Friday, December 16, 2011
2011 has continued to be an exceptionally rough year for RIM. The negative press and impressions don't seem to stop.
Everyone is spewing up recommendations to turn RIM around, much of which is speculation without knowing the internals of the company. Large companies are difficult to course correct quickly. I do wish RIM to be successful, aside from being a local company, it is good for the industry to have competition.
I've never seen the numbers, nor have I seen the internal corporate structure. I'm aware the carrier relationships are tricky. Apple has proven their product and can strong arm carriers to distribute. Other manufacturers are not so lucky, and do not have that kind of leverage. But assuming all the logistics I don't understand, do not exist, here is how I would fix RIM. =)
1) Invest heavily and fix the developer experience! This is the foundation of the product, both internally and externally. If RIM is not turning out apps internally because it's expensive to develop, imagine what everyone else thinks! Now-a-days, underdogs are developing the "core" apps internally, such as Facebook, Twitter. If the internal development process is long and expensive, who from the outside will want to invest too?
I've never developed for it, but I'm assuming Playbook must have had a poor developer experience, since even RIM couldn't turn out native email client within their estimated time frames.
2) Stop the device spam. Also, these product numbers and name collisions are overwhelming, and do not convey any clearly useful information and confuse everyone but the most loyal blackberry followers. One would assume a higher number is better or newer, which is not true. One might assume the first digit would signify the device generation, which is not true. One might assume that products with the same name means they would have the same form factor, which is not true. One might assume that each generation there is a single version of a device, like "Bold", which is not true.
Examples:
a) A Storm 9500 is older than a Curve 9380.
b) A Curve 9330 is not better than a 9300, just different.
c) A Curve 9350,9360 has a keyboard but a Curve 9380 is touch only.
d) 9650 is a Bold, 9630 is a Tour and 9670 is a Style Flip Phone??
e) Torch used to mean portrait slider. Now it's ambiguous with a touch only phone.
f) The Bold 9900 is in the same generation as 9790, which was released later.
3) Be realistic. 2011 was the year of dropped promises. From what I'm hearing, it's because internally, red/yellow flags are ignored, pushed back, or not even raised. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but setting false expectations just compounds the issues until they explode.
While management should rightly question timelines, they should not intimidate people into telling them what they want to hear. Similarly, development teams must estimate realistically, independent of market/management pressures for getting things in earlier. And when delays are anticipated, notify early to set expectations right, both internally and in the market.
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Everyone is spewing up recommendations to turn RIM around, much of which is speculation without knowing the internals of the company. Large companies are difficult to course correct quickly. I do wish RIM to be successful, aside from being a local company, it is good for the industry to have competition.
I've never seen the numbers, nor have I seen the internal corporate structure. I'm aware the carrier relationships are tricky. Apple has proven their product and can strong arm carriers to distribute. Other manufacturers are not so lucky, and do not have that kind of leverage. But assuming all the logistics I don't understand, do not exist, here is how I would fix RIM. =)
1) Invest heavily and fix the developer experience! This is the foundation of the product, both internally and externally. If RIM is not turning out apps internally because it's expensive to develop, imagine what everyone else thinks! Now-a-days, underdogs are developing the "core" apps internally, such as Facebook, Twitter. If the internal development process is long and expensive, who from the outside will want to invest too?
I've never developed for it, but I'm assuming Playbook must have had a poor developer experience, since even RIM couldn't turn out native email client within their estimated time frames.
2) Stop the device spam. Also, these product numbers and name collisions are overwhelming, and do not convey any clearly useful information and confuse everyone but the most loyal blackberry followers. One would assume a higher number is better or newer, which is not true. One might assume the first digit would signify the device generation, which is not true. One might assume that products with the same name means they would have the same form factor, which is not true. One might assume that each generation there is a single version of a device, like "Bold", which is not true.
Examples:
a) A Storm 9500 is older than a Curve 9380.
b) A Curve 9330 is not better than a 9300, just different.
c) A Curve 9350,9360 has a keyboard but a Curve 9380 is touch only.
d) 9650 is a Bold, 9630 is a Tour and 9670 is a Style Flip Phone??
e) Torch used to mean portrait slider. Now it's ambiguous with a touch only phone.
f) The Bold 9900 is in the same generation as 9790, which was released later.
3) Be realistic. 2011 was the year of dropped promises. From what I'm hearing, it's because internally, red/yellow flags are ignored, pushed back, or not even raised. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but setting false expectations just compounds the issues until they explode.
While management should rightly question timelines, they should not intimidate people into telling them what they want to hear. Similarly, development teams must estimate realistically, independent of market/management pressures for getting things in earlier. And when delays are anticipated, notify early to set expectations right, both internally and in the market.
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