Why'd You Remove That Feature?

My Opinion Below

Whenever there is an upgrade to a new version of any software program, inevitably there is some amount of confusion with the new system. It is up to the technical support department to help ferry clients to a new understanding of the new system. One of the most commonly asked questions we will hear regards features that were being used in the previous version but that aren't available or readily apparent (or as easy to use) in the new version.

Why would you remove a feature that our business depends on?! I used that every day! I certainly understand the frustration here. This happens commonly to me with other software programs and I experienced it very strongly in the upgrade from Microsoft Office 2000 to Microsoft Office XP. There was a certain undocumented feature that I used quite often that was not in Office XP. It was several weeks or more of adjustment on my part to get used to the change.

Having seen this side of the software development cycle, I have a little more perspective on it, but I still find it annoying. The cause of these sorts of issues is that the development department is creating a new product from scratch. In most cases like this, the feature that is being referenced wasn't specifically left out on purpose. There wasn't a board meeting where some group decided which features to nix. Instead, there were several meetings where they reviewed usage and importance and functionality of each new feature to be added versus the time and resources that were available to release the product. The important point to take away is that there are always business-based decisions behind every step in the plan, and although that might hurt or inconvenience some clients in the short term it is not done personally. If the option is major critical to users it will be implemented in upgrades to the new system down the line.

This does beg the argument that perhaps it is better to fix current versions and not create a completely new version from scratch, but there are many other considerations to consider here that have to be taken into account. For instance, perhaps the current version of the software uses ASP, but the new version will be written with ASP.NET and gain all the benefits there. You can't simply take the code of the old version and update it as it wouldn't work on the new hardware. So instead you start with code line zero.

It sucks. But it's the nature of the beast.