It went something like this:
“We are now ‘agile’
Ok what are all the cool agile dev ops companies using?
Aha Jira&Slack. Ok let’s use that”
From there it gets even more crazy. The tools get included as a standard question for evaluating vendors on RFP’s. Vendors that use a similar toolset are rated more highly.
When you question why. The response is along the lines of:
“Oh if they are using Jira/slack/other tool, it must be an agile/dev ops/chat ops shop”
Put another way sometimes these tools end up being used as a “signal” to others rather than intrinsic value. The value is in the signalling, driven by social proof.
If one can pull this of when marketing your product you have a win. Effectively you have associated a movement (I.e agile) with your product (I.e Jira). So the buy decision is driven by the need to show they are doing {x}.
There must be some basis Of this and reading on how this is done? The broad topic would be marketing but what specifically?
Notes:
* This is merely an observation. I am not judging the accuracy of the statement that using a specific product = demonstrating some property.
These associations may not be applicable in all markets and I have seen them change over time.
cargo cult driven marketing
We had a good system for creating and looking for documentation in our wiki system, so I hope that was not a selling point for Slack. Unfortunately we (Tech) never really knew why we switched.
EDIT: Also, on the performance side, we were there for the beginning of both systems, and both had their good amount of issues initially. By the time we switched, I don't remember that many HipChat outages. I remember a lot of Slack outages starting up as well, and these days I have issues with Web interface connectivity at least once a week (native works).