[Info-vax] "Evaluating customer requirements" - Il bacio dell morte

[Richard Maher]

Hi Neil,

"Neil Rieck" <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:cee700b5-7684-4523-bc8d-543c61fbbbec at w30g2000yqw.googlegroups.com...
> Update:
>
> I just received a note from the "Office of OpenVMS Programs" at HP.
> They will be adding "AXIS2/c" to the next OpenVMS customer survey.
>

- "On the next survey"?
- "Evaluating customer requirements"?
- "Awaiting customer feedback"?

God help us!

Have you not worked out their modus operandi by now?

Oh well, maybe my parables, analogies, and metaphors just ain't cutting it.

Let me try to come up with a hypathetical example product called gSPOT and
imagine that there's a group within VMS, ostensibly with nothing else to do,
that needs to stave off redundancy. Bolshevik European labour laws can't be
relied upon forever and, with even the really productive core-VMS
engineering teams being given the chop, all these under-employed
roaming-consultants with their "be brilliant" briefs were starting to show
up on the radar. Where can they find a budget to latch on to?

Enter gSPOT. (Extending the Fagan freeware-franchise umbrella to those
stupid enough to paint your fence for free will come much later.)

So, your mate who's worked at countless VMS sites in 4 countries and half a
dozen industries over 20 years has made a very convincing case against the
alternative (Soap Hubris Integration Toolkit), and you've got all the VMS
license-payer funded "personal development" time in the world to play around
with such things, so what are you waiting for? Let's face it, with this
freeware lark you don't have to be smart enough to come up with an original
idea on your own and you don't even have to be a half-competent coder, so it
should be right up your alley!

Lesson 1: - "How to get a product approved"

1) Start about 7 years ago to allow enough time for your floundering
2) Use all the HP resources and equipment you like
3) Don't put it on your time-sheet (even if there's very little else)
4) Once you've got a first cut, start going through the confidential HP/VMS
customer lists
5) Cold-call as many as you can (harang and harass where necessary)
6) Tell everyone else your doing it in your "spare" time but play on your HP
credentials when dealing with customers. (Always use you HP email address
with them and throw in some HP Copyright messages and branding in the docs
for good measure)
7) Offer all sorts of free HP incentives and even suggest HP writes the POC
for them
8) Hit up your mates for additional contacts such as Barclays Merchantile
9) Now collect anyone stupid enough to take up your offer and parade them
before HP Middle Management as a spontaneous, populist, and avant garde
uptake of an industry trend
10) Make sure to avoid and/or deny the obvious conclusion that gSPOT makes
the Soap Hubris Integration Toolkit redundant, and that they are in reality
competing technologies. (Tell all the filth from Bridgeworks and WSIT that
their jobs are safe if they throw in with you.)
11) Make sure to ask a lot of customers about gSPOT at the next bootcamp.
(Don't write down anything they say, you'll fill that in later)
12) Point out to HP management that they could take on official support for
gSPOT with no additional expense. (It's not like your doing fuck all else is
it?)
13) Bingo - your home!

Lesson 2 - "How to see off competing products and other drains on the
coffers"

1) Delay, delay, delay!!!
2) Tell them you're awaiting customer feedback
3) Tell them you're evaluating industry trends
4) Carry out a survey
5) Form a comittee
6) Delay, delay, delay!!!
7) Whenever someone asks for industry-standards, send the boys round and
convince them that gSPOT can do everything they need
8) Make sure the officially HP-supported  alternative only gets half a slide
a bootcamp while gSPOT is bigger than Ben Hur
9) Discredit anyone who doesn't worship at the gSPOT alter (pay lip-service
to the S.H.I.T alternative)
10) Postpone any decisions
11) Delay, delay, delay
12) Spin those stinking pig customers the line about finite resources and ho
w your ski chalets and boats are far more important than their piddly little
requirements. Tell'em to go to Linux if they want industry-standards, the
ungrateful twats!
13) If all else fails, play your ace. Remind HP management that this is
about the sixth piece o' shit middleware product in a row that you got
customers to commit their development budgets to, how there are not that
many customers left to lose, and there's no turning back.

* Just copy what was done with IPsec! It was supposed to ship with 7.3 for
fuck sake :-(

Alles klar?

>
> Neil Rieck

Cheers Richard Maher

They're in the mon-ey! They're in the mon-ey! They gotta lotta what it takes
to get along!