your UX team will want to improve how it all works.

And that's when you'll hit this problem.

Customer: "You moved the button.

"Software company: "Yes we did. It didn't make any sense anymore. It took you to the wrong part of the system.

"Customer: "But we use that button.

"Software company: "We're just trying to make the system better.

"Customer: "We have 10,000 staff who we trained on how to use that button. We'll have to update all our training manuals and re-train everyone. This will cost us a fortune!

"Software company: "But the button didn't even work properly!

"Customer: "But our staff expect the button to be there. They'll be confused when it's not!"

It's an important enterprise contract. Management want to know who dared to move the button.

Maybe the button gets moved back. Maybe nobody will ever move a button again.

In the meantime new customers are coming on board and finding the system really confusing. Your sales team are getting complaints that the system looks out of date and aren't getting as much traction. The market begins to move on to a new system, where all the buttons work (for now).

And your tens of thousands of existing customers continue to use a broken system and complain about it online.

Years later, your support team continue to get new tickets.

"Why does this button not work properly?"