{"id":768295,"date":"2021-08-24T10:08:28","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T17:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-blog-post&p=768295"},"modified":"2021-08-24T10:08:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T17:08:28","slug":"the-true-cost-of-your-idea","status":"publish","type":"msr-blog-post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/articles\/the-true-cost-of-your-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"The true cost of your idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Westworth\u00a0 (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"woman<\/p>\n

Image credit: iStock\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no such thing as a free lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

The saying goes that \u201cideas are cheap, but failure can be expensive.\u201d Each idea we implement, whether it succeeds or fails, has hidden costs which we often don\u2019t consider. You\u2019re aware of the obvious costs such as research, design and development. But have you considered the costs of implementation, change management and the ongoing costs? These hidden costs may be contributing to your idea not being fully used by your customer.<\/p>\n

Implementation costs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your feature is turned on by default and the customer doesn\u2019t need to do anything, right? Wrong. Every idea needs to be checked for security, privacy, and compliance issues. IT needs to be trained and ready to support your idea. Their own support teams need to be ready for the inevitable questions that come their way.<\/p>\n

In DevOps, there\u2019s a concept of planned and unplanned work. According to a study by PagerDuty, \u201c70% or more technology staff are negatively impacted by unplanned work in three or more different ways, including heightened stress and anxiety, reduced work-life balance, and less time to focus on important work.\u201d Organizations classify an idea we release without enough notification, supporting content or controls as unplanned work.<\/p>\n

All of this has a cost to the customer. Yes, that puppy may be \u201cfree,\u201d but there\u2019s a lifetime of cost associated with it.<\/p>\n

How might you do a better job of enabling the customer to successfully implement your idea?<\/p>\n

Change Management Costs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although we like to think our idea is so beautifully designed and easy to use that people will just start using it straightaway, that usually isn\u2019t the case. Users want to know:<\/p>\n