Are You Dogfooding?
The bracelet
Last week, my daughter came home from work as an inspector at a grocery store. He sat down and pulled a bundle of money out of his pocket. I asked him where it came from. She said she received a lot of compliments with a leather strap that she sometimes uses and that many people wanted to know where to get one.
My daughter talked to the boy who did it for her and told her that she should use one because people would buy it for her. He really liked the idea of selling them since he liked doing them, but he really did not want to use them. My daughter and the child calculated a good price and my daughter told her that she would sell them for him.
The next day, she wore the bracelet at work and sold 20! She did not "sell" any of them, she just used it. When people asked her where to buy one, she said she could sell them.
The router
A few years ago, we were designing a network router for businesses. We had small businesses with between one and fifty employees. The basic assumptions were that there would be no one in these companies who is aware of computer networks. We did everything except plug the cables automatically. So we provide a large colored diagram to show where to connect the cables. We tried it several times in the office to make sure there were no problems.
We were satisfied with the test results and ready to send the first order of 10,000 units. As a last minute gesture, I said I would take a house and plug it in. It did not work What went wrong? I spent the night standing up trying to figure out why it was not working. The next morning, I presented all my findings to our senior engineer and explained that it did not work. He looked at me disconsolate and said that they had tried it and that there were no problems, but that he would look at it.
About an hour later, he timidly came to my office to tell me what was wrong. They had forgotten to place a simple order. They never saw the problem in our labs because our network did not need it, but most other networks would need it. We solved the problem and received our shipment of 10,000 units later in the day.
dogfooding
Are you dogfooding? Whether you make complex bracelets or routers, you must use your own products or feed your dog. Originally, I heard this: "Eat our own dog food" Due to the negative nature of this situation, some now say "Drink our own Koolaid" or "Drink our own champagne". A Microsoft executive calls it "IceCreaming".
No matter what you call it, the benefits of feeding the dog are enormous. These are just two examples involving sales and quality advantage. The benefits increase sales, marketing, engineering, quality control, public relations and more. If you do not do dog food now, I suggest you start today.
