I just thought I would share a few personal thoughts on this note. First, I am the last person to say that we are perfect. There are always going to be cases where something is missed or where an error is made. We attempt to minimize those situations, but we will never be able to eliminate all possible errors. Yes, there are times when it is a bit embarrassing to have to admit that an error that was pretty obvious was made. When these errors show up, we work to correct them as aggressively as possible.
Second, in any product, or even feature of a product, there are always more things that you could have done. More capability. More bells and whistles. Better performance. More scale. .... If that was not true, no product would ever need a 2.0 release because everything would be perfect the first time. In this case, there is no product defect. The product works. You can overlay things. They overlay correctly. The steps to perform the overlay are correctly documented, and you can get the result you were looking for and that was designed for. The problem is that use cases mean that there is a lot of work to do and a lot of steps to do that work. And, it would be nice if there were fewer steps involved. So, accelerators to make it faster would be useful. There was a utility developed that could offer that acceleration. The product supports the addition of these kinds of additions between release cycles - a FEATURE of the product to allow extension without re-releasing the product. A developer took advantage of the feature to allow extension and produced a utility that offered the acceleration that was desired. This was done at the time the customers were having difficulty with the number of steps rather than waiting for a future release. At the same time, there is work under investigation to see whether the condition that required the operation to do many overlays could be completely avoided and become unnecessary to make the operation even easier and even less impactful in the future. There is a good idea of how to accomplish that enhancement and it is likely to make a future release to further simplify operation of the system. So, a short term assist immediately and work on a long term enhancement to further improve interaction. In summary, the product was not "unfinished" in this case. It was a fully finished set of capabilities and they did in fact work as documented and provided the capability desired. "Customer issues" were comments that it was harder than they would like and are there ways to make it easier. A reaction was to provide a utility that could be included within the product using features of the product designed to allow for those additions and for API interaction with the system so that improvement could be made for customers immediately. So, I would humbly disagree with your assessment about bragging. Personally, I tend not to brag about the capabilities (I may be proud of them and excited that they help customers but I tend not to brag about them - although I do tend to brag about the team and the overall job they do). But if I was to want to brag.... What happened in this case is worthy of bragging. A significant and very powerful feature was provided that will fundamentally alter how customization is done and how customers can preserve customization while ALSO getting updates to the same areas from BMC - something competing products have not been able to accomplish. The feature worked correctly even for cases where a change caused and required ripple effects. Because there were more steps involved than is desired, a quick response to automate the majority of the work needed was provided and using the designed capability of the infrastructure to allow for programmatic access and to allow for plugins to the development environment, that capability could be safely supplied to the customer within days. The customer issue also triggered an internal discussion about potential long term enhancements to minimize the complexity due to this operation and allow it to be much simpler and less impactful going forward. I call this worth bragging about. Every time, every day of the week. At the same time, I will note that there was NO bragging from the person who posted the utility. They simply offered the capability to help customers who would like to use it. It was offered to address issues that customers had described to help with situations where we could offer assistance. The only bragging from BMC is indirectly in this note from me that is my personal opinion and response to the note posted. And really, it is just stating that what was done is what we hope we do and intend to do with any issue that customers bring up - treat them seriously and help if we can. We don't always achieve that goal, but it is the goal. Yes, there are other cases where a feature doesn't work or where we have missed things where the response would not be something worth bragging about - and while you should (OK, yes should we sometimes don't respond as well as desired every time) see us responding and not claiming that it is a good thing - you will not see us touting this as a good thing. But that is not this case. To everyone on the list. Please keep posting issues, requests, concerns - in this forum or the Developer Community or through support calls or through any other mechanism you desire. We are always happy to hear feedback and we always strive to incorporate that feedback in future releases. We cannot always include it in the immediate upcoming release. We can sometimes offer interim solutions. Sometimes, we cannot do anything but take the request for later. But, we are always willing to hear the comments/feedback. Please keep make sure we are held to the highest standards and challenge us to reach and maintain them when we fall below the bar. Yes, that has happened more recently than we are comfortable with and you should see improvement. I would argue that this case is actually an example of some of the improvement and a restoration of more aggressive response to issues that occur. Just my two cents, Doug Mueller From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of AR Admin Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 12:01 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: Overlay follies: Selection fields ** What!? BMC is encouraging a trend of releasing unfinished product and patch it with "unsupported" utilities to address "customer issues"? One - I'd call this more of a software problem than a customer issue. And two - I woldn't brag too much about that fact. > Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:29:01 -0600 > From: david_eas...@bmc.com > Subject: Re: Overlay follies: Selection fields > To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG > > It will be. We wanted to make the capability available between releases > rather than forcing folks to wait until the next AR System release to get the > functionality. > > It's a trend we're trying to encourage - where applicable, release small > utilities between releases to address customer issues more expediently. Then > fold those utilities (or the functionality they provide) into future releases. > > I assume the community would have a positive reaction to getting resolutions > more quickly... > > -David J. Easter > Manager of Product Management, Remedy Platform > BMC Software, Inc. > > The opinions, statements, and/or suggested courses of action expressed in > this E-mail do not necessarily reflect those of BMC Software, Inc. My > voluntary participation in this forum is not intended to convey a role as a > spokesperson, liaison or public relations representative for BMC Software, > Inc. > -----Original Message----- > From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) > [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Matt Reinfeldt > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 8:39 AM > To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG > Subject: Re: Overlay follies: Selection fields > > Ashish, > > Thank you! Looks like a great add-on that really should be a core component > of the Dev Studio... ;-) > > Matt > > -----Original Message----- > From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) > [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Ashish Thakur > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 9:28 AM > To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG > Subject: Re: Overlay follies: Selection fields > > Hi Daniel, > You can try new utility posted on BMCDN that can create overlay of all views > on a click. > > https://communities.bmc.com/communities/docs/DOC-17903 > > Regards, > Ashish Thakur > > _______________________________________________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 > www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" > > _______________________________________________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org > attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" > > _______________________________________________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org > attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" _attend WWRUG12 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
