It is always a tough assignment to write about mistakes one’s made in life. Doubly so when it has impacted other people and tarnished your reputation.
Besides having a cathartic, confessional effect, being able to analyze your own mistakes from a neutral point of view may hopefully help us avoid more mistakes down the road.
So after getting through the 2009 regular season (late), completing our first post-season and crowning our first ever Box League Champions, I thought it was timely to look back at the season, the last few years in general and see what we could have done differently.
It’s no secret that Box Baseball made its share of mistakes.
From a delay of going live to a buggy beginning of the 2009 season, we lost some customers but also gained some believers (not to mention some extra gray hair).
This series of blog postings are meant to give you an inside look at the mistakes we made, what led to them, and what we did to correct them.
Maybe you’ll find insight for your own business. Or maybe it will give you faith that Box is in it for the long haul. We hope you’ll enjoy these…
Mistake #1: Underestimating the complexity of what we were trying to build
Sounded like a good idea at the time. Sitting there at lunch, chatting about what we liked and didn’t like about existing fantasy baseball offerings, then casually throwing it out there that we should start our own fantasy game.
After all, how hard could it be right?
Famous last words. Our team has real-world experience working with some of the most complex software on the market, and I can honestly say that Box Baseball is a serious piece of software. In fact, I liken it to mutual fund software in many ways. The margin for error has to be close to zero (especially for real-time pieces like the Drafter). It’s constantly producing data on at least a daily basis, and it’s accepting so many data inputs which are then run through a complex algorithm to produce an output.
Adding new features would sometimes affect other areas causing what was viewed as a nice addition to the functionality causing changes in another area.
The old rule of thumb of doubling the amount of time you think something will require to build applied to us in spades. Much as we tried to foresee every situation, it wasn’t until it was in production with live users that many issues cropped up that required attention.
Mistake #2: Underestimating the resources we had at our disposal
The scope of work didn’t really hit us until we were well into coding Box. As it became apparent that this would be much, much larger than any of us anticipated, we were faced with two simple choices. Either we could call it a day and waste everything that was invested to that point, or we could double down and increase the funds and energy to try and get to the finish line.
Since we first started the idea of Box all of us had to stay at our day jobs to feed our families while working evenings and weekends on Box. Thus, our time was more limited than if we were able to focus on Box 24/7.
It also became clear that the most precious resource, even more than cash, would be quality programmers. One hard lesson we’ve learned is that, like any professional service, the quality of programmers varies quite a bit. A lot of time and energy was wasted in filling out our team and especially hiring on our development team whose skills just weren’t strong enough for the complexity of Box Baseball. Suffice to say, we made quite a few hiring mistakes.
This led to a lengthy delay of both the Beta program as well as the regular season of 2009. Both were crippling to our reputation and our business. We were paying dearly for this mistake.
We’re fortunate that at the time of writing this we are blessed with a very strong team of professional programmers who are both exceptional coders as well as good people. Our management and operations team now consists of a professional software product manager and professional development manager. Box has also joined forces with Fantasy Sports Vault to collaborate and share resources which will help us develop the exciting games we have planned for the next 2 years.
Mistake #3: Underestimating the Quality Assurance (QA) time needed
In software development-speak, QA cycles refers to the amount of time in de-bugging. No amount of QA will catch all the bugs, but the goal is to eliminate the biggies. Due to Mistake #1, we admit our QA was not sufficient. The result was predictable. While the majority of live drafts went off without a hitch, there were instances where bugs gummed up the machinery. Other bugs were reported by our faithful users.
We quickly made an internal decision that, while we couldn’t catch all the bugs, we could at the very least respond as quickly as we could. I think in retrospect that we were successful in this regard. Our customers consistently say that the level and timing of our service is one of the things they appreciate about Box.
Bugs would be gathered and ranked in terms of their priorities. For those that were critical, immediate fixes were created and rolled out sometimes within the day. Other less urgent fixes were addressed and communicated on a rolling basis.
As we’ve touched on in Mistake #2, our feeling is that with our new strong team that we’ve had in place since late 2008 we currently have the talent and resources to deliver an online experience that will have minimal glitches. Major new launches, such as the 2010 Box Minors are clearly labeled “beta” to signify that we fully anticipate bugs.
We ask that all Box customers email support@boxbaseball.com if you come across anything that doesn’t work as you think it should. We always promise that we will at least respond to you within 24 hours.
Mistake #4: Thinking that passion was all that’s needed
Couples who have been through a divorce often cite that they naively believed that love was all that a marriage needed. In reality, marriage is much more complicated and requires constant work. Similarly, for a time we believed that our passion for the game of baseball would trump all. What we learned should also have been predictable; customers care less about what you say and more about what you deliver. After all, talk is cheap. Show them the money, so to speak.
The bugs and delays we ran into in 2008 and early 2009 were serious, but through it all we were optimistic that customers would see the passion we had and forgive us. Some did. Some did not. Frankly, we can’t blame those who didn’t. We live in the Internet age of instant gratification and heightened expectations. Companies that don’t deliver usually aren’t given a second chance.
The fantasy baseball community is a close-knit one. Many of us have played with each other for a couple of decades. It is our sincere hope that Mistake #4 will actually help us win back those who are skeptical. We are committed to creating some of the most unique fantasy baseball offerings on the market. We will always listen to the suggestions of our customers and take them seriously. We will never quit brainstorming innovative features and games.
Ultimately, Mistake #5: Underestimating the effect it had on you, our customer.
From day one, we’ve always tried to put our customers first. But we realize we haven’t and we’ve given you a poor customer experience.
We really apologize for this.
We are committed to creating some of the most unique fantasy baseball offerings on the market. We will always listen to the suggestions of our customers and take them seriously. We will never quit brainstorming innovative features and games.
It is this very passion for the game that we share with you. It is therefore our realistic hope that you will enjoy playing Box Baseball and spread the word.
Many expected Box to close up shop and fold after the difficulties we faced. We believe that persistence counts for something. We’re not quitting. Join Box Baseball for 2010 and be part of something truly special.
Thanks for reading this long rant. We hope through our brutal honesty that it has been illuminating.
Play ball!
