I read an interesting article this morning. In short, it says Google has trouble retaining its talented employees because it cannot GTD. The article points at Rasmussen leaving over Wave's termination, among others.

GTD (getting things done) was not the issue. GTD refers to something else, which is not a problem at Google. They managed to deliver the software. Ship it, if you will. They got the thing done. The problem was that the darn thing did not catch on. And the culprit? Why did Google Wave die?

Google either did not understand their users, or perspective users, and gave them something that they did not need or like to use OR Google ignored some of the user requirements. I'm thinking Google, who knows more about you than your English teacher failed to consider Google Wave's critical mass as important - I mean the number of people using the service in order to make it worth-while. Because Google Wave does seem like a fun product, and I remember the hype in the beginning, when everyone was struggling for an invitation.

I remember when I got my account, I was so happy! I logged in, smiled at the nice interface and asked myself: Now what? The place was just empty. I had nobody to start a wave with. I could not tell clients to wave together, because they more than surely did not have an account. Plus, it did not run right in Opera, but I was willing to use Chrome just to get a taste of that masterpiece of programming and UX.

So the real problem with Google Wave was not understanding the user base or not acting on that knowledge. I know I would leave a company like that one myself, and I cannot blame Rasmussen - whom I greatly admire as a developer.

Google's problem is not Getting Things Done, that's working great, actually. It's making them stick, surprisingly.

Edit: the article's link failed to get auto-parsed, so I replaced it with a shortened one.