My worries about the APEX management

It’s not that I like to point the things out, nobody wants to. I gain no personal pleasure out of it, even if some of you may think so. And the time writing this blog hurts me, because I have other things to do now (I started a new career in medicine). I’m also not standing here and say, I could do better. I have a hard time to gain agency about my personal life. But I’m still personally attached with what happens around APEX and rather be shot as the messenger than letting everybody else eaten by the wolf (I hope this saying makes somehow sense in English 😅)

We just overcame the dark valley of underperforming for quite some years. For the last versions we could fairly say, the outcome of every APEX release was finally satisfying again, especially the recognition of customer requests. All that’s missing now - for a 100% satisfaction - is quality. But this is not what I want to talk about today.

It’s June 16, Kscope 25. Yesterday there was the usual APEX Sunday Symposium with “leaks” of future features but still no release of 25.1 😳

For many years it was announced we’re gonna have 2 versions every year and there is not a major version and a secondary one, but both are equal. I still have the opinion to have rather 1 release per year, avoiding the publishing costs of 2 versions, because real companies are not upgrading their environment twice a year and testing all their business apps and spending more and more time to fix things (because of the degrading quality). But fine, as long as it is predictable, we just skip the first version and wait for the second one +2 patch sets.

We planned our regular APEX 24.2 upgrade in December (because we are forced to do so by the security department). We got in trouble, because no 24.2 in November in sight which we could have expected and also not in December 😳. We had to ask for an exception which is a tedious process and puts you on the naughty list.

I don’t want to make a big fuss about it, but at least I would have expected Oracle to announce a “profit warning” in November, that 24.2 may not be released in 24 anymore but somewhere in January (with all your save harbours). There we have a huge management weakness Communication!

Weird to call it 24.2 then in 2025, but fine for the sake of the finished documentation, no big deal.

We all expected 25.1 in May right, but nobody questioned the release by Kscope 25 right? Again, didn’t happen, no communication!

Also we have the new policy no leaks before publishing a new release to maximise press impact. I totally agree with that, but another break of promise and weakening the reliability of public statements with “previews” at Kscope 25.

Business needs predictability and reliability! And if anything goes sideways we need communication!

APEX is not the “Small village in Gaul” anymore, it has become Rome! So we need somebody who can handle that, say NO to features for the sake of predictable releases. We need a Cesar!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPNrWvatXiU&t=42s

Same weird situation with the APEX Cloud upgrades, you have to wait months to get the latest release. The vendors product on the vendors very own cloud → Management Problem!

I’m very much into F1 because I’m a passionate race kart driver myself. You have no idea how hard it is to improve a lap time just by three tenths. The G-Forces are killing you and the drivers basically risking their lives. But very often everything gets nullified by a wrong management decision in the paddock #Ferrari 🙈

You may have heard about the GP in Barcelona where Verstappen bumped into Russel deliberately. But you probably don’t know the full story. First you need to know that Red Bull is not the leading team anymore. They have lost their technical advantage, but Verstappen sill can compensate a lot of it by his exceptional driving (just compare it with the second car, same model, different driver, on average 30! seconds behind).

Here is the full story:

Verstappen was on a Podium Position #3 on soft tyres in lap 55 of 64. A safety car was deployed, so Red Bull management decided to change the tyres to the hard (white) ones (the only ones left, the whites have much less grip but hold much longer, which was not needed for 9 laps left and 6 of them with safety car so no tyres needed there!). He almost lost the car with these crappy, cold, white tyres when the race started again in lap 61 of 64 (Verstappen expected another set of red ones and he complained loudly over the radio). Ferrari could take advantage of the situation and robbed position #3. First Management Fail!

Russel also almost could overtake Verstappen in this situation and Verstappen had to leave the track to avoid collision and an overtake by Russel. The Red Bull Management ordered then to let Russel overtake him deliberately, because they “thought” the Stewards would demand that anyway, because he left track (but it turned out the Stewards were fine with it, because Verstappen avoided collision and he didn’t overtake anybody in the process). Second huge Management Fail! Verstappen cursed over the radio and was completely frustrated when he seemingly made way for Russel to overtake but then instinct took over and he accelerated again and bumped into Russel, which ended up in a 5 places penalty and 3 penalty points for Verstappen, with the risk that he has to pause a race if he gets another point.

So instead of letting Verstappen finishing the race in #3 with 15 points, he finished 10 with 1 point and 3 penalty points all due Failures of the Management!

https://youtu.be/9_qmWm9aefk?si=u64pmmWeVI5eSKxI

I think the team is performing well, so drivers, paddock, motor and chassis development are fine, but we’re clearly missing a strong team principal who is not in love with features but with the outside perception of customers and press. Someone who is able to say NO to features in order to deliver and can communicate to the customers. I hate to say it, but again, we still miss Joel after so many years, nobody even close in sight, but I also don’t even see an effort to find somebody for this position?

https://youtu.be/2oksetv3i90?si=GflpWcAa_utjU_ls&t=44

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Juergen