by Karl Wiegers | Sep 3, 2014 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
Written by Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty The leader of a corporate requirements organization once posed a problem. “I’m experiencing issues in gaining agreement from some of our developers to participate in requirements development,” she said. “Can you please direct me to any documentation available on how developers should be engaged in the requirements process so I can help them understand the value of their participation?” In another organization, a BA experienced a clash between developers seeking detailed input for an accounting system and an IT manager who simply wanted to brainstorm requirements without using any specific elicitation techniques. “Do readers of your book risk cultural conflict?” this BA asked. These questions exemplify the challenges that can arise when trying to engage BAs, developers, and customers in a collaborative requirements partnership. You’d think it would be obvious to a user that providing requirements input makes it more likely that he’ll get what he needs. Developers ought to recognize that participating in the process will make their lives easier than being hit on the head by whatever requirements document flies over the proverbial wall. Obviously, not everyone is as excited about requirements as you are; if they were, they’d probably all become business analysts! Culture clashes frequently arise when teams are working on requirements. There are those who recognize the many risks associated with trying to develop software based on minimal or telepathically communicated requirements. Then there are those who think requirements are unnecessary. It can be tough to gain business-side cooperation on projects like legacy-system replacement if users see this as unrelated to their own business problems and not...
by Enfocus Solutions | Apr 21, 2014 | Collaboration, Product Development, Uncategorized |
For Part 1: Easy to Talk About, Much Harder to Achieve, read previous blog post For Part 2: Working Together through Product Discovery, read previous blog post In the last blog post we talked about the importance and the opportunities for collaborating during the product discovery phase of the product development lifecycle. In today’s blog post, we take a look at collaboration through the product delivery phase of the product development lifecycle. Collaboration during Product Delivery The second track in the dual track agile approach to product development is the product delivery track. Once a feature has made it onto the product delivery track, it will have been validated for viability and an understanding that the right feature has been defined — but now needs to be built correctly. Easy right? Not without collaboration and validation from your development team, your users, your marketing ream, your design team … well, you get the picture. Just the same as product disovery requires a collaborative validation effort to be successful, so does product delivery. The difference in the product delivery phase is that the focus becomes less of ‘are we building the right product’ — and more of ‘are we building the product right?’ This means the focus shifts towards ensuring a product will be adopted — in other words, the focus is on the usability of a product and ensuring the features that are developed, are developed in such a way that they will actually be used. User adoption is driven by understanding what the user needs Once a product reaches the delivery phase, we know that it is the right product, but that...
by Enfocus Solutions | Apr 1, 2014 | Collaboration, Product Development, Uncategorized |
For Part 1: Easy to Talk About, Much Harder to Achieve, read previous blog post The question of when teams need to collaborate in the product development lifecycle has an easy answer: always. But, there are key activities that take place within a product development lifecycle where collaboration is absolutely necessary. Collaboration through Product Discovery and Product Delivery There is an emerging concept in product management called dual-track agile that essentially looks at product development as two tracks: the product discovery track, and the product delivery track. On the product discovery track, teams collaborate to understand what the right product is to build. On the product delivery track, teams collaborate to make sure the product is built right. (Source: Jeff Patton, www.agileproductdesign.com) Both tracks require a foundation of collaboration and validation in order to be successful. In today’s blog post we’re going to talk about the importance of collaboration through the product discovery phase of product development—when teams are trying to figure out ‘what’ actually needs to be built in order to be of value to the market. Traditionally, in the product development lifecycle the validation of a product doesn’t tend to happen until after the launch of a product or during the validation of a developed prototype. Usually by that time, a significant amount time and money has already been spent on defining and developing the product to some degree—without completely validating that the product will meet a market need. On the product discovery track of the dual track agile approach, the focus is on validation, validation, and validation. Validation that the right problem has been identified, validation that...
by John Parker | Mar 31, 2014 | Business Analysis, Project Management, Uncategorized |
Simply put, cloud computing is computing based on the Internet. In the past, people ran applications on a physical computer or server in their building, cloud computing allows people access the same kinds of applications more easily and anywhere through the Internet. Cloud computing is growing rapidly because it just makes economic sense. So why are so many businesses moving to the cloud? It’s because cloud computing increases efficiency, helps improve cash flow and offers many more benefits. Let’s explore some of these benefit: Automatic software updates Many organizations that have implemented an on-premise ERP or CRM system know how painful it is to upgrade the software. With Cloud computing, updates are applied automatically — this is part of the basic service and often saves organizations millions of dollars per year. This frees up customers’ time that can be used on other important tasks. Flexibility The Cloud provides much more flexibility for increases and decreases in demand. For example, if a company needs more bandwidth than usual, maybe for some special promotion, a cloud-based service can instantly meet the demand because of the vast capacity of the services’ remote servers. In fact, this flexibility is so crucial that 65% of respondents to an InformationWeek survey said “the ability to quickly meet business demands” was an important reason to move to cloud computing. New users can be added or removed very easily adjusting to business demand as needed. Disaster recovery Disaster recovery is often much easier for cloud based services as this capability is a standard part of the service. Cloud computing providers take care of most issues, and they...
by Enfocus Solutions | Mar 27, 2014 | Collaboration, Product Development, Uncategorized |
We’ve all heard about collaboration, talked about collaboration, and probably even agreed that collaboration is really really really important—problem is, it seems much easier to talk about than to actually achieve. One of the key roles a product manager can play in any organization is to bring people together—to bring customers and users together to understand what their problems are and how to best solve them, to bring internal stakeholders together to understand what products will best serve the organization, and to bring the individuals of a product team together to work synchronously towards launching a valuable product that will delight their market and upset their competitors. But the fact is, it’s really challenging to get people harmoniously working together—and just as hard to keep them doing so throughout the entire product development lifecycle. As humans, we are all inclined to fulfill our own needs first—but when it comes to collaboration, those inclinations need to be shifted towards each individual working to fulfill the needs of an entire team before their own. If you’re thinking it sounds like hard work then you’re right—fostering collaboration during the product development lifecycle is indeed hard work. But it’s hard work that pays off. It’s currently estimated that 70-90% of all new products fail. You wouldn’t be alone if your initial reaction to that number is ‘wow!’ It seems like too high of a number—and one that makes launching a new product seem like a pretty bleak undertaking. But if we look at the leading cause of failing products then we might see that there is hope for a solution: the number one...
