----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 12:27
PM
Subject: RE: Un-setting for
election
If we what to sell them our product we must conform
to their requirements.
Our first priority
is to generate correct election results. That is an absolute. This
is not a customer prerogative.
This was not the issue.The issue is
operational features and functionality. This is what will set us apart
from other companies that their fist and only priority is to generate correct
elections results. What is also an issue is that each individual state,
and county, or the customer as I call them, are the ones that determine what
is the correct results and how these should be
reported.
Or we just tell them that our system is not flexible and
that if he (the customer) does not change to our idea of how an
election must run, then we can not help him. We need to make
our system flexible to the fact that we the regular workers and the
customers are not perfect.
If
our customers, or anyone else, has suggestions on how to make
our products more flexible without compromising the integrity of the
election, the RCR list is at your disposal. I welcome (even enjoy)
suggestions that make GEMS easier to use.
That is what the the support group does every
time they submit an RCR.
Elections,
however, are event driven. Ballots need to be printed by a certain
deadline, and memory cards need to be burnt by a certain deadline. In
short, elections are not flexible. That is the nature
of our business. Get used to it.
We are talking about DRE's in an early voting
environment and not election day or paper system like Accuvote. We should not
let Accuvote procedure necessarily dictate the future operations of the DRE
unit except for its ease of use for the poll worker and voter. I am not
dealing with Accuvote if I was then I would have no choice but to deal
with its limitations.But this too can be improved. Just because we have done
the same procedure a million times that does not mean that it could not be
improved upon.
Your job as I see it is to fix the problems that we and
the customers encounter as we run the elections.
My job is
to write election software. On occasion as an added service I also
explain how set-for-election works, even though the feature has been in
VTS since the day Global Election Systems was formed. Apparently doing
the latter was a mistake. I guess I'll stick to my job
description; I am better at coding than support
anyway.
Your job as well as mine is to
do whatever the company requires us to do to produce income for the
same. Your main objective is to write code but if the
need requires us to help in support, then that is our job. If we need to
help load trucks to meet shipping dead lines than that is our
job.
But really, I am
in too good a mood today to get into a job description debate with you,
Juan. I don't think you want that.
One of the main reason that many customers look at our
electronic system for early voting is due to the fact that the should
be able to change their election down to the wire without re burning memory
cards and reprinting ballots.
Again, if you can
suggest a way to design a electronic DRE system that does not have removable
media as its primary storage, I will be the first person to champion
it.
Well, our suggestion is to permit the setting of
Early voting portion of the election to be set prior to the election day
machines. And secondly to allow GEMS to be able to increases the number of
machines in any given precinct at any time with out affecting the election.
Both of these were sent to development as fixes to GEMS for this election due
to customer requirements.
If this is not the case then we
should not sell this product for early voting.
You'll need to
talk to sales about that suggestion. I just write the
stuff.
I need to talk to the software development
Group to follow support and sales input and direction as to what our customer
wants, needs, and is willing to pay for.
And this group's ability to follow directions
to that effect.
Ken, in general I do not have any problem with
you or your work, I do feel though that you sometimes do not understand
or are not sensitive to the predicament of sales and of support staff
when in the field in front of our customers trying to explain why something
does not work. Remember we do not have a cast of thousands working in
the support dept and my job is that of Product Manager not
support.
Because of extreme trust and great
relationships that sales and support staff develops with our customers, it is
about the only thing that keeps us in business with that customer. But we can
only go to the well so often until it runs dry.
I know that you are good at what you do but so
are we. Please realize that we are all trying to make Global a bigger
and stronger company so that we can grow both financially and professionally.
Let us work towards this goal with out trying to place blame because we all
suffer the consequence no matter who is to blame.
Juan
Ken