Notes on Productivity Home Page

"Value created (V) is the result of Knowledge (K) x Methodology (M) x Technology (T)"

I must remember this. Very nice. This might be an eye-opener to a lot of people.

And of course this is not only true in our world, but applies everywhere.

Hear Hear!!

This is so to the point. IBM Lotus Domino shops faced with customers wanting to migrate should focus more on wanted outcome instead of technology. Focus on business processes instead. The decission to stay on existing platform may suddenly be clear as day....

Great observations Eric. You could almost argue that making Lotus Notes (or $harePoint) better only contributes to the problem. Better functionality leads to more silos being built. Better administration tools and policies only makes it easier for admins to tie it all down (should they choose to). Maybe something like Project Vulcan and its focus on the use of Analytics will prove be the difference. I doubt many companies will ever invest enough to make KM work without a significant reliance on automated solutions to catalog, store, and retrieve all the information relevant to any given decision.

I hope you're talking to some government people there. They seem to be the ones who hate Notes just because. That's why a lot of them are moving away from it. They don't realize it's a information management issue. I deal with that all the time. They do see Sharepoint as the answer to all their problems. Anything you can do to convince the govvies that Notes can be great with better management would be a good thing.

Well said Eric. As I posted also it's not always IT and it's not always the admins, but locking things down too much will always drive people insane.

We're running headlong into the oldest conflict in IT: admin/security vs. users. If you stop to think about it, almost all of the most highly-touted software solutions of the current cycle focus on devolving a great deal of control to end users. It's "Oh, you can dynamically create [blah blah] without a lot of admin overhead" and "Move information to where you need it, when you need it," but--at the same time--corporate concerns about information security and intellectual property tend to throw roadblocks into that very approach.

If you don't address this fundamental business conflict--and, make no mistake, it's a BUSINESS conflict at its root, NOT an IT conflict--you'll continue to hear the horror stories.

I'd almost add another T to your equation, for "Trust"...

This is a l-o-n-g discussion. At my current site, over the last 5 years, I've weathered two separate, complex (and funded) projects to replace Lotus Notes with Exchange. I've also kept the trains on schedule for two other projects to migrate to GMail.

Lotus Notes is staying because it delivers.

But, the perspective on Lotus as a messaging platform is led by corrosive sarcasm. This slant is fed by competitors (correctly doing their job) and a "consumer" focus on business applications. Lotus Notes is not widely accepted as socially current, and it struggles for a position in that stream. All the Loti want carpet-bombing marketing. But, advertising is not much of a winning strategy for increasing mind share. There is no fix, there is only the long haul. Put in the oars and pull.

I have been using Lotus Notes at work for the last few years, and never liked it, until I learned about GTD a few weeks ago. (I wish I came across the GTD methodology earlier...) I still think Lotus Notes is slow and unfriendly, but now, having a GTD-oriented mindset, I view Lotus Notes not merely as an email client and calendar, but as a GTD tool. It is very rewarding to feel in control, not to be stressed, and to have an empty inbox, whether I use Lotus Notes or Gmail. It is helpful to shift one's focus to Getting Things Done from Lotus Notes' flaws.

Well said Eric. It's amazing that IBM/Lotus ever let the KM banner get away from them. At one time, a part of Notes was all about KM and it still can be with the right GTD and application management and sharing management. Connections is another layer that can help with that in many ways.

Hi folks. I'm not ignoring you. I've just returned from day 2 at KMWORLD to read these responses. Good discussion. In response to @John, there was only one mention of Notes that I heard today. I sat next to two people. the guy was running SharePoint and the lady next to him said "What's that" and he said "SharePoint". She replied that she used Lotus Notes and had not heard of SharePoint. Interesting discussion. Nothing negative. They just compared experience.

What was interesting was that there was no visibility of IBM or Lotus anywhere. Not a single product or vendor in the showcase with anything related to Lotus Solutions (including Connections. That's too bad. Microsoft made sure that folks knew about SharePoint, though. I could share more but I need to go get ready for Day 3.

I wonder if IBM Knows there is a National KM Conference just blocks away from its DC offices? I doubt that the thought leaders, C-level execs, CIOs, CTOs, and CKOs that are in attendance will be going to Lotusphere. So, why isn't IBM here?

Last night, I walked from the KMWORLD conference to the new IBM offices. They are just a few blocks away. I wonder if they even know this conference is going on and that at one time IBM Lotus was synonymous with KM?

I should not speculate too much. What I do know is that apart from two very favorable but brief comments about Lotus Connections by conference speakers there has been no mention or reference to anything IBM or Lotus. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Well put Eric...

Like the post Eric,

Another formula that I find useful is N to the N-1, where N is the number of different technology platforms that must be integrated in order to provide a technology solution.

With Notes you can do so much with just one product.

With most competitors systems, you need many different products working flawlessly together to achieve a similar level of functionality. When something changes in one of the underlying systems, it can have a huge unexpected knock-in affect to many other parts of the system, and upgrades with so many dependencies is a nightmare.

With Notes, for the most part, it just keeps chugging along.

I look-upon Notes as the Ugly Betty of the IT world. Smart, flexible, reliable and a great asset to help you achieve remarkable things when you know how, but a little fat around the middle and it has some terrible dress sense. Some of it's competitors look pretty, but underneath they are cantankerous, inflexible and ultimately very high maintenance.

Swapping vendors is like getting remarried, sometime it works out OK and sometimes it doesn't. But if you don't learn from YOUR mistakes then you are most likely to repeat them.

One of the points in my Speedgeeking session offers another succinct equation to make essentially the same point:

Write Check != Magic Bullet

The rest is here: { Link }

Great post Eric. See you later today at DCLUG :-)

@Nat, if you haven't already done so, be sure to check out eProductivity http://www.eProductivity.com. Its the application that David Allen and team use to get things done with Notes. Happy to answer any questions you may have.