{"id":4609,"date":"2009-10-22T08:12:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T22:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2009-10-22T08:12:33","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T22:12:33","slug":"enhancing-rfes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/10\/22\/enhancing-rfes\/","title":{"rendered":"Enhancing RFEs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Grumpy Storage<\/a>, there’s currently a fantastic piece about the sorry state of how Requests for Enhancement are handled by most vendors<\/a>. In the post, we see a proposal of how vendors might improve how RFEs are accepted and worked on seriously.<\/p>\n

Obviously my blog has an EMC bent, but I work across a great many products, and the one thing I’ll say about most vendors, regardless of whether they’re OS vendors or hardware vendors or software vendors, they all share one common attribute:<\/p>\n

A practically callous disregard for user input<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The most polite response I can think of to vendors who don’t treat RFEs as serious input is “bah humbug”.<\/p>\n

Ignoring RFEs (or not working with them) is like the tail wagging the dog. It’s the company basically saying to the end users, “You don’t have a clue what you’re doing. You can’t possibly understand our product or our direction enough to provide valuable input.”<\/p>\n

This isn’t to say that all<\/em> RFEs are sensible. However, lumping all RFEs into the “sounds like s–t” basket simply because a few happen to be illogical (or are for features that already exist) is unfair to the average user who genuinely wishes to recommend enhancements to a product.<\/p>\n

At IDATA, I’m the primary developer for IDATA Tools<\/a>. My take on RFEs for these tools is that they are invaluable<\/em>. They frequently point to usage scenarios that we hadn’t considered, and they demonstrate how customers need to extend their datazone administration for easier use. Wanting to ignore that would be … well, insane<\/em>.<\/p>\n

RFEs should be treasured. Good on Grumpy Storage for making the case so eloquently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Grumpy Storage, there’s currently a fantastic piece about the sorry state of how Requests for Enhancement are handled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,12,13],"tags":[823,834],"class_list":["post-4609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aside","category-general-technology","category-general-thoughts","tag-request-for-enhancement","tag-rfe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t