Cringley on IBM (design vs implementation)

Remember that IBM's mantra in this was to "fulfill customer requirements." That's a clever slogan that sure sounds like it is based in six-sigma customer service, but it really isn't. That's because most customers don't really know what they want. And if you count on fulfilling these unknown and certainly un-vetted requirements as your corporate raison d'etre, well, it leads to where the company is today -- milking (and ultimately bilking) its customers.

 PBS | I, Cringely . May 18, 2006 

Having spent some time at big blue (even though i was a grunt) i do have some affection for the place - But I have to confess Cringley's analysis is pretty accurate and holds many lessons for engineering services companies (i happen to work at another one now). 

One of the things I was only able to understand once I left IBM was how much of an engineering company big blue was (i say was cause reform the sounds of it  they have becsome and implementation shop) -  The lesson here I think, is that simply providing services of implementations (i.e j2ee websphere and the whole j2ee infrastructure which was a lot of the tech bread and butter for global services) is not enough.  In fact its pretty bad.  The innovation and design that these services used to imply are what is important.  I hope any company that prides itself on "fullfiling customer requirements" as a mantra gets this.  That the real trick is do so so in a way that abstracts a problem and is novel.  Otherwise the selling of solutions might be nothing more - than what is described in this eerily familiar approach:

IBM project management is not based on business results. It is based on documented deniability. A successful IBM project is completing everything as originally documented. If it works or not, it doesn't matter.

PBS | I, Cringely . May 18, 2006

hmm... food for thought