After Hours

Get customers directly involved in the innovation process
PowerBuilder has almost entirely lost mind-share. In order to re-introduce to a new generation of developers, Sybase should treat it as if it was a new product. When the product was originally being developed PowerSoft used the product internally and also partnered with clients. [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=93">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Tighten the feedback loop during CTP and beta testing
The originally public 10.5 beta called for two builds with 2? months (10 weeks) after each for comment. However, beta newsgroup traffic would imply that there was only significant input for 3 weeks after each build release. That means that after each build 7 [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=95">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Speed up the development of those innovations
Geoffrey Moore argues that the timing of innovations is also important:
[Product Innovation] is optimal for grabbing share in high-growth markets where the category has been accepted and now it is features and functions that are driving customer preference. Time-to-market is at least as key as design imagination to [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=91">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Create a culture that supports innovation
Again from Geoffrey Moore, this time on the importance of top management fostering innovation:
To be valuable from a business point of view, innovation must provide a deviation from the norm that creates differentiation in the company?s offering which in turn leads to customer preference at the time of a buying [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=92">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Focus effort on making the product easy to learn for beginners
Not everybody is a seasoned PowerBuilder user, but a great deal of the documentation and samples are written as if they were. People who are new to the product need to be able to establish an early meaningful success with the product in order [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=96">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Sybase and ISUG did the LA PB 10.5 launch event yesterday.

There was also an overview of PowerDesigner 12.0.
Participants asked about or commented on the following:

Whether the new Month Calendar control could be controlled via the keyboard alone.
Would like a Rich Edit edit style
Would like the DataWindow painter to be able to operate against a temp [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=101">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

When I wrote my review of the new menu and toolbar capabilities in PowerBuilder 10.5, one of the things I bagged them on was the complexity of the menu and toolbar properties panes. Well, I found an interim solution. I also finally found a use for the “Labels on Left” option for those [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=102">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Prioritize the end-user so that they are motivated to market the products for you
That was the key when PowerBuilder was first introduced. It is an even more important way of ?marketing? a product now, particularly when your product is essentially ?new? to the vast majority of the target market. Kathy Sierra notes:
Even the [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=97">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

Geoffrey Moore did an interview with CIO Insight that recently got reprinted in an eWeek special insert entitled “Innovations 2006″. I thought that some of his comments dealt particularly with the “focus on the core” argument I made earlier in this blog. Geoffrey Moore first talks about what he considers the three forms [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=103">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>

I’ve been following the TIOBE index for a while. It’s a measure of the “buzz” surrounding various development languages. PowerBuilder has never really done well in it. But perhaps there’s hope now. The Visual Foxpro folks have figured out how to make sure your site gets included in the index and [...]<p><div class="blogdisclaim"><a href="http://teamsybase.net/blogs/?p=104">This post originally appeared on an external website</a></div>