"On my mainframe environment, the developers can't do a thing without an approved request from a business owner, a test script, end-user acceptance of the fix on the staging server, and an approved promotion plan detailing everything about the fix--including how to roll-back the fix if it doesn't work. However, if I tried to set up a system like this in Notes, my Notes developers would all quit! And where am I going to get good Notes developers?"

Resisting the temptation to pick up some extra development work, I explain that these processes don't diminish Notes' worth to the organization, they enable it! To demonstrate, allow me to ask several questions about your Notes environment.

First, which of your Notes applications generates the most help desk calls? Are a large percentage of your developers' efforts centered around just a few key features of Lotus Notes--and could more effective end-user training in these key features reduce the need for many of these efforts? Is your Notes build or promotion process repeatable and robust, even if your key developers or administrators are unavailable?

If you can quickly and easily answer these and other similar questions about Notes in your organizations, and more importantly, if you can point to genuine, meaningful statistics gathered automatically by your development environment, then I'd say you have good operational control of your Notes environment. If not, well, lots of us still enjoy watching those Wild, Wild West movies.

My Server!
I do have sympathy for the technical staff that are going to feel put out by the move to a better business system process. I still remember the Monday morning I reported for work at the old First St. office in East Cambridge where the Lotus side of the Notes development team lived in the late '80s and early '90s. We had our own quasi-production Notes servers in those days, and to make things easier for us we asked IS (Information Services) to maintain them for us, sort of like an early COLO (co-location). That Monday I got into Notes and connected to my server, expecting to tool around with complete and full access as I'd always been able to--only this Monday morning I was locked out...of my own server!

I called up IS and immediately got the administrator watching our Notes servers on the line.

"Hey, what's going on? I can't get into my Notes server!"

"Uh, it's not your Notes server, it belongs to Lotus!"

He went on to explain that since IS was fully responsible for the server, including availability, back-up, and all maintenance, "my" server was going to be treated as an IS resource. If I needed anything done, like a replica database created, or a user added to the NAB (Notes Address Book), I could submit an IS request, with the appropriate approvals, of course.

I was upset, partly because I felt I knew a lot more about Notes than the guy on the other line, but mostly because he was completely right. This wasn't my plaything, my sandbox, it was a corporate resource hosting critical business data; something meant to further the business goals of Lotus Development Corporation. And truth be told, after Lotus IS took over full control of our Notes servers they became much more dependable assets: they were up all the time, they all behaved the same way, and--as often happens with things that do exactly what they're supposed to--we forgot all about them.