Development Process Stability

After shipping a first product, successful companies face a number of challenging problems in product development, including lack of development process stability as development work scales up. Here are some responses that have worked well in the computer, software, storage and consumer electronics industries.

Why process selection matters now

As Product Development scales up to involve multiple concurrent projects, three things happen to stress the development environment and to threaten its results:
1. The informal processes used at startup no longer work reliably to get quality products produced on time.
2. More managers are needed as the development department becomes too large for one person to manage directly.
3. Supporting customers and manufacturing takes time away from development but offers opportunities for feedback that must not be ignored.

This is an opportunity to choose good processes for the next 5 years. There will never be time to reconsider process selections. The cost of change only goes up.

Managing multiple projects is more complex. Engineering and Product Marketing must cooperate in new ways to assure that the next generation of products is successful.

Founders and early employees who are technologists have been crucial to success, but they may not be willing or able to make the transition into a development environment that is sustainable for the long run.

Development processes

Development must move out of crisis mode, so that projects can be completed on a predictable schedule.
There may have to be changes clarifying who is responsible for setting project goals.
Project management tools need to be used to manage schedules and feature lists without overloading the development team with overhead tasks.
When a milestone is missed, rapid analysis and decision-making is critical to staying on track for product introductions. Certain metrics are useful here, and project teams need feedback about how they’re doing.

Development tools

Who is responsible for Quality? The Development department must get serious about product quality, even if QA is managed from Operations or elsewhere.
Bring in hardware and software tools for testing, establish disciplined procedures for release, and stay in the issue/correction feedback loop.
In addition, Development can provide useful input to product direction in the next cycle through interaction with customers and field staff.

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If you would like more information about how we assist growing companies with managing product development for the long term, please call 415 663-1818 or email info@johnlevyconsulting.com

What is Product Marketing's role in development?

A colleague asked, "Do you believe Product Marketing could be the bridge between the Engineering and R&D organizations? It seems to me that market requirements are the other piece to incorporate there and Product Marketing could add that to R&D’s specs before working with Engineering to determine what’s feasible and on what time schedule… What do you think?"

It works at the front end to have an Advanced Development group build prototypes and conceptual specs/models, with specs or requirements added by Product Marketing before giving them to Engineering. But the problems (below) don’t come out until the crunch — when you’re waiting for the next milestone in actual product development.

The problem is that Product Marketing and Engineering (the responsible department for developing products delivered to customers) have a natural tension: they have to arbitrate between what’s feasible within the time/dollar/featureset constraints; Product Marketing should have the customer deliveries in mind, and should interpret “what the customer wants,” while Engineering is responsible for determining which (and how many) features can be delivered within the cost and time constraints.

As a product is developed, Engineering will naturally come back now and then to renegotiate features vs. schedule (and sometimes $) as they uncover problems (or opportunities) that impact schedule. Product Marketing cannot act as the arbiter for this negotiation — Engineering must participate as a fully-responsible party, determining what can be delivered when. When Product Marketing has all the power in this negotiation, you either get emasculated Engineering, which won’t take any chances because they’re being second-guessed; or you get promises that can’t be kept, because Engineering isn’t really running the development process.