| Meeting Summaries:
03 October 2003:
Topic: Top 10 Things
Needed to Create a Successful Product
Speaker: Ruth Hennigar
Ruth Hennigar spoke to a large crowd on the Top 10
Things Needed to Create a Successful Product: Getting
from Market Requirements to Final Software at the October
6th meeting of the SVPMA . Ruth focused on what it takes
to get a successful product built and shared lessons
that apply to both large and small companies alike.
Ruth developed her rules after 20 years in Information
Technology, most recently as the VP of Software at Palm.
Prior to Palm, Ruth was in 2 startups, as the Executive
Vice President of Systems at BarterTrust.com and as
the VP of Products at OnLive! Technologies. Before joining
OnLive!, Ruth was the GM of the Java Products Group
at Sun. Ruth also spent 6 years at Apple in various
engineering and management roles and began her career
at Bell Northern Research (now Nortel) as a software
engineer. Ruth currently serves on several Advisory
Boards for startup companies. Ruth is passionate about
shipping products people want. She delivered her top
10 list in Letterman like fashion with humor and punch.
Recapping the count down:
#10. Define the customer. You must know for whom you
are building your product. Close your eyes and visualize
your customer. If you can't see them, you have not defined
your customer. What attributes does the core customer
base posses? What problem are they trying to solve?
Along with knowing who is the customer, you also need
to know who isn't the customer. This will let you assess
feature requests and stay focused. Once you know the
customer, write it down and share it with the whole
team from engineering to QA and even the executives.
Make sure everyone clearly knows the target customer.
#9. Set up-front product goals. Decide at the beginning
what the "must have" features are and the
release timing. Establish your quality goals and create
tests to validate the goal, such as uptime or performance.
Once again, write it down.
#8. Identify core team members. Once the team is identified,
identify a project lead. This person is the general
manager of the project. She will have her trusted lieutenants
but take responsibility for tracking that all the pieces
come together on time. You should then clarify roles
and responsibility within the team. You must get buy-in
and ownership from the other team members. If this doesn't
happen "you are toast." Ensure you have an
executive sponsor, who may not have day-to-day tasks,
but is required to prepare for and attend the regular
team meetings.
#7. Identify key issues early. Identify issues and
get them on a list. Then assign people to resolve these
issues as soon as possible. You must leave time in the
schedule for these issues, be it licensing or additional
research. Also, be upfront when you know you don't know
and reserve time to figure it out.
#6. Learn from the last time. Use the last project
to analyze what worked, what didn't, and what improvements
can be made. Review these issues in the planning meeting.
Because if it didn't work last time, don't expect it
to work this time, unless you have changed something.
Further, introduce change and new processes early; do
not wait until you are mid-project to implement a new
methodology.
#5. Understand the tradeoffs. Understand the variables
from resources, features, quality, and delivery date
and make your tradeoff decisions as early as possible.
You will always need to make some tradeoffs, so remember
to compare the options against the original product
goals.
#4. Tell the truth. Telling the truth is critical to
get teams working together. You should never shoot the
messenger; doing this will make sure that in the future
your team will only tell you what you want to hear.
You want the truth and you want it as soon as it is
known, because the sooner you learn about an issue,
the more options you have. One trick of the trade is
to build in a detailed level of granularity in the schedule;
this makes it easier to track small slips before they
turn into major problems.
#3. Communicate. Clear and frequent communication is
essential to successfully deliver a product. Set-up
non-meeting commutation channels such as a website for
discussions. You should never assume, rather be clear
and specific. The core team should meet weekly. This
will likely be a team of 3-6 people. Then send updates
to the entire team, which might consist of 20 or more
individuals. Lastly, having effective meetings requires
an investment - team members need to do their pre-work.
For all meetings, have an agenda and keep minutes.
#2. Focus, focus, focus. Keep your eye on the ball.
Ruth advises keeping a short list of critical items.
She refers to this as "Ruthless prioritization."
You should review new requests and data against the
original product goals. Make sure to avoid feature creep
and "last customer input trap."
#1. Make decisions. You should make decisions and stick
with them. This will keep you from loosing precious
time by revisiting old decisions. Have a consistent
process for decision-making. Identify who gets to make
the decision, who has to be included, and who gets a
vote versus an opinion. Once the decision is made, write
it down along with options reviewed, and support the
decision maker. Ruth mentioned that if new information
becomes available, it is ok and prudent to revisit a
decision. Adding perspective, she advises that very
few decisions are fatal that aren't obvious.
That's it! Follow these ten rules and you'll release
a successful product that customers want.
^TOP |
