Secrecy vs. Openness

This subject continues to pursue me as I work closely with my customers and continue to rely on the use of social media. I raised this subject more than a year ago in one of my blog posts Product Launch (1 of 3): Secrecy vs. Openness. Back then this was more of an open question than conviction.

A few weeks ago I was sitting on the Social Media panel at my company's annual event when I faced the following question:

• "Would Steve Jobs be as open and transparent with his customers as we sometimes aspire to be?"

My response was:

• Steve was genius and a great visionary, but he operated in a different space compared to our company. He built products for consumer space and took huge risks in developing his solutions in secrecy. Our company is engaged in developing solutions for much more complex problems in B2B markets, and I would not follow Steve Jobs' approach. I believe in openness, both because multiple minds are just more capable than few, and because it helps establish and nurture much needed trust between the vendor and the customers. A trust that goes way beyond brand loyalty in enterprise software market where these relationships are more like partnerships that extend over many years.

Eating your own dog food or the Platform Culture

I recently came across this Platforms Rant blog by Steve Yegge - quite provocative write-up, and if you are just beginning to look into this perhaps eye-opening, I have to admit.

So how do you introduce a culture of platform development and consumption to established software development organization that has not in the past been able to accomplish this?

Here are some of the important in my mind questions that need to be answered in order to move ahead with this.

1. Customers don't buy the platform, they buy solutions to their problems. How long will corporate investors be willing to pay for this non-direct-revenue producing function in future? Will the platform funding evaporate once the grey clouds show up on the horizon? Will the next organizational leader be as enthusiastic about growing and leveraging the platform?

2. How well can the users of this platform expect to be supported within their stringent project constraints? In other words, as a Product Owner or Scrum Master, will I get better treatment by an outside vendor in terms of defect resolution and enhancement requests handling?

3. Will the platform ultimately stifle innovation benefiting our customers? How competitive can this shared platform end up in the long run? As a Product Manager planning my next release, will I be left with inferior options if confined to the use of my company's platform, particularly when more attractive options exist in the open market?

4. How will the potential future acquisition of new solutions and technologies by my company be handled with respect to platform conformance? Will the newly acquired products be exempted from platform conformance for example? Perhaps with adoption of platform my company can rely more on organic development, less on exciting, but disjoint with the rest of my product portfolio, technologies brought in from outside.

What kind of time do you need?

Have you ever ached for uninterrupted window of time to be able to complete an article or a business plan for example? How about asking your management for 10% free time to work on some innovative idea? Did you notice how it may be easier to get hold of some people at certain times of the day?

A few months ago I came across a neat way to describe the differences in how we spend our days at work.

Depending on situation we tend to allocate our available time in one of the following two modes. We either work in short bursts, frequently switching context, issuing orders or instructions, offering guidance or advice, taking in information flowing from multiple sources, and in general participating in multiple communication threads over short periods of times. Or, we take substantial periods of time to work on something without interruption.

Paul Graham in his 2009 blog refers to these two time allocation schemes as Managers' and Makers' Schedule.

For example, if you want to get some undivided attention from a scientist, try to schedule some time with him or her around lunch, just before or right after that. In their pursuit away from all the meetings, conference calls and other interruptions, they often like to get in early or stay late in the day. Around lunch time however, people working on tasks requiring undivided attention are more likely to be accessible without feeling interrupted.

Coming to terms with this concept is equally as important for harnessing our own single most precious resource - time, as it is for appreciating what this means for others around us and becoming more effective in engaging them.