khoji parkApps · Canada · 2012–2014
The Game Failed. The Team Chat Stayed.
The internal tool was solving a problem outside the game.
Read in slides1. Building a game
Tiny Speck developed the online game Glitch. Its team needed ways to coordinate work, share information and keep conversations accessible. The team had built communication tools to support another project. A useful internal system could survive even when the original product did not.
The internal tool was solving a problem outside the game.
2. A tool survives its original purpose
The communication system had first been useful to people working together on another product. That gave the team evidence of a practical need before it had a separate business to sell. When the game failed, the tool remained a piece of working technology whose value could be reconsidered outside the project that had paid for it.
The failed project had left something useful switched on.
3. The project ends
Glitch did not sustain the business its creators wanted. The team nevertheless had a communication system that remained useful after the game’s future faded. Closing a game created a difficult business decision. It also made the value of the team's existing tools easier to examine separately.
The failed product had left another product in its workshop.
4. A new focus
The founders redirected effort toward the messaging tool. Organised channels offered a way for workplace conversations and information to remain connected. A tool designed for colleagues needed changes for external customers. Internal usefulness was evidence of potential rather than a finished public product.
The next customer would be a team rather than a player.
5. The launch
Slack launched publicly as a workplace service in 2014 after earlier testing. Its development grew from practical communication needs inside the original company. The new service addressed a practical coordination problem for teams. Its success depended on adoption beyond the people who originally built it.
The supporting tool had become the main attraction.
6. Turn colleagues into a different audience
An internal tool works among people familiar with its assumptions and habits. Selling it to other organizations required making that usefulness understandable beyond the original team. The pivot therefore involved a new product and a new audience, not simply changing the name on an unchanged piece of failed game software.
The next users had not attended the old meetings.
7. The pivot
Slack’s own retrospective traces its origins to the gaming project. The outcome demonstrates a particular business pivot, rather than a promise that every failed project hides a success. The pivot reused work without pretending the failed project had succeeded. A business can change direction while retaining lessons and useful technology.
The useful thing survived after the original plan did not.