Marketing demanded IT add website feature that was already working

A retailer’s marketing team proposed adding Apple Pay to the company website to boost sales. Management approved the idea and assigned the work to a website manager’s desk, even though Apple Pay already appeared as a payment option on the site. The worker confirmed Apple Pay was active by checking the site and recalling the earlier enablement project, and by getting confirmation from IT and finance. The next step was to ask why the marketing manager could not see Apple Pay. She showed an Android phone, revealing that the site detected device type and only displayed Apple Pay for Apple devices, so non-Apple users never saw the option.

"Management approved the idea, which duly landed on Hamish's desk - and confused him enormously because the website already offered Apple Pay. Hamish had two pieces of evidence to prove this fact. One was that when he visited the website, he could see an option to pay with Apple Pay. The other was that he worked for the company during the initial push to enable Apple Pay and remembered the project well."

"Hamish nonetheless went along with the request by chatting with colleagues in IT and the company's finance team, who confirmed that Apple Pay was indeed up and running, and even sending money into the company's coffers. That ruled out the possibility that the site was buggy in some way Hamish had missed, and meant the next step was to ask the website manager why she didn't think Apple Pay was already available."

"Hamish said the marketer told him she couldn't see Apple Pay as an option when she visited the site. To prove it, she whipped out her Android phone. "It turns out that everyone who thought this was a brilliant new idea and who had bothered to look at the website had done so without using an Apple device," Hamish told On Call."

"The company's site was therefore not only Apple Pay-enabled, but also capable of detecting users' devices and dynamically presenting re"

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