In the realm of software development and technology, you
might have come across the term "dogfooding." No, it has nothing to
do with canine culinary experiences, but it's a common practice in many tech
companies. In this blog post, we'll explore what dogfooding is, why it's
essential, and how we're embracing this practice more than ever. We'll also
delve into how dogfooding has improved our internal projects, including our
Content Management System (CMS42) and the implementation of a new SMTP server.
Let's dig in!
What is Dogfooding?
Dogfooding, also known as "eating your own dog food" or "drinking your own champagne" (a slightly more pleasant concept) is the practice of using your own products or services internally. In the tech world, this means that the very tools and solutions a company develops are utilized by its own employees, often before they are released to the public.
Why We Do It
Quality Assurance
One of the primary reasons for dogfooding is to test and assess the quality of your products or services. By using them in-house, you can identify and rectify issues, bugs, and limitations before they affect your customers.
Feedback Loop
Dogfooding encourages a continuous feedback loop between the development team and the end users (in this case, employees). This direct interaction helps in improving the product based on real-world usage and user suggestions.
Credibility
It's hard to convince customers to use your product if you don't use it yourself. Demonstrating confidence in your offerings by using them internally builds trust and credibility.
Why We're Doing It More
In recent times, we've ramped up our dogfooding efforts for a few key reasons:
Complexity of Products
Our products have become more complex, offering an array of features and functionalities. By using them ourselves, we become intimately familiar with the user experience and can better improve that experience and provide better support.
Faster Iterations
With agile development methodologies, software updates and new features are released frequently. Dogfooding allows us to keep pace with these changes and adapt swiftly.
Security and Compliance
We place a high premium on security and data compliance. Using our products internally ensures that our security measures are robust and our compliance protocols are effective.
What It Improves
Dogfooding has a profound impact on various aspects of our business:
User Experience
By using our own products, we get first-hand experience of their usability, which aids in refining the user interface and overall experience.
Bug Detection
Bugs that might escape the scrutiny of traditional testing are often discovered by users who interact with the software daily.
Feature Prioritization
Internal users can provide insights into which features are most valuable to them, helping us prioritize development efforts.
Documentation and Training
Dogfooding exposes gaps in documentation and training materials, prompting us to improve support resources.
Increased Confidence
When we release a product that we've extensively used internally, we do so with increased confidence in its quality and reliability.
Using Our Own CMS (CMS:42) for Internal Projects
Our Content Management System, CMS:42, is a prime example of dogfooding in action. As we create and manage content for our own projects using CMS:42, we gain invaluable insights into its use. This hands-on experience helps us enhance the system, fix bugs, and optimize its performance.
I’ve written and formatted this blog post using CMS:42 and our in-house WYSIWYG editor: Eddie.
Our New SMTP Server
Another exciting development is our development and adoption of a new SMTP server for email communication. Using this service internally allows us to ensure the reliability and security of our email system, which is critical for both our internal operations and customer communication. We implemented this within our internal projects as a great opportunity to test a completely new service before forcing our clients to use it. This helped us Isolate performance issues, fix bugs and improve efficiency before allowing our clients access to the system providing them with a much better, more stable platform.
Conclusion
dogfooding is a practice we've embraced and intensified for numerous benefits, from improved product quality and user experience to stronger security and compliance measures. By using our own CMS and SMTP server, we lead by example, demonstrating our commitment to delivering superior solutions to our clients and partners. This is a practice we’ve found is beneficial and something we’ll plan to continue and improve going forward.
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