Server activation

Setting up a server for the first time and turning on management is one of the most technically complex jobs a systems engineer faces. Our challenge was to make it simpler and take less effort while keeping confidence that onboarding would succeed.

I led early sessions with customers to understand their workflows and needs in detail. I then brought in solution architects, partners, engineering and product management to develop the proposed experiences, and worked with executive leadership to keep them aligned with business goals.

I led several workshops with a global group of stakeholders, including pre-sales, solution architects and product management, where we tested onboarding workflows for first-time server setup.

The sessions reinforced the value of user-centered product development. I combined customer insights, stakeholder feedback and executive guidance into a prototype for testing.

One of the team's biggest challenges was simplifying how two management systems connect: a legacy system that lives on the server hardware, and HPE's cloud service for server management and monitoring. Connecting them raised security concerns, conflicting workflow practices and strongly held executive directives, which made it hard to agree on product direction.

I started a collaboration with the HPE human factors lab to test the proposed direction, which challenged one of the executive requirements. Despite the study's results, that requirement stayed.

Where I could make a difference was simplifying the whole activation workflow. Working with two UX and engineering teams, we cut activation time by 50% and delivered APIs customers can use to script activation and onboard at larger scale.