Improving IBM’s RFE ​processes

Feb - Apr 2022

Overview

IBM's Request for Enhancement (RFE) ​process is one avenue in which clients and ​IBMers can submit ideas to improve ​software and hardware. Once an RFE is ​submitted, IBM product teams review it and ​determine if it can fit into the strategic vision ​for the product. If an RFE is accepted, it is ​added to the product backlog, and then ​designed, developed, implemented and ​maintained.

My team was called upon to look into the ​RFE process from both the IBM and client ​perspective to understand IBM motivation ​to engage with the RFE process and the ​impact it has on the client experience.

Process

Backstage research

My team started researching the roles that IBMers play in the RFE process. By starting with understanding the ​backstage first, we gained comfortability in the domain space as well as opened the door to understanding nuances in ​IBM processes.

The first step was creating a stakeholder map which laid out the key job roles involved with the RFE process. Since ​the RFE process spans across all IBM products and varies dependent on the product teams, we had to scope our ​backstage research to specific product teams. We looked to our project sponsors, the RFE Transformation team, to ​point us towards stakeholders to interview.

We conducted a total of 17 interviews with IBMers, which spanned 7 roles within IBM. It was important for my team to ​interview different roles to understand how these roles play various parts in the RFE process. Our team utilized ​snowball recruiting to ensure that we talked to as many knowledgeable participants involved in the process as ​possible.

Synthesis

After the interviews were complete, our team ​synthesized the data in Mural. We created ​multiple artifacts to capture our findings. The first ​set of artifacts were personas for the IBM roles ​that played a part in the RFE process. These ​persona cards captured information such as ​tools, motivation, needs and pain points. We also ​created a backstage process map which ​documented the steps that all of the roles take ​within the RFE process.

After creating these visuals, we delivered an in-​progress presentation to the project sponsors ​letting them know of our work as well as next ​steps. Our next steps were to turn towards the ​front stage.

Front stage research

Within the front stage research, our design team wanted to capture the client process, pain points, and ideas that ​clients have for improvement.

The first part of the front stage research was IBM client interviews who currently engage in the RFE process. We ​created a standardized interview protocol to use within each interview to ensure consistency of questions. Due to ​time constraints, we were only able to interview four clients.

The second part of the front stage research was a UserTesting mission to understand how non-IBM clients engage ​with a product enhancement process for non-IBM companies. This allowed us to understand how other tech ​companies run their enhancement processes and what users thought of them. The UserTesting mission had 15 ​responses, allowing us to synthesize to uncover patterns in the data.

Synthesis

Client interviews

From the IBM client interviews, we ​identified two categorizations of ​interviewees: high-touch corporations ​and low-touch corporations. High touch ​corps engaged frequently with IBM ​through sponsor user programs, beta ​programs, conferences and more. More ​often than not, high touch corps were ​larger corps that had the affordance of ​spending a significant amount of money ​on IBM products, as well as having ​distinct roles within their companies ​collaborating together. Low touch ​corps, on the other hand, engaged less ​frequently with IBM and were on the ​smaller side. These two categorizations ​have different needs and expectations ​within the RFE process.

From this, we created journey maps of the high-touch and low-touch corporation processes. This visualized how ​these corporations were moving through the RFE process as well as what pain points they experienced.

UserTesting survey

The non-IBM UserTesting mission, which allowed us to understand how other tech companies run their ​enhancement processes, was synthesized by groupings of positive experiences and negative experiences ​which were further broken down into categorizations. These categorizations allowed our team to see what made ​a delightful experience for users and what made a painful experience.

We found that every single positive experience entailed a representative reaching out to the enhancement-​submitter to understand the idea better. More often than not, the representative gave the user a concrete idea ​of next steps. The negative experiences had no user-to-company contact and was completely virtual, with no ​follow up on next steps.

Ideation

After our research insights were articulated, we ideated on ways to improve this experience. Looking at the data ​we gathered from the UserTesting mission, we had an idea of what made up delightful client experiences. Each ​member of the design team created their ideal experience through a six panel storyboard. After diverging, we ​converged and played our ideas back to one another. We combined the best of our ideas into one final North ​Star client experience as well as a near-term client experience. Our ideas focused on how we can change IBM ​processes to better accommodate the user experience. We aimed to streamline collaboration between IBMers.

We also thought of features to add to the RFE portal to enhance the digital experience. I did quick mock-ups of ​ideas to add to the RFE portal, like moving the navigation bar, adding

Read out & prioritization

Our team played back our insights and ideas to ​the sponsoring team. After giving a read out, ​we worked with the sponsoring team to ​prioritize our ideas, with the design team ​ranking against “importance to user” and the ​sponsoring team ranking against “feasibility to ​implement”.

Our ideas were added to their backlog, ​including the improvements to their portal.

The sponsoring team was responsible for the ​implementation of our ideas. We worked ​closely with them to oversee the ​implementation.

Conclusion

Since our design team was not responsible for the implementation and future iteration, I did not have a chance to ​track metrics. If I had the opportunity to stay on the project longer, I would have tracked usage metrics before and ​after to see if there was an uptick in visits to the site after the new designs had been implemented. I would have also ​run additional interviews to gather qualitative feedback on the new designs.

Overall, I thought this project was successful in terms of conducting front-stage and backstage research to ​understand processes and experiences. I would have liked to conduct more interviews with clients to cast a wider ​net of perspectives and to flesh out the categorizations and roles better.