Engineering, beta testing and the never-ending war with the marketing department - SDTimes.com (blog)

Amidst everything that's happened with the iOS 6 Maps application fiasco, the fact that Apple has now issued an additional apology for the situation at hand and everything in between, something needs to be explored: the relationship between the engineering and marketing departments.

Whatever happened deep within the depths of Apple during the Maps app's development will probably remain secret for a long time to come thanks to the company's legendary secrecy (as well as its explicit non-disclosure agreements), but I think it's hard to argue that something went off the rails between the application that was promised and what was actually delivered. Between arguments with Google, Apple going in its own direction where a map-based application was concerned, a canceled contract with Google and loads of hype around what the new iOS 6 Maps application could actually deliver, the end result was a set of expectations that's been almost unmatched since 1999 and the first of the "Star Wars" prequels.

From a purely speculative viewpoint, the break seems to come down between marketing and engineering. At some point, the cool bells and whistles heralded in the Maps app were shown to a marketing team which decided to make this a centerpiece of the iOS 6 ad campaign. And, in screenshot form, the Maps app did look like it could offer something incredible. 3D Flyover features don't spring up on a daily basis and if your upcoming iOS app was to be the first of its kind and possibly feature way-cool Siri integration, how could a marketing team not want to be part of this?

The difference came in the execution.

If there was a conflict between Apple's engineers and its marketing teams at Apple, it's not indicative of anything new, but more indicative of a balance that needs to be struck between these two sides of the company. Looking back to two fairly infamous examples, IBM promised the world with OS/2 and Microsoft promised it could make just about anyone into a computer user with Microsoft Bob, both scenarios leading to fairly chaotic results. Here, massive marketing campaigns were developed, tested and launched in arenas where further beta testing wouldn't have hurt and the companies themselves stated that the end products would change the world. 

Not an easy thing to deliver upon, especially if your product radically departs from something your users are accustomed to in just about every aspect of their daily computing lives. 

Granted, hindsight is 20/20 and Apple has had glitches as well as failed products and services even under the Jobs tenure (the MobileMe launch, the discontinued Ping music service and the iPod Hi-Fi speaker coming to mind), but one of Jobs' talents seemed to be reigning in the marketing department when the need arose. Since the iOS 6 Maps app story began, a number of publications have wondered aloud as to whether this mistake would or could have occurred if Steve Jobs was still alive. While no one can readily answer this question, Jobs was able to know when not to make an unfinished product the centerpiece of a major launch. While Ping failed, Jobs addressed it more as a side feature to iTunes at the time and when some critics didn't seem to think the first-gen Apple TV was robust enough to compete in the big leagues, Jobs stated that the product was more of a "hobby" the company was working on rather than openly bet the farm on this product.

So how do you resolve your own company's war between the engineering and marketing departments, especially since both sides like to have something shiny and cool to show others at the end of the day? No one's really figured this out, but if you can reach a truce, then you'll be in that much better a position when the product actually launches. If marketing can walk in engineering's shoes for a bit and vice versa, then marketing can actually believe engineering when it says it needs three more months to sort some bugs out, especially if a weird new protocol or feature is being ironed out and engineering can understand what marketing has to deliver to make it look like something really cool is in the works.

It's Atticus Finch quote time here and if neither party learns to walk a mile in the other's shoes, then engineering and marketing, two departments with completely foreign job skills to each other will find their relationship with each other that much harder down the line.

So, marketing, engineering, it's time to sit, listen, talk to each other and where others see almost outright disaster with the iOS 6 Maps application mess, you might be able to find land mines that can be avoided in the future. 

Besides, this is why they created happy hour in the first place.