LANDesk Increases Market Knowledge with Help from InContext

LANDesk provides the industry's most cost effective and intelligent systems and security management solutions from a single console that simplify IT management for desktops, servers, and mobile devices. LANDesk® solutions are scalable and support heterogeneous IT environments.

LANDesk has been very successful in the desktop administration market. However, LANDesk wasn't satisfied with its penetration of the server management market and knew it could benefit from a deeper understanding of its customer’s needs for desktop and server management in order to improve its product offering.

LANDesk wanted to gather reliable customer data quickly. It needed a way to bring the needs of customers to its developers as part of the user-centered design commitment of LANDesk's agile development process.

Through its work with InContext, LANDesk has better aligned its server management offerings with its customer needs; identifying key stories that were planned into its agile iterations and producing personas that helped keep its development team focused on the customer.

"Integrating contextual data with our agile development process means we are not just getting customer feedback on the work completed in an iteration, but that we're using the customer need to drive priorities at the planning stage when we create our stories and iterations," explained Lisa Baker, LANDesk lead user interface designer.

The market response to the resulting product has been excellent. In March 2005, eWeek Labs Technical Director Cameron Sturdevant wrote of LANDesk Server Manager, "The sensible combination of useful tools — a LANDesk hallmark — should ease many system management chores without adding a lot of training time.... We like LANDesk Server Manager['s]... approach to system management because it places so little burden on the managed system. During our tests, even when the agents were active, they were quite good at using only a minimum of CPU cycles and memory." (LANDesk's Server Management Tool Is a Solid First Effort) Go see it at www.landesk.com/Products/Server/Index.aspx.  

LANDesk's Challenge

LANDesk was already familiar with InContext and the Contextual Design process through prior work, so it hired InContext to help gather needed data. "We have usability and user experience professionals on staff," said Lisa, "but InContext specializes in collecting data from the field and using it to create a real impact on products and marketing strategies. That's what we needed. By contracting with InContext, we were able to quickly extend our resources and expertise to get the best value from our customer visits."

LANDesk's goal was to discover:

InContext's data collection process included the LANDesk team, which went along on field interviews to observe server managers in the workplace and to see the tools and techniques they used. The team also participated in interpretive sessions, lending its expertise to the data analysis and getting a first-hand look at emerging data.

By looking at different users performing a variety of tasks, the LANDesk team was able to understand the needs across the whole server life cycle. The InContext team organized this information and delivered a market characterization, detailed design recommendations and next steps.

LANDesk's implementation team uses an XP agile development process to develop LANDesk solutions. This meant the entire development cycle had to be completed within the short timeframe of just four weeks — from start to finish — before release planning and the product’s first XP iteration.

End Users' Issues

By observing real-world users at work and talking to them about their needs, the InContext team discovered that users' most-pressing priorities weren’t all addressed by LANDesk’s current solution. Users top concerns included: 

Design Solutions

Based on its data, the InContext team developed a series of recommendations to help LANDesk extend its market share in the server management market. LANDesk's Lisa Baker also took the data and developed personas to easily communicate the needs of the users to the LANDesk development team, helping focus the developers on creating value for the users. "Building personas with real contextual data brings the customer alive for development and marketing," Lisa commented.

Feature recommendations from the InContext team fit in the agile development timeframe, allowing LANDesk to glean immediate direction for implementation and then develop a server management solution that provides immediate value to users. InContext's recommendations focused on:

The team also delivered ideas for marketing and packaging.

Delivering Results

The project delivered on LANDesk's goals and provided the desired insight.

"Using contextual data means the personas we create are real. And they resonate well when the developers meet real-life customers," said Lisa.

 "LANDesk Server Manager gives us greater insight on how our servers are running and allows us to be more productive. It makes it easier for us to ensure application availability and that servers are up and will stay up and running all the time," said Luke Doherty, IT manager at Intercontinental Hotels Group.

Copyright © 2005 LANDesk Software Ltd. or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. LANDesk is a registered trademark or trademark of LANDesk Software Ltd. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries.