A Letter to the DevCentral Community
Hey there DevCentral community,
I’m Tony Hynes, Director of Community Development for F5. Given the scale of change to the look and functionality of DevCentral, and the passionate responses we’ve received as a result of the change, I wanted to take some of your time to address a few things. But if you’re in a hurry here’s the tl;dr version: We know this relaunch didn’t go exactly as planned and we’re committed to fixing it.
First off, I want to apologize for forklifting your experience without enough prior communication. We should have given the community a better heads up on what exactly was going to change. We’re asking the DevCentral user to change a lot of known behaviors (login, contribution maintenance, account management) and we didn’t do a good job hitting that message early and often. Total failure on our part.
Second, we are working through the challenge of locating the content you need both on-site and through search engines. We are actively working on a few fixes that will alleviate some of the pain, and we will be adding “help” functionality which will act as a guide to help you work with the new DevCentral search, filter, and navigation options. We should have had this complete at launch. Again, mea culpa.
Third, change is hard. The old platform was just that—old. There was no path forward on the old platform to build the type of experience we know the community wanted or to build the features the community needs. The community deserved a better site and we weren’t going to be able to build that on-top of the old one. In the short term, that means we have to make some compromises and take a few steps back in order to move forward. Which leads me to address what’s coming.
A long-standing request from the community has been to consolidate credentials across F5 properties. DevCentral will be the first F5 property to on-board the necessary technology, and soon you’ll be able to use this SSO on other F5 sites. Also, from the “big ask” bucket is the ability to respond to Q&A via email. The new platform supports not only Q&A, but also article and message comments as well. This adds a whole new level of engagement capabilities to the site, and validates the message that DevCentral belongs to the community, and we want to hear your voice.
Fourth, the members of my team are as much members of DevCentral as they are owners, and they are equally passionate. They want the improvements to come just as fast and furious as you do. They’re not satisfied with the relaunch either and are as committed to making this right as I am.
Finally, please know that we understand the pain caused as a result of the changes and the impact to your daily workflow. We are actively working to resolve every issue with complete urgency.
Thank you for sticking with us through this transition and for understanding that our goal is a better experience for all. You have, once again, proven that this is a community that cares enough to provide feedback (good and bad). For that, I cannot thank you enough!
Tony Hynes
I’m Tony Hynes, Director of Community Development for F5. Given the scale of change to the look and functionality of DevCentral, and the passionate responses we’ve received as a result of the change, I wanted to take some of your time to address a few things. But if you’re in a hurry here’s the tl;dr version: We know this relaunch didn’t go exactly as planned and we’re committed to fixing it.
First off, I want to apologize for forklifting your experience without enough prior communication. We should have given the community a better heads up on what exactly was going to change. We’re asking the DevCentral user to change a lot of known behaviors (login, contribution maintenance, account management) and we didn’t do a good job hitting that message early and often. Total failure on our part.
Second, we are working through the challenge of locating the content you need both on-site and through search engines. We are actively working on a few fixes that will alleviate some of the pain, and we will be adding “help” functionality which will act as a guide to help you work with the new DevCentral search, filter, and navigation options. We should have had this complete at launch. Again, mea culpa.
Third, change is hard. The old platform was just that—old. There was no path forward on the old platform to build the type of experience we know the community wanted or to build the features the community needs. The community deserved a better site and we weren’t going to be able to build that on-top of the old one. In the short term, that means we have to make some compromises and take a few steps back in order to move forward. Which leads me to address what’s coming.
A long-standing request from the community has been to consolidate credentials across F5 properties. DevCentral will be the first F5 property to on-board the necessary technology, and soon you’ll be able to use this SSO on other F5 sites. Also, from the “big ask” bucket is the ability to respond to Q&A via email. The new platform supports not only Q&A, but also article and message comments as well. This adds a whole new level of engagement capabilities to the site, and validates the message that DevCentral belongs to the community, and we want to hear your voice.
Fourth, the members of my team are as much members of DevCentral as they are owners, and they are equally passionate. They want the improvements to come just as fast and furious as you do. They’re not satisfied with the relaunch either and are as committed to making this right as I am.
Finally, please know that we understand the pain caused as a result of the changes and the impact to your daily workflow. We are actively working to resolve every issue with complete urgency.
Thank you for sticking with us through this transition and for understanding that our goal is a better experience for all. You have, once again, proven that this is a community that cares enough to provide feedback (good and bad). For that, I cannot thank you enough!
Tony Hynes
Published May 24, 2019
Version 1.0
_pre_Nimbostratus
"First off, I want to apologize for forklifting your experience without enough prior communication."
" ... and we want to hear your voice."
🙋 .. eh .. hello .,.. If you want to hear user voice .. you could trial the changes and ask user opinion BEFORE you making the changes. Maybe F5 need some secret sauce for A/B deployment ? ( See : https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/programmability-in-the-network-blue-green-deployment-pattern )
"We are actively working to resolve every issue with complete urgency."
You get my respect if you back out the changes and try again at later time.
Right now it feels like you admitted that you screw up but still forge ahead with it.
janholtzAltostratus
OK, here's a little test:
Assume you're a consultant working on a locked down management windows machine.
You get permission to download & install the F5 irule editor to that machine, since you've been using it since first release to work on TCL code, your bread & butter.
PLEASE show me, how, using Devcentral, I can get the installation files for latest said iRule editor?
I've been a staunch supporter of, and evangelist for, F5 since LTM version 9.21, and frankly some of the latest decisions in product stability and community - specifically Devcentral - couldn't have been more detrimental if the decision makers were actively TRYING to destroy the brand.
Regards
Jan Holtzhausen
- LiefZimmerman
Admin
- take a look at this article (also referenced on Codeshare) - https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/iRule-Editor-Download
Hope this helps.
CameronDevcentral used to be a BIG sell to management and the team at renewal time for our devices because of the ease of finding solutions but now it is hard to navigate, you cannot open multiple links from a search and it's just plain annoying to use.
Devcentral also used to be the first place I looked but now its the last.
- LiefZimmerman
- thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. You are not alone in your frustration and for that we apologize.
We consider ourselves to be part of this community and we take things like "hard to navigate" and "just plain annoying" to heart. The DevCentral community and team is not known to be shy or soft-spoken but that doesn't always translate into 'effective' or 'persuasive'. That said, we (the Team) are doing enterprise-level cross-fit now...building solid relationships and getting better in many of those arenas; all with the goal of improving the community experience per community feedback.
Thank you.
On the subject of "opening multiple links" specifically - amazingly enough something as simple as that was tied down in red-tape that we struggled through as a result of launching DevCentral using many enterprise systems simultaneously (SaaS Community, SSO, and UnifiedSearch). I *think* I have finally cut through the red-tape (just last Friday) on the search component and the, embarrassingly simple, tech solution should be coming soon. I'm scared to commit to when exactly (red-tape is also very STICKY)...but it is imminent.
Within the constraints of our business realities we are turning feedback like yours into action - hopefully we can do that in a timeframe that won't drop us completely off your reference-list. If even half of what we are striving for becomes reality; perhaps that will even begin moving DevCentral back up your reference-list after this hit.
