This isn’t a challenge at all - you have said that the marketing is aimed at early adopters, so all you need to do is to say:
“Our new release has some great new features listed below, and Early Adopters with good technical skills can try these immediately but Conservative users should wait until we say it is fully ready for general use …”
What is killjoy about that?
Does that mean that Conservative users can’t ever upgrade to Fangtooth, and won’t be able to upgrade to move off Electric Eel until at least 2026? Can you confirm that Electric Eel will be fully supported for security and bug fix minor releases until then?
I am unclear why telling Conservative users that Fangtooth Goldeneye won’t be suitable for them either should warrant any kind of smile (even a slight one). Surely a or or or or or or or would be a more appropriate and empathetic emoticon than ?
(And as you know full well, the time machine you originally referred to was nothing to do with Macs - it was about hindsight vs. foresight - and this is therefore a deflection even if it is intended to be humorous.)
There is no doubt that marketing YouTubers in their bedroom inspires some people to crank out a TrueNAS but it also puts other people off the product especially Enterprises which I’ve always felt is a great shame.
The move from FreeNAS to TrueNAS was primarily to get rid of the word free as it’s hard to sell a product with free in the name by definition. The above situation works along the same line. “Hey Boss there is this great product called TrueNAS and I think it would be a great fit for the company. Take a look at this YouTuber in their bedroom running it.”
Did you misread Goldeye as Fangtooth? He was saying that Goldeye, which releases in October, will not hit a .2 Conservative release in the two months before the end of the year.
I think you have actually hit on an important point here - although T3 doesn’t say it is aimed at people running home labs and NASes, when you include chat about gaming you pretty much make it seem that way.
I think as little as @Kris and @Honeybadger being clearer about the existing split of the T3 vlog into two pieces - it already pretty much is split into product-related marketing and then stuff for enthusiasts e.g. discussions of gaming, and having a clearer transition to indicate that the Enterprise / Commercial user bit has finished and you are now addressing the enthusiast community might go a long way to making the T3s seem more Enterprise oriented but still engaging for the enthusiast. And that would also give you some better structure to say in part 1 that this is going to be Enterprise ready in (e.g.) 3Q 2025 and then in part 2 to tell the enthusiasts that it is ready for them to use it right now.
@kris and I live with split brains…life can be more fun with multiple personalities.
The Enterprise and CE structure reflects your comments. It is common software, but where possible, features can be used in the Enterprise. The appliances are all built with Enterprise needs. 80% of the company only focus on Enterprise needs.
The CE and Community provide an opportunity to innovate and test while building a relationship with a lot of smart people. Most of our Enterprise leads still come from the Community and hence we want to grow that Community. Many of our ideas come from the Community as well.
We’d prefer a reputation for quality so there is synergy. We have avoided, the consumer, easy-to-use, but insecure market. That would completely scramble our brains.
Good response. Although I am of course not talking about offering both a free and enterprise product, but rather the two fundamental approaches to product management: technology-first vs outcome-first.
A technology-focused approach starts with the tech itself, building impressive systems in hopes they become great products and succeed commercially. Where an outcome-oriented approach starts at the other end, with (hopefully) a deep understanding of target audience and an understanding of needs and painpoints, then works backwards from there to develop technology to meet those needs. Of course, in reality, most companies sit somewhere between these two.
Developing bottom-up from technology can lead to complex, hard-to-use products, loss of focus on real user needs, poor prioritisation, neglecting testing, or “shiny object syndrome” - tendency to chase shiny new ideas instead of sticking to core goals… On the flip side, outcome-first approaches can fail if they are based on the incorrect assumptions about the user, set unrealistic goals, or lack flexibility.
Signs of a tech-driven product mindset include constant refactoring, marketing that simply lists technology capabilities, and vague product vision and roadmaps.
And yes, of course, for any technology-driven product company, the technology is ultimately what matters. But the question is from which end you start.
A classic but extreme example: Apple. Once near bankruptcy, now a $3 trillion company largely from iPhone, which was born from a relentless focus on user experience that drove development of amazing technology to support that vision. Apple continues to extract value from that in new and adjacent areas.
A great comment from @rungekutta. I would only add two additional decision factors relating to Risk Management:
iX Risks - Sometimes it is better to bite off a smaller piece (e.g. Incus Containers) and deliver fully rounded new functionality in one major release, and then bite off another chunk (e.g. Incus virtualisation) to deliver fully in a 2nd major release. Biting smaller chunks and taking smaller risks here then allows you the space to reduce…
Users’ Risks - Requiring users to migrate anything / everything as at the same time and as an integral part of an o/s version upgrade is adding a whole lot of burden and risk onto the user’s shoulders - delivering new technologies alongside existing technologies so that users can migrate at their own pace and time of choosing reduces the users risks. As Morgan says:
so it might actually be beneficial to iX if it gave greater thought to the user migration experience because when your free advertising community has bad experiences, your free advertising suffers.
You have to pay the bills.
If you believe that we are smart people, then why do you ignore us a lot of the time?
I genuinely believe that A) this is generally true (that you want to deliver quality), but also B) that in general you do deliver quality.
However the gist of this whole discussion is that you have a blind-spot with adopting new technologies where you repeatedly fail to deliver quality (as perceived by the community) - and you don’t listen to feedback and then repeat the same issue with future adoptions.
However the more knowledgeable members of the community would much prefer to work with you at the planning stage to help avoid such things rather than criticise after the event - and this is the “synergy” that we see is possible but not yet happening.
Ironically, had the emails from marketing inviting random users to undertake a survey but made under the pretext of a community technical council or somesuch had come from the Product Strategy team and been made to the more knowledgeable users inviting them to join a genuine Technical Council, that would have been genuinely synergistic rather than just a marketing ploy.
The forums are not where planning takes place. The forums are a source of ideas and requirements. We get feedback and can assist with problems.
The primary ways of influencing planning is through contributions:
Bug reports
Feature Requests… and votes
Discord channel and contribute code
Customers sign commercial contracts with their needs
Apply for a job with TrueNAS
Give feedback to the Community Technical Council
Developers run nightlies and provide us direct feedback
The only thing I’ll say here is that ‘Developers’ don’t always have the same view as users. Like @rungekutta said you have to start with the users and work backwards.
Take F1 for example Ferrari make great cars and their engineers are brilliant but Lewis Hamilton tells them what needs changing and not the other way around.
It’s a confusing picture. Further up, @Captain_Morgan says 80% of the firm focusses on ”enterprise needs”. However by the directly above, product strategy seems to be crowdsourced from feature requests and votes (but how many ”enterprise” users participate is this…?), feedback from in-house developers, bug reports, contractual agreements with customers, presumably conditioning certain critical (to them) functionality into their agreements, and this ”technical council” which seems to be a survey that was recently sent out to truenas users (who in fact?).
So who is the target paying customer again, what are their main current and future needs, where does TrueNAS fit into that and what are the short and longer term steps to get there?
At least from my perspective, all of this combined only illustrates how iX runs product strategy and planning relative to this post.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad but I think it puts many of the discussions in this thread in context. And if I was bold enough to advise iX, I would tell them that this will be a significant hurdle for them if they are intending to break into enterprise proper and compete with the big established players.
I am NOT suggesting that the forums are the means for involving knowledgeable community members at the planning stage.
The entire point of making a suggestion for a change of process is that it isn’t part of how things are done at the moment. Are you really stating that your reason for rejecting a suggestion for change is that it isn’t how you do things at the moment?
None of the Enterprise customers are expected to use the forums. However, they often do get advice on how to integrate a specific client or App, or our support team uses the forums for ideas on solutions.
Enterprise Customers provide feedback/requests directly to the sales/SE/support team, and we collect those needs separately, often under NDA. We make commitments directly to individual customers or the whole base as needed. We are in direct email and phone contact. Customer contract sizes range from $10K to $10M.
Prospects that decline to use us also influence our future directions. If we see why we were not selected, that influences what we need to fix. The sales team also influences the plans to meet their targets.
A lot of Enterprise requirements are platform/appliance related. They are often unrelated to CE requirements.
So, the forums are focused on the self-help community (CE) and represent a slice of our interests. Planning has to take into account a much broader set of interests, including long-term commercial viability and growth. We have 200+ employees to maintain and reward.
We recently agreed to support the deployment of over 250 CE systems - the customer was prepared to pay for specific commitments. That was a reasonable process for both sides.
We disclose plans as they become commitments. Unlike proprietary solutions, anyone with a strong interest can track code changes in GitHub.
We welcome community input using the tools we provide. If specific commitments are needed, talk to our sales team and buy the systems you need. We can then make financially reasonable commitments. The Community generally benefits from these commitments because many of the features are integrated into CE without any requests being made.
Is the planning process complex? Yes.
Do the forums have all the info needed to plan? No.
Agreed. But who says knowledgeable community members should contribute through the forums or that they should only have access to information in the forums.
Obviously you would want community members who can understand the various types of user who you need to meet the needs of, and who can understand the broader sets of interests and enterprise viewpoint, and who are willing to sign confidentiality agreements and who can advise but not be part of the actual decision making process, and you would need to decide how high level their involvement should be.
If we are going to ask rhetorical questions and then answer them ourselves…
Does iX have all the input it needs to make the best possible decisions without involving outsiders in the planning process? No.
Has iX admitted that this is the case? Yes
Would involving actual users from various groups in the planning process improve the decision making? Yes.
Would iX need to involve all users? No
Can iX benefit from a small subset of users? Yes
Does user engagement have to get into the fine detail and the complexity of the planning process? No
Could there be a high level input and review? Yes
Would this be excessively onerous on either users or iX? No
Would this be beneficial? Yes.
Does such an involvement need to be through the Forums? No.
Does it make sense to use the forums for such an involvement? No.
Could there be a new way to engage to get customer input into the planning process? Yes.
Is iX willing to engage with users through a new process? Apparently not.
Users that place bug reports and feature requests are often used as sounding boards.
Experts in particular areas of the software are hugely valuable resource.
Customers are also used.
Taking a single comment out of context in this way is highly misleading.
You know full well that this is NOT the context that this single statement was made regarding HOW iX could benefit from the input from a small subset of users to the planning and review of plans.
TBH, if this is the best rebuttal you can make, you have already lost the argument!!
It was a statement of facts… before we can discuss how to improve something, there needs to be agreement on the facts.
I have full knowledge of the process we use and why. If you want to ask questions, I’m happy to answer. But if you state things that aren’t true, I will correct.
BTW, our process is continually changing and has improved dramatically over the last 2 years. However, we don’t claim its perfect. We review the process based on successes/failures of previous releases.
(e.g. after the poor response to the “experimental” tag, we decided to add automation on the software status page into the updater)
I also don’t claim there’s a right or wrong decision on new technology. Its often “wrong” initially but directionally its right and helps the community and our business over 2-3 years.
If I ask 10 existing users about our plans… 8 out of 10 may not see the benefit for them personally. They generally don’t want change and prefer a focus on bug fixes (ease-of-use improvements). However, a set of new users may see this as the reason to try TrueNAS. 3 years later, the existing users embrace and say it’s good. If Enterprise customers also embrace, its a home run.
or 
or 
or 
or 
or 
or 
or 
would be a more appropriate and empathetic emoticon than 
?
Although I am of course not talking about offering both a free and enterprise product, but rather the two fundamental approaches to product management: technology-first vs outcome-first.