Board index » delphi » CBR Dale Performance Review

2005-07-15 04:02:58 AM
delphi20
"But despite the recent troubles with Borland's quarterly results, if he
were judged on his performance since he was made CEO, Fuller would still
have a pretty enviable track record."
I hesitate to post the URL because I don't like the name of the HTML
document, so you are only going to get the TinyURL. :-)
tinyurl.com/8kq33
Seems like a pretty good review. It is good to have editors commenting
positively during times of change.
 

"Kyle A. Miller" <kyle#XXXX@XXXXX.COM>wrote
But he did give some veiled forewarning of the imminent sales miss: "We are
now more reliant on very large deals - last quarter we had eight
multi-million dollar deals,"
</q>
May explain why individual and small developers seem to be losing their
appeal to Borland.
 

to a small company or individual. When going through Borlands product line
3/4 of products would never be of interest to a small team like mine, and I
think the small developers have been feeling left out by Borland in the last
few years. It will be interesting to see now that Java is no longer the cash
cow it previously was for Borland if the start looking to the small guys
again.
Craig.
 

Borland simply have a bigger investment in and focus on Enterprise products
_as well as_ on individual developers.
Borland now have
* MDA/ECO
* Calibre RM, StarTeam, OptimiseIT and the rest of the SDO/ALM tool set
* process management consulting services
etc
Who buys and commits to these Enterprise level products and processes?
Enterprises - big customers - big sales.
I don't see it as being at all extraordinary that Borland are getting more
big sales, I think it is a Good Thing.
If, on the other hand, sales are dropping off for smaller customers, I'd
chalk it up to one of three things
- product quality assurance (enough said)
- Management telling them to move to .net and VS.net
- Borland marketing not getting their message out
For the second and to a certain extent for the third of these, what's the
answer? Target the mindset at the Enterprise level.
Regards
Lauchlan Mackinnon
 

Lauchlan M writes:
Of the products you listed, let's see how they do not meet the need of
individual developers.
MDA/ECO - An object oriented framework with persistence being its
specialty. Don't you know individual developers have no interest in this
"object oriented" thing and never need to persist data? Procedural
programming and TStringList.SaveToFile() is all you need.
StarTeam - Version control. Issues management. Real individual
developers use xcopy for version control and Notepad for issue
management. This system has worked for generations. Why change?
OptimizeIt - That allows you to monitor memory usage and other factors
which may affect performance. Individual developers have relied on eye
balling the snappiness of a form displaying to measure performance. For
monitoring memory usage, do you really need anything more than the Task
Manager?
</sarcasm>
Ok, individual developers may not use CalibreRM or a consulting service.
Although some useful information about software lifecycles might come
out of the latter.
 

companies doing software development. If they are doing information sessions
in your area (through your local Borland office), or if you work for a large
company, I suggest you check them out and keep an eye on how it's
travelling.
I have been to three such information sessions and have learnt something new
each time. The next one coming up (in Australia), in a few weeks, has the
following description:
<<
The Role of CMMI in Software Delivery Optimisation and the Business Process
Maturity Model
Attend this session to be in a position to radically improve your software
development processes...
Topic One - The Role of CMMI in Software Delivery Optimisation
Dr. Curtis will describe why business demands require that software
development becomes a predictable business process that can be improved as
business challenges increase. He will describe how Borland's Software
Delivery Optimisation vision integrates improvements to people and processes
as well as technology to create a full software development solution. Dr.
Curtis will also reveal how CMMI provides a roadmap for implementing these
solutions and what benefits can be expected. Learn how the integration of
CMMI-based improvements can help an organisation fully exploit the
capabilities of Borland's Core Software Delivery Platform. Read More>>
Topic Two - Introducing the Business Process Maturity Model (An evolving
maturity model for improving business processes)
Dr Curtis will describe the recently developed Business Process Maturity
Model that provides a maturity model-based approach for improving business
processes. This new model, developed by Dr. Curtis and Charles Weber of
Borland, has been piloted in the banking, health care, {*word*143}, and
semiconductor equipment manufacturing industries with success. Discover how
software and IT organisations can help businesses use this model to improve
results and better utilise a maturing application development group. The
seminar will end with reflections on the future of process maturity models
and business.
www.teraquest.com/ . The general idea is to identify the elements of
risk in your projects and to manage them, and to insitgate processes that
continually re-examine how your company is doing with respect to the key
metrics (productivity etc). For example, some of the specific sources of
risk that occur most frequently are things like a lack of clarity about
specifying and managing requirements, and a lack of endor{*word*224}t of both the
project and the process management by the stakeholders and executive.
It is of course aimed primarily at companies with 5 or more developers and a
corporate environment/focus, but what I got out of it are some great ideas
for risk management, applicable to small companies as well as large ones,
and an exposure to a set of ideas that are extremely useful for managing
processes in large companies, and will be extremely useful in framing the
conversation for selling/delivering/contracting software or software
development to larger enterprises.
Anyway, just thought I would give it a plug. Borland don't seem to mention it
much here.
Lauchlan M
 

"somebody" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes:
 

Kyle A. Miller writes:
of the latter.
I would use CalibreRM if I could afford it. And if I didn't have to "call
for pricing".
-Brion
 

Brion L. Webster writes:
CaliberRM differently than StarTeam. Especially as they are designed to
be used hand in hand.
--
Craig Stuntz [TeamB] ?Vertex Systems Corp. ?Columbus, OH
Delphi/InterBase Weblog : blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz
Want to help make Delphi and InterBase better? Use QC!
qc.borland.com -- Vote for important issues
 

small one) to have more than one true "focus". Their focus is now broader
and encompasses "software development"; the problem that I can see is that
the "individual developer" is less focused as Borland "zooms out".
[...]
is necessarily a *bad* one from a business perspective, but changing
people's mindsets is extremely difficult and expensive. I'd venture a
wild guess that developing a 64-bit compiler would be less expensive. ;)
Based on their current financial situation, the risk is evident; it is more
volatile to rely on a small number of large sales rather than a large number
of small sales.
From a Delphi developer's perspective, I think it is a bad one because it
moves the focus away from the "individual developer" to the "software
development process" and that doesn't really e{*word*277} me since it makes me
feel like I am merely a "cog in the machine".
I'd add at least a few more factors that can contribute to the dropping off
of smaller customers:
-lack of investment from internal Borland management in development
tools/technology/compiler
-distinguishing features only available in the highest price sku
-no technological "wow" factor
-emergence of "ok" free/os software development tools
 

Craig Stuntz [TeamB] writes:
Canadian site. I have got a call in now to get pricing for my new client.
--
Wayne Niddery - Logic Fundamentals, Inc. (www.logicfundamentals.com)
RADBooks: www.logicfundamentals.com/RADBooks.html
It used to be that other people's achievements were considered an
inspiration, not a grievance.
 

Brion L. Webster writes:
at shop.borland.com with prices listed.
Maybe the Borland store policy is "if you have to ask, you can not afford
it." it is their way of saying it is astronomically priced, so move along.
And I do.
 

Wayne Niddery [TeamB] writes:
shops, though you do have to buy them through a salesperson. CaliberRM
is nice, but expensive.
I have no idea what that SKU is on shop.borland.com. it is almost
dangerous to buy StarTeam without being precise about what SKU you need.
--
Craig Stuntz [TeamB] . Vertex Systems Corp. . Columbus, OH
Delphi/InterBase Weblog : blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz
 

Besides large enterprises are getting the same buggy Delphi releases as
we are. They are also probably tired of the same expectations that a
problem would eb fixed in the next release. This habit worked for M$
but it doesn't work well for others.
Kyle A. Miller writes: