Want to influence the future of OpenEdge? You can with our CVP program! Read on for the full details about this program and information on how can get involved.
In May of 2018, the OpenEdge Customer Validation Program (CVP) was launched at ProgressNEXT. This program is designed to take OpenEdge application developers “behind the kitchen counter” so we can share the OpenEdge recipe with you, enabling customers and partners to collaborate directly with senior members of the development teams and influence product direction. Today, the CVP has more than 330 individual participants representing over 60 companies and it continues to grow. There are many ongoing and parallel discussion threads, and customers are invited to end of sprint reviews and regular open houses hosted by the OpenEdge development team, homing in on specific areas of interest.
What Is the Value of the CVP?
The value of the CVP goes two ways: As a software vendor, we get value from having better access to knowledge about what our customers need and what will make them successful. At the same time, our customers gain better insight and visibility into what we do as well as direct access to our senior engineers, architects and product managers. For example, in the regular Virtual Open Houses, we pick a topic on which an architect presents for 20-30 minutes and then the floor is opened for questions. It is like visiting us in person, but you can be anywhere in the world. You can ask our people about anything, as our long-term partner or user of our technology, and if we can’t help you right there on the spot, we’ll reach out later with an answer. With the CVP, we intend to strengthen our partnership and our collaboration with our user community.
There are already many instances where we took specific action and even pivoted our approach based on the feedback from customers we got through the CVP. For example, Team Espresso recently had 10 different people representing customers and partners attending their two-week iteration review. The team was able to share what they built, hear directly from customers and receive immediate feedback on what it would mean for customers to use it and what they might have missed. In their case, they added a way to handle security certificates as part of Docker containers.
A Glimpse Ahead
The CVP is still in its growth phase, and we highly encourage all Progress employees, customers and partners to join. The program offers great opportunities for customers to share their use cases, priorities and concerns, and also gives our developers and product managers a chance to test the reception of upcoming release changes and new features so that we can fine-tune our way forward. We would love to keep you engaged so we can better understand your needs and what keeps you awake at night. And of course, we also want to help you understand where we are spending our time. Hear from your colleagues in the industry and other partners around the world, learn from their approach and what they’re seeing, and just get more benefit from the solution and tools you already have.
When you join you will be asked to accept online terms, which simply cover a non-disclosure agreement because we are sharing what hasn’t been made generally available yet, and you will receive an intro letter from Oleg welcoming you to the CVP.
For more information on the Customer Validation Program, simply click here or push the button below to sign up directly.
Sign Up for the CVP
Oleg Kupershmidt
As a Director of Product Management Oleg manages the OpenEdge platform. Prior to joining Progress in 2017, Oleg served in senior Product Management roles at Ipswitch, CA Technologies, Vivox and Nokia, and accumulated extensive experience in leading product teams and managing mission critical enterprise software solutions.