Meet the Parents: What the Software Evaluation Process Can Learn from the Movies

Pam Byrnes: What's the matter sweetie? Can't sleep? Greg Focker: No, no. I was just going over my answers to the polygraph test your dad just gave me.

• Meet the Parents

We recently hosted a prospective customer at our headquarters in California. We love inviting customers and prospectice customers into “our house” to see where Guidewire software is made and more importantly, meet the people who make and support it.

Over the course of two days, our visitors experienced a peek behind the Guidewire curtain with access to a variety of teams, including Product Management, Development, and Support. They had the chance to review our product roadmap and see first-hand some of the latest experiments we are working on in the Guidewire Labs. A big hit was the chance to tour our facility to see the open floor plan we use to facilitate agile development. With no barriers between them, our developers, product managers, QA and documentation all work side-by-side on teams where information flows easily.

Meeting the humans who make your software is an important step in a software evaluation process and if at all possible, a step we strongly encourage our prospects to take. Talk is cheap and marketing brochures are easy to create. Words like “commitment” and “relationship” can roll easily off the tongue – and if you’ve spent any time with Guidewire, you know these are words that we use often.

Coming to meet us in our new headquarters in Foster City is a quick and sure fire way to ensure you are getting a clear view of the “family” you are about to join – and whether we truly live by the words we use in our marketing campaigns. You can see the relationships of our people at work and witness first hand (without the aid of a polygraph!) whether the folks you meet are the sort you want to be connected to for, say, the next twenty or so years. Is the work environment a place that attracts and retains talent? Are core values consistent and upheld? Is there alignment among the departments?

We can’t guarantee that your visit will be as eventful as Greg Focker’s visit to his fiancé Pam’s house – but we do guarantee you’ll get a clear eyed view of our team.