Editor's note: Last year we introduced the Bamboo Year in Review feature, kicking off with a note from the desk of the CEO and including in-depth Q&As with each of the Bamboo department heads. In keeping with the Bamboo commitment to transparency, we're going to make the Year in Review feature an annual Bamboo Nation tradition. In this installment, we chat with Anh Le, who heads up Bamboo's Research and Development organization in Vietnam.
Given Bamboo's recursive method of product development, how many products would you say your team is typically working on at any given time?
Year round, we have a minimum of 20 products under active development at any given time.
What percentage of that total would you say represents new products, as opposed to enhancements to existing products?
Our vision is to always listen to the needs of our customers, which necessitates a dual focus on innovation in both new products as well as upgrades to our existing product line.
Of the remaining four technical groups which you oversee (Customization, Support, Test Engineering, and Quality Assurance), is the workload similar in the number products that the individual groups are working on at any given time?
All five technical groups share similar tasks and projects, but as the Customization group has grown in the past year, they've been able to share resources among the other groups as necessary. Our current workload is not centrally divided, but is instead effectively spread across all groups for more productive scheduling and results.
Given the existing workload, do you have plans for growing your staff in the year ahead? If yes, would that growth take place across all five of your technical groups, or be concentrated in just one or two areas?
With our current workload, we need to expand all of the technical groups. Staffing up of Cloud services and customer support are our first two areas of focus.
In addition to new Web Parts and enhancements to existing products, this year saw your organization taking on the three single biggest Bamboo products to date: Project Management Central (PM Central), Bamboo Conductor, and (coming soon to Bamboo Labs) Bamboo Composer. How did the introduction of these major applications into the workflow change your processes, if at all?
PM Central was our most important product this year. Even with 20 other products under development though, our collaboration process is highly adaptable since the workload is handled by separate teams.
Last year saw the beginning of "rotations" of small teams visiting our U.S. headquarters in Reston from the Ho Chi Minh City office for purposes of immersive learning. These rotations have continued throughout 2009, and will continue in the coming year, right?
Given the positive results we've seen to date, yes, the plan is absolutely to continue these rotations.
A number of folks in your organization earned their Microsoft certifications (or earned additional certifications) over the past year. How many new certifications did your organization earn this year?
We have increased our Microsoft certifications by 20% this year.
With Bamboo's involvement in the Microsoft Technical Adoption Program for SharePoint 2010, your organization was able to get a jump-start on learning the intricacies of the new version and porting existing Bamboo products to 2010. How many products have been ported thus far?
With our access to early builds of the next version of SharePoint, our portfolio currently has 18 products that work with the SharePoint 2010 beta.
With the confirmation of a June release for SharePoint 2010, will all of Bamboo products be 2010-ready in time for the release?
Our plan is that all of our products will be 2010-ready prior to the official launch of SharePoint 2010.
With the announcement of Bamboo's new Online Applications division representing the company's entry into the hosted applications space, does your organization anticipate building client-based versions of any of the hosted applications that the new division will be producing?
If our customers request them, we could certainly provide client-based version of our hosted apps, but doing so is not currently on the product roadmap for the coming year.
This year saw your group continue its involvement in Bamboo Nation, with lead engineers taking on ownership of their products through blogs announcing the availability of betas in Bamboo Labs and answering support questions in the forums. Is this level of code-to-blog-to-forums dedication a trend we can expect to see continue in the coming year?
Our commitment to an engineer is that they will serve as the engineering product owner. Along with that ownership, our engineers will be more involved in the forums to support their own products. Our plan is to improve communications across the board.
With more than a half dozen new betas scheduled to debut in Labs in the coming weeks, it seems that your engineers are going to have their work cut out for them on Bamboo Nation!
Our teams take care of Bamboo products like many people take care of their loved ones.
Read the entire 2009 Bamboo Year in Review package:
Posted
Dec 18 2009, 09:00 AM
by
Anh Le