Designing software that works for a wide audience continues to be a challenge. Even inside enterprises, developers struggle to get the user interface right.
Features added serve only a small group, yet vendors constantly tweak popular ones to look modern. Product teams ask small numbers of users what they want, build those features, and assume that everyone wants them. Software gets bloated and unusable.
Todd Olson, CEO of Pendo, says, “All too often, people don’t focus enough on what is the core job to be done and the pain that we’re solving. We naively think that we can just go ask a handful of users, what do you want us to build?”
It’s time for the industry to stop asking and start watching. Pendo uses real-time analytics to observe actual user behaviour. It captures exactly how teams move through screens. Generative AI now decodes these patterns to reveal the true job to be done. Data allows teams to strip away clutter.
They remove features that add no value. The focus shifts to high-efficiency workflows. This approach mirrors the evolution seen in cloud platforms. Legacy on-premise systems gave way to agile, data-driven stacks. Manual feature selection must now yield to evidence-based deprecation.
He also argues that the competitive advantage belongs to leaders who can say no. They must have the courage to cut the noise. Can your organisation handle the hard conversations required to remove legacy bloat? The future of software depends on it.
To hear what else Olson had to say, listen to the podcast.
Where can I get it?
You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the player below. Alternatively, click on any of the podcast services below and go to the Enterprise Times podcast page.
