This is the second part in a three part series. Last week I wrote about how you can prepare a persuasive case for the functional extension of some aspect of Capital. Making a compelling case for an enhancement is a strategy valid for any enterprise class software tool – perhaps will assist you with other Mentor Graphics Offerings. This time around the advice is specific to all the diverse modules of Capital software for Electrical Platform Design because it refers to the Mentor Ideas portal for IESD. After the genesis of the idea comes the development of it into something which has a fighting chance of making it into a new version of Capital.
This tells you how to enter your proposed improvement into the system, and gives you some insight into what happens in that process. The goal is to give you information so that you know best how to operate that system to your advantage when you wish to promote an enhancement request.
There is a necessary starting condition. You probably already have this covered. It is to get yourself a Mentor Graphic Supportnet account if you do not already have one. It is fairly obvious to point this out too, but there is a pre-requisite for you to have some current licenses, and a support and maintenance contract current for them with Mentor Graphics.
Adding to the enhancement proposals.
Log on to your Supportnet account and find the link to the Ideas Enhancement requests site on the right hand side.
With a SupportNET account you can register and participate on Mentor Graphics’ Ideas site where enhancement requests are gathered and collated. Once there, the very first step before you create a new enhancement request is to do a word or phrase based search of the existing data store of enhancement requests. Also perform a search by tags. When you search by tags there is an auto-complete suggestion.
The aim of doing these searches is to discover whether there is a request logged already which is closely matching or even identical to the one you have. If there is something close or equivalent, add any new information to that one already existing as comments. Support the one you have found by up-voting it. In the course of looking for something matching your own idea you may have seen some interesting requests which you like the look of. Vote for those too. Community support is a dialog between you and others.
Tag your enhancement requests carefully when you enter them
A second step in cementing your enhancement in place as a worthy and compelling one is optional. You can discuss the matter a Mentor Graphics Capital software specialist. These come with a variety of titles:
- Application Engineer
- Technical Marketing Engineer
- Product Marketing Manager
- Product Architect
- Transportation Accounts Product Specialist
- Consultant
- Technical Account Manager
- Account Manager
- Product Line Director
What does it gain you if run the enhancement request past your Mentor Graphics contacts? These people will listen to your requirements. They can confirm that functionally your request lies outside of existing functionality offered if there is a doubt. They can assist in helping you frame the description of your needs so that it is precisely expressed and can be entirely understood by other similar users in other companies, and by Mentor Graphics staff responsible for developing new features. Mentor Graphics staff will welcome your approach and be happy to sit down with you in person, or to have a telephone or web meeting. It is useful to do this and I recommend it.
There is yet another reason to talk with your software partner, even if your enhancement requests is simple and well understood. The Mentor Ideas web site for enhancement requests for Capital is a public forum. Other users of the Capital tools, which includes customers who may be in some sense competing for business with you may see your entries on the site. Therefore you may be shy to publicize details of the potential for design or manufacturing process improvements, reduced cost and increased efficiency which may result from a new feature in this forum. However it is vital to make the software authors aware of what commercial enablement, what competitive advantage may accrue to help in their prioritization of the request. As ever Mentor Graphics will respect the privacy of your information. Sharing with Mentor Graphics the insights you have about the benefits of proposed the enhancements can help enormously in prioritizing your request.
Back to the mandatory steps: Thirdly, you enter the description of your request in Mentor Ideas. If you use pictures to illustrate your thoughts – screen captures for instance – these are an easy way to convey some quite complex concepts which ground the readers’ understanding of what you are referring to. The site will allow files of reasonable size to be uploaded as attachments, so a slide presentation or even a short movie clip is possible. Review what you enter. Perhaps have a co-worker look it over too. Other tips for effective communication of your enhancement request include that you should take some time to choose a summary – a headline for the idea which captures the essence of the enhancement request. Also significant is to ensure other people with similar interests on the site can find you – so tag the item so other people can find it and support it. Make your proposal attractive and easy to understand. Now it is in the system and open for consideration.
Basic flow chart of enahncement request – note the conclusion reached is only sometimes “yes”.
Wisdom of the crowds, not the tyranny of the majority.
Having other people respond with support for your ideas is exactly what you should be aiming for. Ultimately it is a product management decision which gives a “go” decision to including a new feature based on an enhancement request from you. That means it is your software partner supplier who makes that judgment. The more support from other customers who use the Ideas site an item has the harder it is to ignore, the plainer the pull of customer demand. Making customers happy is what Mentor Graphics does.
Voting by other people for your enhancements, and you voting for others is vital for the system to work well. When a switch-over to Mentor Graphics’ present system of recording enhancement requests from customers was done in (2009) prior to the Capital software being included on the Ideas site, non-Capital products were used in the pilot phase, and what product managers thought were the most attractive and most popular subset of enhancement requests were put on the beta version of the website to “seed” the new version. Of those enhancement requests, in time the most supported one was the fifth most popular amongst customers active in recording their preferences. The enhancements the community of users devised for themselves were basically much more relevant and attractive. See Footnote [1]. A good product manager does not think she is infallible, with feedback from votes she has points of reference to literally count on.
Not just a popularity contest
Next, in my experience is the pivotal point in the process of delivering good new functionality many users want, many users will actually go on to use. The software product managers of IESD in Mentor Graphics resolve as a group which items are candidates for inclustion in upcoming releases. If working on incomplete or incorrect data from the community of users one must inevitably come to a less than perfect decision. Having the product manager’s inputs as clean, clear and precise as possible is highly desirable. Not varying or second guessing the market information as interpreted, a product manager will make good decisions. Empowerment her to hold the development organization to her given course of without override from her managers comes from thriving participation on the Ideas pages from users.
What tends to promote some enhancements over others.
Saeed Khan wrote a good summary of the type of process software companies and software development go through to promote the enhancement ideas which are. I recommend if you want insight into what we at Mentor Graphics do to process you ideas and decide what comes out as accepted and what does not you just understand these. See Footnote [2]. He devised a simple list which outlines these criteria
- relevant to many customers
- likely to be implemented if they rank highly amongst the customers
- move the product in the direction it needs to be taken
The principle is simple. Align your requests with Mentor’s appreciation of relevance, rank and future product direction. Then your proposals have a much boosted chance.
Do you want to have the enhancement more than you want …..?
For software professionals we should note the simple list for prioritization decisions is 2/3 customer focused and 1/3 related to our own opinions of the customers’ interest. Another idea of Mr. Khan’s – which I really like is the “purchase the feature” model, where participants in decision making are given a set amount of fictitious money, and they can allocate the amount they want to spend against individual feature requests.” This way of deciding appeals to my appreciation of Motor City cultural icons – because of the story of how Motown Records notables like Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson and the rest of the staff would sit down to listen to the records and try to decide which ones to promote – which ones had the best chances of becoming big hits. People were challenged to imagine a person having enough money for a sandwich for lunch or to purchase the record but not enough for both. Which one would they buy? If you hesitated before saying you would buy the sandwich, that was the indication you had a hit.
Next post will continue with insight as to how to make sure you produce the hit idea for enhancement – continuing the theme of giving it the best possible chance for success. I assume you do want your proposals to have an advantge if it is available.
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2009/02/12/enhancing-the-enhancement-request-process-mentor-graphics/
[2] See more at: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/A-Model-for-Metrics-Driven-Feature-Prioritization#sthash.d4D8uRqT.dpuf Saeed Khan