Notes myth vs reality discussed in two good blog entries
August 24 2009
Lotus Notes is now a few months of officially turning 20. As these two recent blog entries highlights, a lot of people remember the younger Lotus Notes and don't know what it looks like today...
Aaron Paxson, "A second look at Lotus Notes":
For those that refuse to check it out, simply because of past experience, you are allowing your pride and stubborness to prevent you from really seeing the greatness of Lotus.Aaron, who has gone from Notes admin to Exchange admin, then goes on to list things he likes about Notes/Domino vs. Exchange/Outlook, including scalability, reliablility, client and server managability, security, migration, licensing, platform, and chat. Not bad.
Do I think it is for everyone? No, certainly not. But I do want those that hate Lotus to give it a chance. If you still hate it, no problem. But, stop saying Lotus is the worse thing in the world, without giving the new version a chance.
Scott Good, "Myths about Notes (and Domino)":
I'm surprised how often I hear people spouting off information about Notes and/or Domino that is more than innaccurate, it's just plain wrong. And always, it seems, from people supremely-confident in the rightness of their wrongness. ...Now, I have been criticized for saying essentially the same thing as Scott -- "don't blame the customer" I am told. And yes we are taking steps to help ensure more and more of our clients have a current understanding of what Lotus is all about. Scott's blog does a nice, visual job of disproving some of the current myths, about user interface characteristics, web services, data access, database size, and workflow/rules engines.
These are the Myths of Domino and just like the years-gone-by myths of dragons or sea creatures or Minataurs, what irritates me most about them is how often they come from people who (a) should know better, and (b) are in positions of authority to make poor decisions on the basis of them.
We have come to the point that some of our proposals now contain an entire section devoted to addressing some of the most pervasive (and damaging) of these myths. I thought I might share some of the more damning with you and hopefully you'll share the ones you've heard, too.
Take a look at both postings and recognize the capabilities and technological power you have today with Notes/Domino 8.x. It might serve as a good reminder that part of "selling" Notes/Domino within your organization is addressing those who seem to remember when Notes was a pimply-faced pre-teen or still in diapers, and don't realize that it's moving into its third decade as a confident, mature 20-year-old.
Post a Comment
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Marie Scott http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/crashtestchix | 8/24/2009 7:41:54 AM
The wikipedia entry for Lotus Notes needs to be updated as it contains many inaccuracies and pure myth. { Link }
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Peter http://www.wardpeter.com | 8/24/2009 8:47:08 AM
Can you name 3 non IBM / partner related public web sites that people would instantly know.
This would be do wonders for the Notes brand.
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Henning Heinz | 8/24/2009 10:07:57 AM
If you mean me with my comment in the GAPE topic concerning "don't blame the customer". This only refers to the quote from Andrew Pollack "If #LeavingLotus for Google actually makes sense for your company, then you haven't been using it right". Anyway my intention was not to blame anyone. I just expressed my (totally non-objective) opinion in this case.
For the topic itself. Sometimes it reads a bit as if IBM wants to forget the history of Lotus Notes and just concentrate on the current 8.5 release (or even 8.5.1 if we speak about Designer). Notes has a history and there is much IBM can be proud of (and some that it shouldn't).
Just today a user asked me why Notes displays a pop-up message that he should go into the Body field (when the cursor currently is in the Subject field and he presses the attach file icon while writing a memo). It is correct behaviour as the cursor is in the "wrong" field but it was not what the user expected.
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Frédéric Fanchamps | 8/24/2009 12:54:08 PM
<<It is correct behaviour>>
<<not what the user expected>>
What is correct behavior?
Thinking the correct behavior as the user expects could help Lotus Notes I think.
And answering the user don't know what is correct will not help Lotus Notes.
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David Bell | 8/24/2009 2:01:15 PM
It is easy to say thay Notes should just move the cursor for the user and then carry on.
But because Notes allows attachments to be inserted in line there are cases where the correct insertion point is not known. What if the user already wrote the email, then maybe edited the subject before they decided to attach a file, where does the client put the cursor now ?
Should we presume to know where the user wants that attachment, assume it should always be at the top, the bottom, before a fwd header line, etc. ?
Maybe we let the user go pick the file first, then prompt them to pick from a list of 3-4 places (like top, bottom, before fwd header,etc.) or maybe even allow a click in the message where it can be placed if the body already has content ?
With the easier rearranging of content in 8.5.1 (drag and drop text, attachments, etc.) maybe we always put it at the top and then just let the user drag it ?
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Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 8/24/2009 2:06:22 PM
@6 - "Notes has a history and there is much IBM can be proud of (and some that it shouldn't)."
I think that's very true, and I mention that now even when talking about Notes 8.5 and use the word 'proud'. Yes we had to focus on the UI and usability, but while Microsoft were concentrating on pretty-ing up Outlook, Lotus were focusing on manageability, security, remote access capabilities, real-time collaboration and so on. There is a lot to be proud of there - they may have had a nice UI for years but wouldn't Microsoft give their proverbial right arm to match Notes' security?
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Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 8/24/2009 2:24:21 PM
I have indeed done quite a bit of editing on the wikipedia page, Ed... but not a lot lately I have to admit. Apart from simply needing to put my time into other things, I should mention one of the principle reasons I slowed down in my contributions. Other wikipedia contributors frequently pointed out the lack of proper citations in the article, and I really wanted to do something about that but found it very difficult, especially ( but not exclusively) for the historical stuff. Much of the article consists of stuff that "everybody knows", but that's not good enough for wikipedia. It's best to cite independently published articles rather than IBM web site material in order to avoid the appearance of the article being nothing more than IBM promotion, and it's really time-consuming finding good material that is both objective and clear enough to cite.
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Timothy Briley | 8/24/2009 3:23:43 PM
@9- "they may have had a nice UI for years but wouldn't Microsoft give their proverbial right arm to match Notes' security?"
From my perspective, M$ put their effort in developing a nice UI while IBM/Lotus put its resources into developing a solid back-end. The result is that here in the US at least, Exchange/Outlook has a much greater share of the market/mindset than Domino/Notes.
M$ might give their proverbial right arm for the robustness and security of Domino, but I don't think that they would give up their market share/mindset for it.
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Henning Heinz | 8/24/2009 3:34:15 PM
@6 I am sure you can find good explanations for it but the user sometimes expects something else. Notes is full of this. Why can't you edit an Attachment if you open the mail through the preview pane? You can drag Attachments to the filesystem. A great feature. Many current Notes 8 releases unfortunately only enable one attachment at the same time. If you select two or more you just get a "Not possible" symbol. I have seen many setups where, if you have a local mail file, the Notes 8 client locks for a few seconds if you get a new mail displaying the famous Vista donut and Sametime sometimes get blocked too when Notes is busy (I heard this will soon be gone). Explain this to a user that don't care about threads. Besides all this my customers that still use Notes really like it. Even me sometimes think about switching my personal mail back to nsf. Applications are still what makes Notes shine in many ways.
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David Hablewitz | 8/24/2009 4:50:20 PM
"It isn't what we don't know that gets us into trouble. It is what we know for certain that just isn't so." --Mark Twain
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Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 8/24/2009 9:29:48 PM
@8, I agree that the Lotus product takes adjustment - I also LOVE that the attachment can be put exactly in the right spot because I often have more than one to place. However, if your cursor is in the Subject or To field, it would be nice instead of an error, the client simply put the cursor at the beginning or the end of the body and attached it.
I was a hard Outlook/Exchange holdout until R5 came out with it's real developer client. (I'm also a developer.) I adjusted, but if some "feature" is a pain, fix it.
Actually, R5 was pretty cutting edge, Outlook 98 came out afterwards, and the toolbar they added on the left had a very striking resemblence to the R5 one. Unfortually, it took IBM Lotus a few releases to catch back up and pass.
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John Foldager http://www.izone.dk | 8/25/2009 2:32:42 AM
I think that the reason that Microsoft have a broader "acceptance" everywhere is that Microsoft and its partners have a great way of talking about all the nice stuff around their products (the UI etc., not the technical stuff), where IBM and its Business Partners tends to talk more about what we really like to be changed in Notes/Domino (because we are so passionated about it). After R8+ we also begin to talk about the great UI and all the possibilities, but it takes time to get it "out there".
One of my own most frustrating everyday hurdles is that I have no official way to get to some hard-core IBM/Lotus developers that can give me a direction of how to solve a specific task. I know I can create a PMR if I think Notes doesn't do what I want it to do, but it is time-consuming to get it to the 3rd level. I know I can post to the forums, but often questions are not answered as quickly or followed up on. I would love to have a possibility of getting to the core developers (even pay for it) if I knew that I could get an answer and maybe some example code that would solve my problem. I have previously tried to get in contact with some of the 'heavy' Lotus gurus out there (internal as well as external) to get answers to XPages frustrations etc. but it just never get to 'the right person'.
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Simon O’Doherty | 8/25/2009 3:13:33 AM
Seems to happen with a lot of things. I still get people telling me "Java is slow" mantra, who probably never coded in Java since 1.1 and wouldn't know a java application if it bit them.
Most of the issues I get are directly related to the product and are logged. But twitter for example is a great example of the FUD. Often when I check into someone having an issue it is on version 5 or 6, or is already fixed in ND8.x.
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Simon O’Doherty http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/Simon/ | 8/25/2009 6:24:02 AM
"I would love to have a possibility of getting to the core developers (even pay for it)"
This should be possible if your paying for it. PSP Strategic contracts get to developers faster when opening a PMR (if needed to). Talk to sales rep or your PSM.
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David Hablewitz | 8/25/2009 12:38:17 PM
The reasons the myths persist can be easily explained. Logic has nothing to do with it. Legitimate quality of the product has nothing to do with it. However, several other psychological reasons can.
Commitment and Consistency are huge factors. "I made this choice in the past. These new facts are inconsistent with the conclusions I have already made. Therefore, these new facts must be wrong." We are all influenced by and susceptible to this behavior. In fact, it is human nature to ignore information that is inconsistent with the conclusions you have already made. The trait of consistency to those around us is also highly valued. A great example: When several senators changed their opinion that we should go to war in Iraq, they were vilified far more than the others who made and stuck to their decision, regardless of which side of the argument they were on. Thus, while Scott Good is "..surprised how often I hear people spouting off information about Notes and/or Domino that is more than innaccurate, it's just plain wrong. And always, it seems, from people supremely-confident in the rightness of their wrongness. " I am not.
Social Proofing is also a huge factor. The basic idea is "hey, the people around me are behaving in that way, therefore it must be right." Lemmings are famous for this and you see where it takes them.
I once heard a CIO in a meeting explain why he wanted to move to Exchange:
CIO: "Because most companies use Outlook."
Notes team lead: "Maybe in America, but not internationally. A bank in China just added 200,000 seats."
CIO: "We're not an international company."
Ironically, it IS an international company. But the power of social proofing outweighs that. Not surprisingly, it turned out that all of the other CIO's *that he knows* use Outlook. Social Proof.
Another reason is the misnomer that price = quality. "That product is more expensive, therefore it must be better."
Conditioning and Association. People adopt these things as a part of their identity. "I am a Republican. I could never vote for a Democrat!" and vice versa. The vote is no longer made based on who is the best candidate. As such, the logic of his blog is lost to emotion.
"For those that refuse to check it out, simply because of past experience, you are allowing your pride and stubborness to prevent you from really seeing the greatness of Lotus." That's right, Aaron. And until you accept that fact, you have no chance of influencing them.
All of these factors easily overwhelm any objective decision based solely on facts. For us computer people, it can be most difficult to grasp because we deal with computers which display none of these traits. You can find a much better explanation of all these concepts and much more on this topic in the book: "Influence: The psychology of persuasion" by Robert B. Caildini, PH.D. This is required reading for many MBA programs and marketing degrees.
Without an understanding of these powerful forces, you will not be able to manage them.
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Petetm | 8/26/2009 12:10:06 PM
@11
"M$ put their effort in developing a nice UI while IBM/Lotus put its resources into developing a solid back-end. The result is that here in the US at least, Exchange/Outlook has a much greater share of the market/mindset than Domino/Notes."
Which seems to prove that the decision makers in the US are mostly concerned about cosmetics and not functionality.
Just because a car looks nice doesn't mean it runs well.
Any idea how old Exchange is in comparison?