Conference 7.286::digital

    You'll have to define cancelled. There's a lot of words like "unfunded"
    around. Do they mean cancelled? Only the spin doctors may know.

    
    It seems that new terms are cropping up all over.  Traditionally
    when engineering no longer intended to continue active development
    on an existing product one of two things was done with it:
    
    	1) maintenance mode - This meant that the product would stay
    	    alive and be available for sale but that no new features
    	    would be added.  Any engineering work was restricted to
    	    fixing some few number of serious bugs, ensuring that it
    	    continued to be compatible with future releases of the
    	    operating system, etc.  Sometimes it would be maintained
    	    by engineering and sometimes by a software services
    	    engineering group.  It was all pretty much case by case.
    
    	2)  retired - The product would go into phase 5 and plans
    	    developed and implemented for fully retiring it from service.
    
    It seems this term 'unfunded' describes something just a bit different.
    It seems to mean only that Digital software engineering will not be
    funding and/or doing further development on the product but that that
    work will be accomplished by some other means.
    
    fwiw,
    Steve
    

    This isn't official, but the fact the Microsft windows Notes file has
    quite a few resume's of developers from DecWrite for MSW would seem to
    indicate something....
    
    	Yaacov

	What's the difference between

	(1) A product that Engineering spends $5 million/year on, but
	    nobody in Sales ever bothers to sell,

	    and

	(2) A product that Engineering spends nothing on, and nobody in
	    Sales ever bothers to sell?

	Answer:

	Not a lot.

	Now if we could take a small fraction of the money that
	Engineering is cutting, and apply it to hiring, training,
	equipping and mobilising skilled people in the field to
	sell the remaining products, that would make sense!

	Personally, it has always seemed to me that it would be more
	rational to ask Sales to sing from the same hymn book as
	Engineering, Marketing, and top management, but nobody else
	has ever espoused such a radical opinion.

	/Tom

  Re .2 (Steve)

> [Unfunded] seems to mean only that Digital software engineering will not be
> funding and/or doing further development on the product but that that
> work will be accomplished by some other means.
 
  Somewhat reminiscent of the box on the flow diagram which states
  "And Here A Miracle Happens".

  Re .4 (Tom)

> Now if we could take a small fraction of the money that
> Engineering is cutting, and apply it to hiring, training,
> equipping and mobilising skilled people in the field to
> sell the remaining products ...

  ... or even *use* some of these skilled people to sell their own product ?
  [ Effectively making a mini-sabbatical from developing the product to going
  out to generate/encourage/broaden the market for the next version .. if you
  don't succeed, you don't come back ? ]  Given that many of the people going
  out the door know their product inside out and that many [NOT all] of the
  sales people simply don't [can't] know it to the same depth, does it really
  make sense that we don't even try to kill two birds with one stone ?

  Frank

re: .5, Frank

>  ... or even *use* some of these skilled people to sell their own product ?
>  [ Effectively making a mini-sabbatical from developing the product to going
>  out to generate/encourage/broaden the market for the next version .. if you
>  don't succeed, you don't come back ? ]

You're not seriously proposing such a notion, are you? Say you're not . . . 

Asking engineers to gain exposure to the field/customers is one thing, and
not unreasonable. But forcing them into a sales role on a sink or swim basis
appears pretty ludicrous to me (unless the unspoken plan is to provide a
path out the door.) Even sales will tell you they're the only ones capable
of doing it.

-Jack

re Note 2230.5 by KERNEL::BELL:

>   Re .2 (Steve)
> 
> > [Unfunded] seems to mean only that Digital software engineering will not be
> > funding and/or doing further development on the product but that that
> > work will be accomplished by some other means.
>  
>   Somewhat reminiscent of the box on the flow diagram which states
>   "And Here A Miracle Happens".

    I suppose that the correct term for these products is that they are
    being TFSO'd:  Terminated Funding, Support Okay
    
    Steve

Re a couple back.

Spare the flames. I am not in sales but I am in the field. This is also not an
attack on engineering.  We build excellent products; unfortunately too many are
not competitive.

No amount of sales training is going to increase the sales of products that
customers do not want or do not find competitive.  Witness our PC strategy. It
took 9 years to figure out how to sell PCs.  You need to be competitive on 
functionality or price.  These days, the latter is more important.

When we start building products that customers (read other than the installed
base) actually want we can switch the sales channels from a push model (read
shove it down a customer's throat) to a pull strategy (read everybody wants one)

At least our new president has figured this out. When we start listening to 
customers (really listening) and begin building things they actually 
need, want, and can use, and at the same time provide more features at a better
price than our competition we'll sell all we can make.  Gee, this must be why 
I can't get a notebook PC?

Yesterday's technology today won't cut it anymore just because it says Digital 
on the box.  The big three automakers found this out, HP and IBM 
(to some extent) found this out.  When we do, we'll be on the road to recovery.

The money saved on cancelled products would be better spent on competitive
analysis and buying a new (read from the outside) marketeer.

    re: .4
    
    I think your note unfairly puts all the burden for our problems on
    sales.  There are problems all around and I can make a good case
    for where engineering went wrong or any other group in the company.
    
    How about the millions we spent developing products that engineering
    thought customers would want to buy, but they weren't paying any
    attention to what customers were saying/buying/asking for?
    
    The sales organization is absolutely in need of pruning, training
    and getting more focused.  The engineering organization is in
    need of making customer inputs a part of the decision about what
    products to develop and what features those products have.  Just
    because a product seems like a great idea to a Digital software
    engineer doesn't mean that an MIS director (or scientist or insert
    your favorite customer) wants to buy it.  When sales people call
    engineering to talk about some of these things they are routinely
    ignored as being an impediment to engineering schedules.  We need
    to find a way to get these inputs into the process in an efficient
    way, so engineering can design products that customers will buy
    and so engineering can excell in time-to-market demands.
    
    Any constructive ideas on how to do this would probably be
    welcomed by all of our managers.
    
    Elaine

Funny,

I am currently taking a Master's Level Software Design course.  I consult with 
our client's on Software Engineering Issues, so I figured I'ld study up :-)...

Anyway, they made an interesting point:

Joe Computer Science CANNOT specify application software.

It must be accomplished in conjunction with domain expertise.  In other words,
if you want to build applications for the banking industry, then you better
get some bankers on staff if you want to really understand the problem.

I don't know if I agree with this in it's extreme, but I suspect that there is
a large grain of truth in it.  I wonder how our own organizations stack up
to this test?

(just thinking aloud...)

/mike

    re .11
    
    I have often recommended to clients who wanted to start an mis
    department (whatever their mistaken reasons) to begin with people who
    are excellent in the disciplines they want to automate and send those
    people out to learn programming.  Its easier to teach programming to an
    accountant (say) than accounting to a programmer.   Among the reasons I
    find compelling are that the accountant will still have the respect of
    his peers in accounting, even after he learns programming.  That
    respect can never be earned by the programmer who studies accounting. 
    Its amazing how much one's *image* counts in getting things done!
    
    Dick

Re: .10

>    The sales organization is absolutely in need of pruning, training
>    and getting more focused.

I'm not even sure if pruning's the case. Cost of Sales is the issue, not sales
per se. There's an awful lot of "overhead tax" in the system that I suspect
is the real problem. It's a continuous delight to work with the highest quality
DEC salespeople that I deal with week-to-week at the sharp end.

One of the fundamental issue is the "twist" that maps the products we bring to
market vs the way they are deployed and used in customers. There always
seems to be a big disconnect between the two... and insufficient staff work
to make need/functionality/packaging decisions based on data rather than gut 
feel.
								- Ian W.

    
    Please post cancelled products here. 
    
    There are no shortage of rumors, so please only facts.
    I've heard half a dozen such rumors, but I'd prefer hearing
    from the people directly involved.
    
    The rumors make the sales force reluctant to sell the products
    because a credit might have to be issued when the customer finds
    out.
    
    Also, postings might stir support for products which are in danger
    but should not be.

    Perhaps those folks working on products rumoredto be cancelled were
    also instructed not to say anything outside of their organization until
    an "official" decree is distributed.
    
    -- dg

    
    Re: .14
    
    > Please post cancelled products here.
    
    To be candid, I wouldn't be very hopeful that anyone in the know
    is going to do what you ask.  There have been several memos from
    software management about the trouble we often end up with from
    spreading information unofficially.
    
    fwiw,
    Steve
    

    may be you can get a list of the product managers and send them a 
    mail message asking for the status of the product they own?

    iam sure they must be a list of names of product manager showing which
    manager owns which product, that is one way one can start.

    /nasser

    	 Well it's too bad we haven't found a viable market for rat holes 
    	consisting of argumentative, unsubstantiated  and/or occasionally
    	pointless opinions because that's one product DEC has NO shortage
    	of. 
    
    	 The base noter suggested that useful, legitimate and at least
    	marginally official information be posted here. Thus far, I count 
    	only ONE response out of 17 that even comes close to those specs.
    
    	 I guess we're all gonna stand around fighting over the hose while
    	the town burns down. It's no wonder DEC can't hold market share...
    
    	Flame off...
    
    	Glenn

I just read a note in another conference urging people *not* to post 
information about cancelled projects.  The rationale was that such information
could possibly prove damaging to Digital if it were to get passed outside the
corporation in the wrong context. 
 
So people might want to think twice about what gets posted in this note...

-  David

    
    If morale could be considered as a product of a corporation's
    initiatives toward it's employee population, then the demise of 
    morale should come as a surprise to no one.
    

    If a product is cancelled in the woods meeting and there's no one to
    hear it being cancelled, is it really cancelled?
    
    "The wrong context" isn't damaging Digital.
    
    The failure of Digital's top management to react to sweeping changes in
    the our own customers are using computing technology, that's what's
    damaging Digital.
    
    I fell a bit like James Carville today and I want to hang up a giant
    sign reading "THE CUSTOMER COMES FIRST, STUPID".

As I pointed out in .3, resumes can point the finger
(implicitly, and sometimes explicitly) at projects that are about
to be canceled.

For example, going thru the OASS::JOBS notesfile, you will 
see that the VUIT project lost it's funding, various 
client/server documentation projects are being closed down,
, LAN Network file server program, etc.

Just read them...

	Yaacov

	re .18:

>         Well it's too bad we haven't found a viable market for rat holes 
>        consisting of argumentative, unsubstantiated  and/or occasionally
>        pointless opinions because that's one product DEC has NO shortage
>        of. 

	Touch�.

	Regarding the reactions to my earlier reply (in which I pointed
	out an imbalance between Sales and Engineering directions), let
	me just point out that I did not intend to blame Sales for
	anything. I merely said that it was mistaken to spend a lot of
	money on products that would not get sold. I further said that
	once the decision had been made to invest in a product, it
	seemed more rational to modify Sales' strategy, if necessary,
	to include it, than to cancel it and throw away the investment
	because Sales doesn't choose to sell it (and not necessarily
	because customers don't want it).

	Sorry for contributing to the noise level. I guess it's hard to
	leave a topic like this alone until legitimate information appears.

	/Tom

    This topic has been widely discussed in the DECwrite notesfile on
    SARAH::DECWRITE. Refer to note 3798. Note 3798.65 is a lengthy
    statement from Software Engineering that covers most software product
    categories. The general drift seems to be that nothing definite has yet
    been decided, but that major changes are afoot. There is also a statement
    from DECwrite product management in 3798.66 for those of you who are
    interested in that particular SW.
    
    This is the closest I have seen to an official statement. More
    statements are due this coming Friday 27/11/92.
    
    Salut,
    Edward

>    This is the closest I have seen to an official statement. More
>    statements are due this coming Friday 27/11/92.

Friday's a holiday in the U.S., so I'd expect no announcements then.