Ever since SAS has released their new web page design for Denmark, Sweden and Norway, it has received amazing amount of hate. And I say hate, because there is literally no other word that could explain what SAS customers experience trying to use updated version.
FlyerTalk has 70 unhappy comments users, but that is in English. Swedish forum BusinessClass.se soon will reach 500 comments, and oh boy, they are definitely not positive.
What happened briefly:
- SAS decided to update their webpage to something more modern, useful, up to date and iPhone looking
- SAS hired some Indian development company to do it
- SAS tested beta version for almost a year in 2016
- SAS released new version to Denmark, Sweden and Norway early 2017
- All SAS customers started to get endless headaches, as new web page is just not making sense and does not work in 80% of the cases
- SAS started to roll the new version back, out, back and out again between 3 major markets
- SAS customers anger and hate turned simply into laughter and ignorance of new website (you still can use www.flysas.com with old version)
Rumours are saying that SAS management was completely ignorant about the quality of new site and was ignoring endless complaints from everyone who tried to book a flight or access EuroBonus account with new design.
Instead of firing whoever was in charge of this project, claiming money back from Indian developers and rolling back old version, which did not look fancy, but was at least working, SAS decided to open a Development Blog…
SAS Development Blog – where we share our releases and milestones
What the hell have you been doing for the past years, while website was in beta?
Who took a decision to release something barely working towards end users?
My main question, why the hell I shall care as SAS customer what are the milestones and releases? I simply want a web page that works! Where I can book a ticket, see my status, make a change, book a reward, find my reservation and select a seat/meal.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about your milestones, and to be honest, your milestones should have been all met right before you released that idiotic design and functionality, not 3 months after.
Here comes the worst part:
In the past six months, we’ve collected feedback from our Beta site, conducted user testing and made data-driven changes accordingly. Right now, we are in a state where we can call the site to be a minimum viable product (“MVP”).
In agile software development an MVP has just enough core features to deploy it. In other words, it has very basic functionality. Releasing an MVP accelerates learning and maximizes time spent on relevant development with the right focus. It differs from the conventional strategy of investing time and money to implement whole product before verifying whether customers want the product or not.
This quite popular image below represents the agile way a limited yet functional product is evolving. Thank you Henrik Kniberg for allowing us to share this great illustration with our travelers.
And here is a picture they attached in the blog
Well, let me tell you something. Elon Musk has not released skate on batteries, bike with self navigation and eco-friendly scooter. He released Tesla car, which he aimed for from the very beginning.
It is a pathetic excuse to justify extremely poor development of new SAS web site.
Leave your comments what you think about new page and development blog 🙂
