Story share IBM 一同事职业发展履历

1. Your job scope?

--- My Job role is P4 client architect. The responsibility of this role is listed as below:
1). Support sales team to win new deals on P4 by clarifying clients' requirements, designing competitive solutions for clients, deliverying PoC for clients if required, proving IBM's private cloud building capability through technical workshops or presentations.
2). Deploy P4 to clients who have signed contracts with IBM.
3). Feedback to development team on prioritized marketing needs on private cloud. Provide valuable feedback to P4 development team on the key features that missed in P4 offering but which is very popular in the market and help development team review the revised design.

--- 我目前担任的是P4云平台客户架构师，个人责任包括:
1)，辅助销售团队明确客户需求，基于P4云平台和IBM相关产品为客户设计有竞争力的总体云解决方案； 实施POC，为客户讲解IBM私有云方案以及负责相关技术研讨。
2)，为签约客户设计并部署P4云平台。
3)，基于市场动态和客户需求的优先级，为P4开发团队提供产品开发建议，包括新功能点和已有功能须要加强的地方，并协助开发同事审查功能设计方案。
 
 
2. What's project you're leading/supporting? Were there any business challenges for you to finish it? And how do you make it?

---  Currently I am working on the Foton cloud deployment project as leading architect. I worked as leading technical architect from the project engagement phase, solution design phase through the current deploying phase.

The major challenges for this project are:
1).At the early stage, there were many strong competitors like H3C, Huawei, HPE, the private cloud requested by Foton would be used for their internet of vehicle. So the business impact was critical for the winning of this contract. The client's technical discussions with all the competitors had been kept for around 1 year but  still hadn't not decided before I joined the team with our P4 offering.

2).Foton has multiple organizations who wish to use the cloud platform, but each organization has different requirements for the cloud and some of their requirements are conflict. The worst situation is that they do not have a high level executive to manage this conflict from the client side.

3). The schedule of the design and deployment for this client was extremely tight. They asked us to complete all the works including requirement clarification, hardware bidding, purchasing, cloud platform design, deployment and tests in 3 months. I never saw such tight schedule. But the client needs the system for their production use and can not miss the schedule.

During the engagement phase, I helped IBM team influence Foton clients to choose IBM solution. We carefully investigated client's requirements, their deployment situation, and compared our solution with the competitors' and addressed our strengths to focus on clients' key pain points by integrating P4 together with multiple IBM products. We tested clients' feedback, recorded all their concerns and addressed them pro-actively by providing specific workshops or presentations.

To resolve the conflict requirements from client's different teams, we worked closely with them, listen to their requirements, provide recommendation from technical profession perspective and try my best to avoid any further conflicts. And make them to be awared that I am helping them achieve the common objectives of the project but not arguing with them.
 
Regarding the tight schedule, the entire IBM team had been working very hard to make this happen. The management team also helped find experts and the development and testing team resolved tough technical problems in very short time and provided different documents within a limited amount of time. To achieve this same goal, it was only a team work that can make it happen. Even it is still in the middle of the deployment work for this client, but everything goes well so far and  I have confidence on this team to make another impossible happen.  

In this case, IBM solution's "easy to use" by providing a self service portal, strong process customization capability, competitive bare-metal management capability, software pattern provisioning capability and comprehensive IT monitoring capabilities made the customer finally made their choice.  And IBMer's profession on design and deployment also impressed our clients. The client now can be able to meet their production schedule by deploying their private cloud and IBM wined the contract of this key client as well as the trust from the client.

--- 目前我在福田汽车私有云项目里担任首席架构师，我是从这个项目售前阶段就参与进来的，经历了项目签约，总体设计，硬件采购，一直到目前的实施阶段。
这个过程当中咱们项目组遇到了不少挑战，主要有：
1)，在项目售前阶段，咱们遇到了很多强大的竞争对手，包括华为，H3C，惠普等。因为福田汽车云平台是用来支撑其核心的车联网系统的关键基础平台，因此公司上下都很是重视, 以致于在IBM P4云平台和福田客户讨论以前，客户和相关竞争对手的技术讨论持续了近1年的时间，客户还没法决定究竟采用哪家的产品和方案。
 
2)，福田汽车有多个部门都会使用这个云平台，每一个部门都有本身比较独特的需求，并且其中有些需求是相互冲突的，更糟的是有些时候客户没有一个统一的高层去化解这些冲突的需求，须要咱们来帮助他们梳理。
 
3)，因为客户须要用到云平台的系统上线时间已经肯定，因此云平台从设计到实施时间很是紧张只有3个月，须要作完从需求分析，硬件(服务器，存储，网络)选型、招标、采购，云平台设计、部署和测试。我以前历来没有遇到过期间这么紧张的项目，可是由于客户车联网和全球CRM系统的上线时间不能推迟，因此咱们整个IBM团队的责任和压力是很是大的。

在售前阶段，我帮助IBM团队一块儿仔细分析客户需求，对比咱们和竞争对手的不一样产品，从客户的真实痛点出发，结合P4云平台和IBM的不一样产品，为客户作方案讲解和技术讨论，针对客户的反馈不断修改咱们的方案使其更符合客户的需求。
 
针对客户部门之间有冲突的需求，咱们积极的和客户不一样的部门进行沟通，认真聆听他们的想法，从专业的技术角度为他们提供建议，尽最大的力量化解不一致的需求。让客户感觉到咱们是在帮助他们达成一致的目标，从而使项目顺利进行。
 
关于项目时间周期很紧这个难点，整个IBM团队为了达到客户的指望，都很是努力的工做。管理团队及时帮助咱们协调相关专家支持，开发测试团队每次都在很短的时间解决咱们遇到棘手的技术问题而且按时提供客户须要的各类文档。整个项目进行过程当中，IBM团队充分展现了非凡的团队协做能力，从而使项目到目前为止十分顺利，我也很是有信心即便将来还会遇到什么问题，咱们团队都有能力解决它。
 
最终，IBM云平台解决方案所提供的易于使用的门户，强大的流程定义能力，有竞争力的物理机管理功能，还有软件部署和全面的IT监控运维能力，促使客户选择了IBM。然后咱们为其提供专业的设计和实施也给客户留下了深入的印象，客户也很是信赖咱们有能力帮助他们实现其应用按时部署到云平台这个艰巨的任务。

3. What kind of believe drive you or your team to make it success?  What you've learned from this project?

--- First of all, I believe our solution is very valuable for our clients: it saves their cost, makes better use of their resources and makes their daily work much easier.
Secondly, I also believe whenever I encounter a challenge from the client, I can always rely on my management team and the development team to support me on my back.
Thirdly, I have confidence in IBM that I can always get an expert's support on any technical challenge I encountered. And I can learn from them to continuously improve and develop my skills.

--- For what I have learned:

Although the project is still moving forward, I have learned a lot, e.g. how to continuously improve our product to make it attractive to our customer, how to support our sales team to manage clients' endless requirements, how to collaborate multiple teams including sales team, deliver team, clients, business partners to achieve the goal of completing the projects and bringing value to the clients.

--- 首先，我坚信咱们的云解决方案是可以给客户带来真正价值的，是能够帮助客户减小开销，更好的利用他们的物理资源，而且可以使客户天天工做得更轻松。
其次，我深信我在客户这里不论遇到什么挑战和问题，我均可以依赖个人经理、还有开发测试团队的队友，他们会尽最大可能地给我提供帮助。
第三，我对IBM的技术实力很是有信心，不论遇到什么的问题，我均可以从相关的技术专家那里获得帮助，而且不断提升我自身的能力。
 
--- 虽然项目目前还在紧张的实施过程当中，我已经从中收获了不少东西，好比如何结合客户的需求不断的提高咱们本身的产品从而使其对客户更具吸引力；如何帮助销售团队去控制客户无限的需求；如何在客户，销售，业务伙伴和实施团队之间协调使你们达成一致的目标，充分合做。