Developing something new is hard. It is too easy to think you have answers to question you ask internally, confident you have things figured out and you ship. When I worked on the Mac Portable, this occurred. Everyone on the team thought the product was a winner, including the media.
Released on September 20, 1989, it was received with excitement from most critics but consumer sales were quite low.
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In May 2006, PC World rated the Macintosh Portable as the seventeenth worst tech product of all time.[
The lesson I learned from this is the Fog of War syndrome. The lack of situational awareness shipping new services can be crippling.
The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.[1] The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign.
The enemy is not the other companies, but the act of customers not buying your service.
The latest manifestation of this problem is Obamacare. And, the enemy Obama didn’t expect is his own Democratic party.
Washington (CNN) -- A private meeting on Capitol Hill with House Democrats and White House officials on Wednesday became heated when rank-and-file members expressed frustration about continued Obamacare problems, according to multiple sources in the room.
One congressional Democrat who attended the meeting said senior Obama administration officials Mike Hash and David Simas really "got hit" by House Democrats about everything from the troubled website to the broken presidential promise that people can keep the insurance plans they like.
Including President Clinton.
Boosting pressure further on Obama was former President Bill Clinton, who said on Tuesday that the President should find a way to uphold his initial promises about health policies.
Clinton: Obama should 'honor commitment' on keeping health plans
A growing number of Democrats have called for changes or delays to the program as many face tough reelection bids in 2014 and are feeling pressure from challengers and constituents.
There are some data center services I can think that were developed in the Fog of War, lacking the situational awareness.