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Comment by sambeau | Hacker News Reader

Companies like Basecamp and Trello are here to prove that assertion wrong. Basecamp is in every fortune-500 company more than once and never officially. Why? Because you don't need IT to approve it first and it's price is just under what most managers can stick on their company credit card. One of Basecamp's mottos is "Do Less".

It's also worth pointing out that the simpler the software, the more likely it is to fit in with more companies' workflows. As soon as you start adding niche features the more likely it is that they won't fit neatly with most places they are sold into.

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You actually do probably need your IT department to approve your use of Basecamp and Trello. It's very easy for project management and tracking tools to accommodate sensitive information like pending deals, new launches, or even PII. Your IT department probably isn't happy about rogue usage of external/third-party tools for storing data that they haven't properly tracked and can't wipeout or revoke if you quit.

Whether or not you choose to respect those needs, they very much still exist for all larger publicly traded companies.

I should say, those needs exist for all companies, it's just that the larger publicly traded ones have more to lose from e.g. a GDPR violation, data exfiltration/compromise or accidental leak of financially impactful data.

Shadow IT will always be created when the existing system or IT group can't or won't support the users' needs (imagined or not).

A good rule of thumb is, if you think your <medium-to-large corporation> doesn't need Shadow IT, it means you're not already part of your company's Shadow IT circle.

that is a funny comment :) thank you.

https://www.federaltimes.com/opinions/2019/04/18/dear-bureau...

Totally agree, but it takes a really strong product manager to stand up to a sales person with $10K in revenue from an enterprise buyer "if we just add this one feature they want".

The fact that the enterprise buyer doesn't actually need the feature, or could do it easier/cheaper/better is immaterial. A Purchasing Department worker in the enterprise is looking at your product and Product X, and Product X has that feature that some manager somewhere in the purchasing process said they'd like to have. They really like your product, but they can't justify picking it over Product X without that feature.

Telling salesfolk that they have to walk away from the sale they spent months cultivating is hard, and there are often board-level ramifications to doing it. The entire company has to be behind "Keeping it Simple", including the directors and shareholders. This is why these companies (and products) are rare.

Product managers also need to stop living in idealized bubbles and actually understand their users and customers. What they want can at times can be dirty or ugly, and require PMs to challenge engineering stakeholders. There needs to be give and take there. Often PMs are getting crunched in the middle and don't have the wherewithal to deal with these situations.

Requirements also change over time and PMs can end up chasing a vision that doesn't exist. If PMs get out of their bubble and acknowledge this more they'd be trusted since there would be alignment on the long-term value for the customer and therefore sales. There are times that PMs need to show backbone when dealing with sales, or leadership, on features that might derail the product, but this doesn't have to be the default.

>Totally agree, but it takes a really strong product manager to stand up to a sales person with $10K in revenue from an enterprise buyer "if we just add this one feature they want".

Lol, let's be realistic. If a PM is in the situation to decide that and does so, in a few days he'll find himself in a meeting with some higher ups to discuss how to find a way. (Unless of course 10k is insignificant for the company and there's already a hard roadmap for higher value projects.)

> It's also worth pointing out that the simpler the software, the more likely it is to fit in with more companies' workflows

The problem is that's not a continuous function. Leave out specific features and you lose entire industries.

Incentives are not aligned for enterprise software authors to lose entire industries.

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