IBM acquired Apptio, which they considered to be among the top five or six options they reviewed. It’s likely that Apptio’s sales team painted a very rosy picture for our executives, promising unprecedented transparency into team operations, the ability to identify inefficient teams, and traceability from high-level executive OKRs down to individual Jira tickets. Naturally, Arvind was thrilled at the prospect of this newfound insight, perhaps even imagining it would make workforce reductions easier to manage.
However, it seems no one involved in the decision-making process conducted a proper user experience study with objective feedback. Now, almost 13 months post-acquisition, Apptio still lacks user role management, leaving sensitive financial information accessible to everyone. This oversight has forced IBM to restrict access solely to management, a far cry from the comprehensive visibility and utility the leadership envisioned and sold to lower-level managers like myself.
IBM does this time and time again with so many companies we buy. I know rank and file employees are frustrated with the tools we take away and are forced to use. But I am helpless to do anything about it.