Marion's Weblog

Marion's Weblog
My name is Marion Vermazen. I worked at Sun Microsystems up until June 3, 2005. I worked on the IT aspects of Sun's work from anywhere program, iWork. I was also the team lead for the Java Desktop and Solaris 10 at Sun Change Acceptance team.

« Previous day (Nov 3, 2004) | Main | Next day (Nov 5, 2004) »

Thursday November 04, 2004

JDS Preview is coming Next Week!

As I mentioned in an earlier Blog we are rolling out a new Gnome look and feel across Sun. It will make Gnome look more like JDS. This is the first step to getting everyone at Sun running JDS everywhere. We call this new Gnome look and feel JDS preview. The base version for JDS Preview to be installed on is Solaris9U4(min) and Gnome 2.02.

The rollout has been delayed a couple of times because we really wan to get this right. But now we are good to go, and we will do the roll out next week. If all goes as planned we'll do a third of the SunRay servers Sunday night, and a third each of the next two nights.

The change acceptance work and communications for this has been a fantastic learning experience. We've used multiple methods of communication and repeated the message over and over again. Just some of the methods we've used include: all Sun email from Jonathan Schwartz, cartoon posters featuring the JDS Phantom, phone calls to key influencers, group presentations, ask the expert conference calls, each team member focused on individual conversations with a different key stakeholder group, and a jds-preview-comments alias with personalized responses.

We aren't done. This is just the first step. We have learned a lot but we still have a lot to do. We still have work to do on the vision. we still haven't completely engaged some key stakeholder groups like the Distinguished engineer community and the IT application support group.

But the most exciting thing about this is that it is working!! I know I shouldn't sound surprised but it always nice to see what you believe in actually work. We are doing multiple conference calls this week to answer people's questions. What is really exciting is that we are getting feedback that people like JDS Preview and are excited to see us beginning to roll out improvements to our user interface. IT so often gets beat up any time there is a change. This time it looks like it will be received as a positive improvement moving us forward. I think it is symbolic of Sun's recovery. It feels good.

(2004-11-04 11:22:48.0) Permalink Comments [5]