Graded by Analysts

Way back in the start of my career, I was a lowly UI designer for a customer facing web application –an extranet called MyExodus. Sitting with a team of engineers, my job was to help deliver a consistent, usable experience that would help our clients quickly ascertain the status of their web hosting systems.

I remember how management would scramble, hustle, and work hard to meet the demands of an Analyst Research firm that was reviewing our product –I was involved in helping to scrape together presentations, gather the right screenshots, and mockup scenarios of where we were headed on the roadmap. Tier 1 Research graded our product (along with over a dozen others) and I remember how stressful it was for us to deliver all of this, show our secret sauce, let them take a peek behind the curtains and letting management beam or scour with the results. It felt exposing, but helped us in the long run, as we knew where we stood in our marketplace, and what we had to improve on.

As I embark on this Forrester Wave Report for Community Platforms, I’m just reminded of what the experience was like.

So if you’ve ever been graded or rated great or poorly by an analyst, I just want you to know, I remember what it was like on the vendor side of the table, but I won’t let it deter me from doing an objective analysis.

Oh, if you’re wondering how we did, we scored pretty well in out category, esp in the UI rankings –I was proud and it was a bullet point on my resume. Of course, Exodus is long gone (although I tell my story here), the remnants were acquired by Cable and Wireless.