Air Traffic

Quick Copilot OneClick Update

The Copilot OneClick launch was our cleanest launch to date, and it feels great to be on the other side of a complex feature release with no (new) bugs in only three weeks. You (our customers) have installed a few hundred OneClick computers, and the feedback we have recevied has been overwhelmingly positive, so, thanks! 

We did face a few issues with Windows 2000 setups that should all be resolved at this point. If you are still struggling with getting OneClick installed on any computer, I would encourage you to contact support so that we can resolve any issue as soon as possible.

Right now, we are hard at work getting Copilot OneClick for Macs shipped so that all of our customers can put this feature to work for them. 

Finally, we have already received some amazing feedback from you about what features you would like to see in Copilot, and I hope everyone will keep an eye on http://feedback.copilot.com to see what we have planned for upcoming releases.

Back to work!

Iterating for quality and productivity

There are many times when repeating things is necessary and helpful. That is certainly the case with a strong QA/testing/feedback process in software development. The key is getting feedback early and then often. As you know, we took a product from concept to release in 6 weeks. It was a substantial amount of work. It adds some great new functionality, but my best guess is that it took us fifteen to twenty percent longer then it "should have."

The problem was simply that our rock star QA analyst was away on vacation at [what we failed to recognize as] a pivot point in the development cycle. It happened just as we finished the first pass of Fog Creek Copilot OneClick's functionality, before any of the chrome was applied. The people around to give us feedback had a strong technical understanding of the product and the problem that it was solving. As a result, we spent a full week without serious first-time user feedback.

It is a distinct advantage, that QA analysts aren't programmers (usually). It's awesome that FC attracted a few that put themselves in the shoes of lead users in a way that is very hard once you are deeply involved in the architecture of the software. Without their feedback, we made decisions about features and interaction design, as well as assumptions about the readiness of the software for delivery to market, that were wrong.

We could have solved this problem without Alison (QA analyst extraordinaire) if we had recognized it. Steve Krug has a great methodology for dealing with this exact issue, through quick and cheap usability testing, but we didn't think it was dangerous to delay the collection of feedback just a few days. Its not that we had to undo all of the decisions that were made in that intervening week, but some made it harder to incorporate the necessary changes that came out of Ali's testing. Even hallway usability testing failed us, to some extent, because we had explained too much about the product and the process to our colleagues. Without credible non-tech-centric feedback, our blind spots grew, but our awareness of them receded. More importantly, we lost momentum because we started to feel like it was done even though we were only really at the halfway point, in terms of time.

The day Ali returned from vacation and started filing bugs, our productivity went right back up, our sense of urgency returned, and our blind spots started shrinking. Two weeks later, we were cleaning the dust out of the corners and putting the final touches on the product.It's comforting to know that this is a problem that can be hedged by proactively improving our process. Next time around, we will be sure to have either QA or user feedback built-in to the "initial pass complete" phase of our development cycle.

Cross Posted at http://www.geekslens.com/2008/10/15/iterations/

Copilot OneClick Ships!

How it started

Six weeks ago, I passed along Seth Godin's Like your hair is on fire post to the rest of the Copilot team. We had been kicking around this idea of getting a new product out there to make it even easier for people who run help desks, or help their mom every weekend, to use Copilot. It was a huge chunk of new functionality.

• It had to be installed to make it work.
• It would need to talk to computers in our data center all the time so we could know if it was online.
• It would require a whole bunch of new UI on the website to create, control and organize the computers.

The list of stuff that needed doing was daunting, but as we thought about it, it became clear that we didn't need to do everything we had envisioned right from launch. For example, we didn't have to have a ghost mode that would allow system administrators to put OneClick into an image from day one. First, based on talking to our customers, we weren't sure that enough users wanted the feature. Second, and perhaps most importantly, it added complexity to the use of the product for people who might not even need the feature.

With some fastidious feature trimming, we got down to something that could be feature complete in just a few weeks. After six weeks of effort, we have a brand-new shipping Fog Creek Copilot product. That means:

• all-new clients (the part that runs on your computer)
• all-new reflector (the part that runs in our data center)
• all-new section on the website to control your OneClick computers

All of that in just six weeks time to give us Fog Creek Copilot OneClick.

What is OneClick?

Copilot OneClick gets installed on the computers of the people that you help most frequently and allows you to support them with a single click from the website once OneClick is set up. This streamlines the process of helping the same people over and over again (which a lot of our customers were doing) by allowing them to avoid the trip back to the website to create a new invitation or download the host. It is a feature for our subscribers as long as they have one of our unlimited plans. You can install Fog Creek Copilot OneClick on as many computers as you want for only $39.95 per month. If you want to try it out, sign up for a free trial.

It was a singularly spectacular experience working on this product with Ben and Tyler (the two studs from the Aardvark'd movie) and Alison (our absolutely awesome QA analyst). We worked hard, learned a ton, and managed to have fun while doing it.

We will be sharing the lessons that we learned along the way right here, so check back over the next week or so if you are interested.

What's Next?

Rock Band, and lots of it! Then we have a few things that we are thinking about, but it would be great if you would let us know what you want to see in the product by giving us feedback.