Money 2002 SUCKS - Buy Quicken 02

Sorry I stepped out for a moment; it's gotten pretty exciting in here. Seriously, I know I haven't posted much lately, and some other business issues have kept me from even reading the newsgroup much for a couple of weeks.

First, let me say a little something about Lisa's role on Money2002. Product Management is, of course, a powerful voice in the development of our product's features, but it is by no means the controlling voice. Each functional team is represented at all levels, and gives input both from the perspective of their roles and as advocates for our customers. The point is, Lisa is doing a pretty good job of communicating with this user community, gathering the concerns you have shared, relaying them to the various teams that can respond or act on them, and driving us to results. We've shipped two packages of "issue resolutions" already for Money2002; Lisa helped us identify the issues and understand the urgency of those fixes for you.

Lisa is well aware a couple of items in Money2002 are very unpopular here. If you imagine that she has a wry sense of humor, then you'll recognize that the smiley on her "proud" sentence indicates a humble, self-depracating attitude rather than an arrogant or careless one. The feedback in this newsgroup is quite devastating; nobody on the product team reads it without being strongly affected by your passion. If there are folks on the team that are careless or arrogant about customer satisifaction, they are not reading and posting in this group, and Lisa is as far from that as possible.

We are glad of the feedback you give us, though. We also get feedback through our PSS channels, and we do a fair amount of usability testing as we design features. Feature specs are written with feedback from across the team, and work is carefully implemented and tested. While we feel that this approach gives us the best opportunity to design great features, we know that it is not perfect. It is also a fairly expensive process (especially with respect to that least fungible of resources, calendar time), which is why it is difficult for us to provide extensive re-workings of features in mid-cycle. (Go ahead, I know I left myself open for some potshots above; enjoy!)

We provide what is basically a single application that is supposed to be compelling across a pretty wide range of customers. Yes, we have reason to be proud of how this release is being received across that range, but we know that there are potential customers that are very unhappy with portions of it. We are continuing to look at ways to make the current product more satisfactory, and we will always take this feedback into account as we plan for major future releases.

-Russ Paul-Jones
MSN Money Development Manager