Buying enterprise software is a bit like buying a house — it can cost a truckload of money and there’s plenty of paranoia to go around. Will the pest report be clean? What if my mortgage broker can’t secure the loan? What if the seller strips out the brushed steel socket covers and adjustable light switches before we move in?

The relationship between enterprise software buyers and their vendors can also be complex and lacking in trust. Enterprise license agreements often involve a pretty sizable multi-year commitment to a vendor who has yet to prove that they can sustain the relationship and not run off with the fixtures and fittings. Somebody somewhere is putting their professional neck on the line…

With high stakes like this, transparency is often an issue for enterprise software buyers. What if that young vendor tries to get us locked into long-term contracts with unforeseen maintenance or consultancy costs? What if they can’t scale up their support organization to handle a global deployment?

As an enterprise buyer, it’s bad enough that you don’t really know the vendor, but the fear of getting sold a piece of enterprise software that turns into a cost sink of support, maintenance, and upgrade costs is enough to send any buyer off to the pub to procrastinate.

Throw in a really lousy economic environment and you have rolled out a perfect welcome mat for the financial year 2009. So where are the conscientious enterprise software buyer and hard-pressed vendor to turn in these ‘challenging times’?

Here’s one suggestion — check out Ray Wang’s blog as a starting point. Ray is a highly respected analyst from Forrester Research who has quite a healthy fixation on the trials and tribulations of purchasing enterprise software. Ray has created a detailed ‘Bill of Rights’ for enterprise software buyers that addresses many of the issues discussed above — it’s a carefully crafted effort to define the needs and wants of enterprise software buyers, with a set of nice flowcharts and visual aids. Clearly, Ray doesn’t do this stuff in his spare time.

For some added industry perspective on Ray Wang’s ‘Bill of Rights’, I’d also encourage you to check out Michael Krigsman’s article titled Evaluating the enterprise software buyer’s ‘Bill of Rights’. Mike quite rightly argues that the vendor’s perspective is equally important, and enterprise software buyers must make key contributions to their own project’s success.

As Krigsman articulates, “Customers and vendors can both learn from this bill of rights. Relationships are successful when all sides recognize and respect the others’ legitimate rights and responsibilities.” Very well said and, from my experience of the enterprise software world, I couldn’t agree more.

A cynic might say that’s a bit like discovering the people who sold their house to you have left a bottle of champagne in the fridge and an unclaimed flat screen TV in the den. Dream on you might say — or maybe Wang and Krigsman combined are really onto something here…

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - (Marketwire - July 22, 2009) - InnerWorkings®, the leading provider of practice-based solutions to optimize skills and processes across software organizations, today announced the addition of a money back guarantee clause to their standard licensing agreement. If a customer finds that the coding challenges, real-time code judging, and sample solutions created by InnerWorkings do not help to improve their software developers’ performance and productivity, then the customer may have the program’s license fee fully refunded.

“We are extremely confident about our solution and acknowledge that every company has its own unique standards of performance and productivity for its developers,” said Francis McKeagney, CEO of InnerWorkings. “If a customer finds that our solution does not positively impact its own standard levels of developer performance within 90 days, then they are guaranteed a full refund of the licensing agreement. Our objective is to make a company’s software developers more productive and more efficient through practice-based training. If we are not providing that benefit then our program is not doing its job.”

InnerWorkings has written this customer warranty into its standard licensing agreement based on the firm knowledge that its practice-based learning solutions can measurably impact developer performance. Each company defines their own set of standards for success, so InnerWorkings has decided to present this blanket warranty to emphasize a true commitment to building great software organizations. If a customer is not meeting their own standards of developer performance, they must send a formal claim to InnerWorkings within 90 days of the contract signing to get their license fee fully refunded.

About InnerWorkings

InnerWorkings helps software organizations to gain clear insight into development team capabilities and to optimize skills and processes. The company’s goal is to help customers improve developer utilization and reduce the risks of in-house development, outsourcing, off shoring, and recruiting. InnerWorkings has been a Gold-Certified Microsoft Partner and Visual Studio Integration Partner since 2003. InnerWorkings customers include a number of Fortune 1000 companies. For more information visit http://www.innerworkings.com.

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Have you noticed the buzz surrounding a promising open source JavaScript library called jQuery? Adoption has been nothing short of astonishing, with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Dell using jQuery to build out their JavaScript frameworks.

At InnerWorkings, we’ve been dissecting and analyzing the relative merits and advantages of jQuery, sound in the knowledge that developers find plain old JavaScript programming boring, difficult, and frustrating.

Listen to the following 3 minute video presentation from Michael O’Brien, head of development at InnerWorkings, on what jQuery is and why we like it so much:

I’d also encourage you to check out Scott Guthrie’s blog which offers some excellent insights into jQuery and why Microsoft has bundled it with ASP.NET MVC. Good to know…

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In my previous post I revealed that, to craft a great (technical) presentation, I deliberately use storytelling techniques borrowed by contemporary screenwriting. I leverage the power of story to stimulate an emotional response, even a new behavior, in the audience.

This approach comes from the realization that, although important, rational thinking has its limits. Even if we have facts that prove that we are “right”, it doesn’t mean that people listen to us.
By framing a subjective point of view, however, a story can influence perceptions, reinterpreting and directing what those facts mean to our audience.

If you happen to believe that stories are just for entertainment, think again. Stories are powerful, even frightening, weapons of influence. They have been used for thousands of years to persuade masses to join religions and wars, to unite and divide, to discriminate between “right” and “wrong”.

I’m often told that storytelling is too difficult. Yet, we unconsciously tell stories to others and ourselves on a daily basis. We tell who we are, what we have done, what we value, etc. We strip out all the unnecessary details and use stories to package our experience, or the experience of others, for easy consumption.

Aristotle observed that traditional narrative is structured around a dramatic story told in 3 acts: beginning, middle, end. I was surprised to discover that, after thousands of years, Hollywood-style screenwriting is still firmly grounded around this structure.

In a future post I’ll examine it in more detail, but for now, I’ll just state the obvious: a good story starts with a good idea.
What’s a simple definition of a good story idea (to be told in 3 acts)?

Someone wants something badly and goes after it against great odds.

I learned this definition by heart (and I wish I could recall where I found it). This simple sentence embodies three key elements of a good story: Character (”someone”), Desire (”wants something badly”), and Obstacles (”and goes after it against great odds”).

Implicitly, this definition also elicits the dramatic question: “Will he/she succeed?”

I’m just scratching the surface here, but watch a movie tonight and see for yourself.

It might seem obvious, but the story ends when the answer to the dramatic question is revealed.

When I performed my “Agile Tales” presentation in Stockholm for the very first time last year, I distilled a story from my own experience. Back then I didn’t know anything about storytelling.

Coincidentally, I had a character (me), plenty of obstacles (IT project from hell), and strong desire (I didn’t want to fail!). It’s a classic case of something that works without knowing why!

The story was about overcoming obstacles using agility, effective communication, and deliberate creativity.
Early in the presentation, I explained that I was involved in this impossible IT project. All the odds were stacked against me.
The setup was excellent, wasn’t it? But then I said:
“Amazingly, project from hell was a success. Maybe this is why…”

Do you see what I did? I made a rookie mistake.
I resolved the dramatic question too soon, effectively releasing the tension I created.

Several months (and more than 50 screenwriting books) later, I said instead:
“Project from hell was threatening me. This is what I tried…”.

The facts were exactly the same, but I plotted the story differently. This simple modification allowed me to preserve the tension until the end.

Next time, I’ll continue this fascinating exploration into the world of storytelling by revealing a technique I learned from a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
Stay tuned.

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