We aren’t the only company that does this, but Redgate Software does try to be data driven. Across my 18 years, I’ve had plenty of people use evidence from customers, from usage data, from market research, and more to justify a decision.
I think Google and quite a few other companies have called this being “data-driven.”
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not on people’s opinions, the volume of their voices or who they are. When the evidence changes, we are prepared to change our minds. We will thank, and never shoot, the messenger.
I will say that this has skewed a bit over time, as I find that evidence is subject to interpretation and I’ve certainly seen some people cherry picking evidence to support their decision. Sometimes by asking for certain evidence.
However, we did realize there were issues and have tried to correct. I was part of a yearlong project last year that impacted marketing, product, and engineering where we focused on getting more information from more customers, and especially being careful to get evidence from multiple sources, including different geographies. We had a bias to the UK, so we tried to correct for that, and I think we made some strides.
That being said, I haven’t seen us shoot or blame the messenger for bad news, though sometimes thanks are sometimes not as sincere as they could be. I understand, because contrary news tends to dampen enthusiasm.
I have a copy of the Book of Redgate from 2010. This was a book we produced internally about the company after 10 years in existence. At that time, I’d been there for about 3 years, and it was interesting to learn a some things about the company. This series of posts looks back at the Book of Redgate 15 years later.