As I’ve been running Sumavi, my new company for the last 2 months I’ve been thinking a lot of what types of activities I can do to make it successful for the near term and the long run.\u00a0 One of the themes that has constantly come to my mind is the “Use what you sell” message.<\/p>\n
This is something I first thought of while working at IBM.\u00a0 I was developing a product called CSM.\u00a0 I thought it was pretty good, but none of the sales engineers liked it.\u00a0 They all used xCAT instead.\u00a0 Its not like they didn’t try it.\u00a0 Some did.\u00a0 They tried CSM and they went right back to xCAT.\u00a0 They would think:\u00a0 “Why pay for something I don’t like when I can get this software kit that I love for free?”<\/p>\n
In addition to this manufacturing started using xCAT to test all their clusters and then even the nascent On-Demand center standardized on xCAT as well.\u00a0 None used CSM.<\/p>\n
After going out into the field and working with customers I saw pretty clearly why CSM wasn’t meeting the needs of our customers.\u00a0 But at the same time, it was difficult to describe the frustration to my old development team.\u00a0 They would ask for bullet pointed lists of things that were wrong with it.\u00a0 I would stay up late at night trying to pinpoint all of my issues, but it just didn’t resonate.\u00a0 It could be my lack of communication skills or that I just couldn’t describe it.\u00a0 I found that some people got very defensive.<\/p>\n
In a matter of time CSM became end of life and the team was disbanded.\u00a0 Now some of those people are part of the xCAT development team.\u00a0 Its been great to continue to work with them.\u00a0 I’m now outside of the blue curtain, but I’m still an open source contributor to the xCAT project.<\/p>\n
I find myself thinking all the time if I’m drinking too much of my own Kool-Aid.<\/p>\n
I think the best thing that we could have done back then was send developers out to the customers that use it, or at the very least work with internal customers.\u00a0 Have a rotation where a developer needs to join support to at least get a first glimpse of how customers use the code.\u00a0 This is something that I think made xCAT successful.\u00a0 We would make changes or get feedback right away from our customers.\u00a0 I hope to do this with Sumavi.\u00a0 In fact, we’ll have our first beta customer in a week from tomorrow where we’ll get a chance to see what we’re made of.<\/p>\n
But you don’t even have to go that far.\u00a0 Consider for example Lotus Notes at IBM.\u00a0 They are doing a great job of using what they sell.\u00a0 However, they’re more ramming it down other people’s throats.\u00a0 Think of all the nick names I heard for it from IBM employees.\u00a0 IBM has a gold mine of enterprise users that are smart and know good software when they see it.\u00a0 All IBM needs to do is send an email to all the employees that reads:<\/p>\n
“We’re conducting a manditory brief survey.\u00a0 Click <yes> if you like Lotus Notes.\u00a0 Click <here> if you think its ok, and Click <here> if you really dislike it. You may also enter comments below if you like:”<\/p>\n
Simple.\u00a0 Then all the managers just have to make sure the employees fill it out.\u00a0 Its easy to do, IBM made me do it every year with my BCGs. (Only in this case, they need to make sure its anonymous)<\/p>\n
Then, depending on the results, you either give the Senior VP of Lotus Notes a raise, or you fire him.\u00a0 My guess is that they will probably end up firing them.\u00a0 The point is, you have all these internal ways and attitudes in your corporation and you need to look at the truth and stop kidding yourself or your project will be dead.<\/p>\n
My prediction is that if Notes doesn’t shape up, it won’t be around much longer.\u00a0 Nobody I have ever talked to about it likes it.\u00a0 I don’t think it would be too hard to make work either.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I would suggest:<\/p>\n
– Make it work natively on my iPhone.\u00a0 (Maybe this is just IBM’s implementation and it works fine everywhere else, don’t know)<\/p>\n
– Give me a non-java client, or let it integrate seemlessly with Apple Mail<\/p>\n
– Why on earth is there a program called “Zap-Notes” that will allow you to kill the notes processes without restarting your computer?\u00a0 This is embarresing.<\/p>\n
– Start limiting the function of it and focus on core things.\u00a0 Start innovating.\u00a0 Stop playing catch up.<\/p>\n
Anyway, hopefully others will have the same painful advice for me on the Sumavisor that we’re creating at Sumavi.\u00a0 But you know what we’re going to do?\u00a0 We’re not going to ignore it.\u00a0 We’re going to take it, and do our best to make at least 75% happy.\u00a0 (Why 75%?\u00a0 Because some people will never be happy, especially people in IT. (But we’re still going to try!))<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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