The 80:20 principle

Microsoft released its first version of Office (named Microsoft Office 3.0) for the Windows operating system in the year 1990. This was followed by Office 4.0 in the year 1994, and Office 4.3 soon after. Microsoft Office 95 followed Office 4.3 and then we had Microsoft launching Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003 and finally Office 2007 last year.

So what exactly are the improvements that Microsoft made while bringing out each of these versions of one the most popular office suites available in the market today (OpenOffice.org is quickly catching up and it’s a good sign for those who believe in free and open source software)? Well, each version had a lot of new features built into it like sophisticated grammar checking (Office 97), digital signatures for security (Office 2000), handwriting recognition (Office XP), etc.

However, in my opinion, the average user will not notice too many major improvements in Office over the years except for the user interface. The reason for this is that most users don’t use the advanced features that are available in the Office suite (Do you really think you needed to upgrade to Office 2007 or do you agree with me when I say that you could’ve managed with Office XP or even earlier versions such as Office 2000 and Office 97? Give it a thought.).

So why does Microsoft release new versions of Office and, more importantly, why do people upgrade to the newer versions of Office? Common sense would tell you that it is a technique that Microsoft employs to keep their business running and make more money. In the case of Office, people are actually forced to upgrade to newer versions since documents created in later versions cannot be edited in the older versions (for example, a word document saved in Word 2007 using the default .docx extension cannot be viewed or edited in earlier versions of Word).

Microsoft Office, my dear friends, is a typical example of the 80:20 principle. I was told about the 80:20 principle when I happened to visit a software company in Bangalore to test an application that they had created. I was pursuing my Bachelor of Engineering degree in computer science then and while interacting with the CTO of the company, he made a point that for engineers to be successful businessmen they need to understand the 80:20 principle. According to this 80:20 principle, 80% of the features (mainly the essential ones) should be implemented in the initial version of the product and the remaining 20% of the features can be incorporated in its future versions.

This 80:20 principle can be applied to any industry. Take for example the automobile industry where companies come out with new variants of bikes and cars quite often or even the electronics industry where rapid advancements are made in technology (How often does one find their digicam, cell phone or MP3 player outdated?). It is true that you can manage with your old car (My 9 year old Maruti 800 is still good enough for me ;-) ), your old MP3 player or even your old digicam but the fact is that people have this tendency to go in for the latest things that are available in the market. This is why the 80:20 principle has been largely successful.

The good thing about the 80:20 principle is that companies using them tend to do a lot of research in improving their products. Companies also take feedback about their products in order to make their products more user-friendly (and hope for a better market-share with their next version of the product).

While most industries can capitalize on this 80:20 principle and make money, I personally don’t think that software companies will be able to do this for long since the open source software industry looks all set to spoil their fun and companies like Microsoft would have to search for alternatives in order to retain their market-share.

Don't be irreplaceable

In the professional world, signatures in an e-mail are often used to provide one's details such as designation, contact number and office location but how often does one find a quote by a famous writer or leader appended to these details? Quite often right? Even though some people consider such quotes unprofessional, there are a large number of people who use such quotes in their e-mail signatures. Personally, I like to read these quotes.

When I actually thought about it, I felt that quotes in the signatures of e-mails accomplish two things. One, it tells the receiver of the mail more about the character of the sender since more often than not, a quote that one chooses to put in his/her signature would be one that has a message that he/she believes in. Secondly, quotes also get the receiver of the mail to think about the message that is contained in it and this is a good thing since quotes rarely have a bad or negative message in them (at least I have never seen a signature quote that read something like 'Destroy everything around you since the devil commands you' and let’s hope that I don’t find one like that ;-) ).

One signature quote that really got me thinking recently was one that my friend at office had. It said "Don't be irreplaceable, because if you can't be replaced then you can't be promoted.”. The reason why this quote got me thinking is the impression that most people have about the IT industry and people belonging to the IT industry.

Employees of the IT industry are seen as young people who have a lot of money (and don’t know what to do with it) and cannot mingle with the common man. Most people think that the 'techies' spend all their time in their "code" or hanging out with their 'techie' friends at some pub or multiplex. Being a part of this industry for almost a year now, I partially agree with this notion that people have. I say this because quite often when people in the industry talk about socializing, they mean getting drunk at some pub. Even team outings are incomplete without people getting drunk and dancing around a bonfire :-). All this is fine and I have nothing against it but somewhere I get this feeling that these people just don’t realize how much money they waste and how hard some people have to work to earn their daily bread. I am not trying to say that you shouldn't go out with friends and have fun. All I am trying to say is that there are other people in the world around you who are less fortunate and that one has to try and understand the way in which they live as well.

Also, the IT industry has this notorious image of creating people who are very self-centered and selfish. Like in any industry, the IT industry also recognizes people with knowledge. Hence, people who have more knowledge than others are reluctant to pass on this knowledge. The perfect answer to people who think this way is - "Don't be irreplaceable, because if you can't be replaced then you can't be promoted.". Why? Because if you keep all the knowledge that you have to yourself, then you can't be replaced. Superiors would not want to replace a person who has all the knowledge with someone who does not have it. This essentially means that by not sharing your knowledge you are not reducing your chances of getting promoted to a higher level. Ideally, people should pass on their knowledge to others and learn new things since the various paths of knowledge have no dead-ends.

My friend's signature quote accomplished both things that I said most signature quotes do. It told me more about the kind of person she was (being her friend I already knew a lot about her ;-) ) and it felt really good to know that people who think about others existed in the IT industry too. Also, the quote got me thinking about the message that it contained. A message (or knowledge) that I wanted to share with others.

So, I would like to sign off by saying "Don't be irreplaceable, because if you can't be replaced then you can't be promoted."