One of the biggest challenges to any new, innovative product development team is which user group to target for your first product versions.  Since early users can make your product or break it, so this is no trivial decision.  There are generally two schools of thought on this subject.  One is to target a less demanding user group in hopes of learning slowly and iterating before they thrash your product to death.  The other theory is to put your product in front of the most demanding user group first, take your lumps, and if the product can hold its own, all the other user groups can be mopped up quickly.

I wish I could take credit for being a part of that decision here at Shiftboard, but I can’t.  It happened a number of years before I was even associated with the company.  The product was initially built for healthcare staffing in 2002-2004, but that product team decided the core scheduling application could be simplified to address many more markets in a simpler, more streamlined way with a very intuitive product.

Stripping a product down to its essence

So it was that in mid 2004 and early 2005 they descended on the product like Richard Petty’s pit crew – Snap On tools, pneumatic drills, the works.  The chassis was lowered, suspension tightened, a new engine tied in that made the old one look like a flywheel with a mouse.  Everything was designed around ease and speed of online scheduling.  Anything that interfered with the design principle, a protrusion or sharp angle – anything that added wind resistance, was stripped away quicker than corrosion on an F-18’s wing.  When the overhaul was completed in spring 2005, there sat a machine idling on the track with a singular purpose.  Why on earth was so thorough of an overhaul required?  To keep up, of course, but with whom?

When I first came to Shiftboard to take the sales team to the next level, I reviewed the customer list.  At first I overlooked all the non-profits, until the sheer numbers starting grabbing my attention.  There must have been 20 film festivals alone at the time, not including music concerts and other events.  “What’s with all these festivals and events?”   The response I received was quite simple – a number of the referrals we received were from the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), the largest film festival in the country by some measures.  “When did SIFF come aboard?”  I should have guessed the answer but was still surprised . . . spring 2005.  As a novice to online scheduling, I was asking myself why the volunteer scheduling market was chosen as the proving ground.

Raw speed

How many of y’all saw Carl Lewis run in his prime?  The man seemed to float down the track during those 100s and 200s he ran.  Ever looked closely at a volunteer?  They come in all shapes and sizes of course.  It’s hard to pick them out of a crowd.  Some are wearing t-shirts and sporting 3 days of beard growth, others skirts and heels.

But if you look closely at the bag they carry or what protrudes from their collective backpacks, you might catch a glimpse of trail running shoes, a dry-fit garment, or sprinter’s cleats.  You see, one thing ties together all volunteers: they offer up their own time to their cause, rather than someone paying them to give it.  That one little attribute puts volunteers in a class with Carl in terms of software usage.  They can’t be bought by an employer.  If they are confused or frustrated for even a minute, they run like the wind.  Because no one, no organization, can make them stay.

Back in the spring of 2005, the most demanding use case around was Seattle International Film Festival’s volunteer scheduling.  Those folks came once per year, wanted to confirm their shifts quickly, volunteer their time, and be done.  No training could be required.  If Shiftboard couldn’t be figured out immediately, they were gone.  Second chances don’t happen often in life, even less with a new user in software-as-a-service.  Luckily for me, and more importantly for our customers, that stripped down machine built in 2005 was sleek enough to chase down even the fastest and most demanding volunteers users. SIFF has been a customer for 5 years now.  This past year there were more than 4,500 event scheduling shifts confirmed by nearly a thousand volunteers during the 3 week festival.

Bona fides in volunteer scheduling software

Among many other segments, we count volunteer scheduling as a core competency.  We like working with non-profits, and it is a part of our mission to do so.  We have humane societies, hospitals, mentoring groups, convention & visitors bureaus, churches, private schools, volunteer groups staffing concessions at pro sporting events, you name it.  Thanks to the good folks at Tampa Theatre, our system was talked up as great volunteer scheduling software last week at a meting of the League of Historic American Theatres.  Today there are tens of thousands of volunteers who are registered Shiftboard users in North America.  I have come to learn that it’s not luck, but rather a lot of product development focus.

It all comes back to one thing.  The key players here early on, and especially the founder Bryan, decided that ease-of-use had to trump all other requirements.  And to test out the product design, the most demanding user group around was put in front of their favorite browser without any training, just to be very sure they could pick up shifts and print their schedules.  Those users made cheetahs look slow in terms of how quickly they were on to the next website or text message if their user experience was frustrating or complex.  They are still the ultimate test today.  Online scheduling, simplified.

– Rob E

I like BNET.com for their business articles and the range of deeper issues they cover surrounding biz and tech.

Stefan Deering writes at the BNET Intercom blog about a comment made by Seth Godin, famous marketing guru (who I also follow and enjoy).  But Godin made some comment about how nonprofits are blowing it and don’t get social media. Godin couldn’t be more wrong.

We have a fair number of nonprofits, event management types, who are all over the Twitter-sphere and Blogosphere and Facebook-sphere (okay, that last one is a goofy stretch word-wise).  Point is, they do get it. They are leveraging the tools as well or better than some of the, scratch that, than many of the corporate and media types I know.

I’m voting with Stefan. Seth Godin Is Wrong about Nonprofits and the Web

-TJ M

We have made some changes and updates to the Shiftboard news page.  This is the first page any user sees when they login.  It’s similar to a reader board in that it quickly grabs the viewer’s attention.  All managers, coordinators and end users land on this page first.   The news page is completely customizable by managers.  You can include links to the Internet and insert documents like a PDF waiver or training packet.  The news page holds all necessary info and can be designed to be bright and colorful or plain and simple. Updating the page is a cinch and all edits are available to users in real-time.

Volunteer scheduling managers use the news page to thank members for their efforts and highlight shifts they are desperate to fill.  Nurse scheduling managers post reminders about proof of immunization requirements and CPR re-certification classes.  Lately, healthcare staffing managers have been using the news page to post current reports about swine flu.  Amongst all market segments it seems there is always something new to message.  Our news page offers a user-friendly approach that is easy to update 24/7.

For Shiftboard users, checking the news page quickly becomes routine, just as routine as a morning cup of coffee.

Being a Seattle company and a long-time (and raving) fan of the Seattle International Film Festival, we can’t help but love what SIFF does in the community and online. We appreciate Zee Grega writing about us on her MetBlog post about volunteering at SIFF. Thank you Zee.

We follow SIFF at Twitter, of course.

Plus we also are members of their active Facebook Group with almost 1,200 members. It is always fun to connect up with friends you didn’t know were also involved or interested in the Seattle International Film Festival.

SIFF is savvy about their online time. They have a great website, naturally. They have Twitter going for them. Their Facebook setup has me intrigued though as they have both a Group and a Fan page. I think that’s smart. Some people will just want to identify with the brand and stand up as a fan. Others will want to engage in discussions at a different level, much like the volunteers at SIFF who use Shiftboard to manage their schedules online. Groups allow that interactivity.

Oh, and just to prove they are a fun-loving bunch, SIFF has a great Flickr page, too.

-TJ M

Not long ago, the New York Times included Shiftboard in an article. Columnist and blogger, David Strom, talked to Rob Eleveld about the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between online scheduling and calendaring.

Scheduling is a mission critical business application. Calendaring is simply a shared view of events or other items with date-oriented features. In web terms, online calendars tend to be virtual bulletin boards.

While many useful tools exist for basic calendaring, when staff interactivity is required, those tools quickly break down somewhere between 20-40 people, especially when business requirements, reporting, adjustments, and rules must be applied or managed. Strom interviewed one of our customers, the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has been using Shiftboard to coordinate Durham Wayfinders, a group of more than 350 volunteers who help with local events.

Of course, we were honored to be included in one of the nation’s finest papers and one of the best known in the world, but more so we appreciate that the journalist understood the finer points around online scheduling because that’s how we successfully help customers.

–TJ McCue