IBM Quality Software Engineering team

Yesterday I was in Boston for the day where I was invited to speak at an internal IBM meeting  of the IBM Quality Software Engineering team.  I was asked to present from a customers point of view on what IBM does well, and where improvement is needed in the quality of the products shipping from IBM.  I spent about an hour presenting an overview of my companies IT strategy, and then focused on 3 main areas, Integration of IBM products (or the lack of in some cases), Configuration, mainly focused on client configuration issues, and Serviceability of the product once it has been deployed. While much of presentation was not on specific issues, I did choose a few areas to highlight that needed attention including – Quickr should honor name changes made via the AdminP process – Sametime and Quickr should support be supported on servers configured with Internet Site Documents – Integration for Notes, Sametime and Quickr Calendars In addition to presenting I had the opportunity to meet with members of the Quality teams, and Executives in smaller groups to discuss more specific issues.  While I can’t tell you the items mentioned above or some of the others I discussed will happen right away, I can tell you it is obvious from the questions I received and the number of people who wanted to talk to me when I am done, that IBM is listening and trying to meet the customers needs. This was my third trip on the Acela in the last 2 months, but this time I had my brand new Verizon Wirless broadband card, giving me internet access for the 4 hour train ride.  Over the entire trip there were only two spots where the network disconnected, one was a drop and immediate reconnect, the other was about a three minute stretch with no coverage, overall pretty impressive coverage, and decent speed. The entire trip was done without my Blackberry, Notes Traveler has been doing a good job for me so far, though the device itself is very different and takes some getting used to.