Dogfooding on steroids

“Dogfooding” is a delightful term we use in the software industry for the important practice of actually using your own product in your company’s day-to-day operations.

It comes from the equally delightful expression, to eat your own dogfood.

Dogfooding is, I believe, in a league above any other process for making sure your software is actually good.

If you are not already dogfooding, start doing it now.

You’ll immediately discover that your features are unfinished, your product’s UI lacks polish (even if it looks good), and that you’ve created one of those products that make users curse at the computer.

Conversely, when your whole dev team uses your software product daily, the annoying things get fixed ASAP.

The idea of dogfooding is all good and fine, but the reality is most of us can’t actually use our software in the way that our target customer does.

For example, my company uses our own product, Feature Upvote, to track feature requests. We get maybe one feature request per week. Some of our customers receive hundreds per week. At our level of usage, we don’t get to understand the pain points for our biggest customers.

One customer, out of frustration, asked if they could add one of our team to their Feature Upvote account, to experience it in their shoes. I volunteered. That turned out be a sensational idea.

Suddenly I got to experience the feeling of being overwhelmed with tons of feedback; of having to repeat the same five clicks over and over, when it could be done in one click with some better UX; of the need for better bulk handling of feedback.

Our software is now so much better as a result.

In Kill the HiPPO, there’s a similar story about “Building for ‘Simon from Canada’”, from the early days of YouCanBookMe. It shares how they got an actual real person from their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) to help them get the small details right.

Some questions for you:

1. Are you already “dogfooding” your product? If not, is there a way you can start doing so?
2. Can you upgrade to “dogfooding” on steroids, by involving a helpful customer, who uses your software every day, in the process?

Kill the HiPPO news

• Michele Hanson, author of Deploy Empathy, wrote an Amazon review for Kill the HiPPO:

• I’m repeatedly hearing “I like that the book is so short”. Before publishing, I felt that the book’s shortness would result in negative feedback; but the very opposite is happening. It turns out that many people don’t finish most business books because they are way too long.
• 🎉 I got my first royalty payout from Amazon! 🎉 It’s a tiny amount, as it is for March, when I had just one Kindle sale before the print version was published and before the book was officially launched. But it is still worth celebrating.

I’m looking for podcast guest opportunities

Do you know of a podcast that would be a good match for a chat about Kill the HiPPO?

If so, let me know!

Until next time,

Steve McLeod
​​​killthehippo.com​​