Posts Tagged ‘product management’

The Secret to Designing Products Customers Love: Manage Requirements Effectively.

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

The Aberdeen Group just published a new Analyst report on the value of requirements management to help companies speed development cycles, improve profit margins and design products that customers love.  Every executive I know cares about product innovation, it’s the driver for greater financial performance of their respective companies.  But, few of them wake up thinking about requirements management.  What the bleep is that?   There’s an “a-ha moment” that comes when they realize the secret to innovation is managing requirements effectively.  The devil is in the details (requirements).  It’s worth the investment to get them right.

requirements_management_aberdeen_report

The key findings show that requirements management is critical to the successful development of today’s modern products.  Companies must be able to:

  • Manage product requirements throughout the development lifecycle
  • Provide visibility into requirements and their status to the entire product development team
  • Be able to truly evaluate the impact of changes on both the requirements and the design

Companies that achieve these core RM capabilities will be more efficient, see lower costs, and become more profitable with products that are in high demand from customers.

The report also includes a case study on IntraPace, the medical devices company, who is using Jama Contour to streamline their requirements management process and specification needs for meeting FDA compliance standards.

“Contour is now the best tool in our arsenal of design tools.” – Mace Volzing, manager of software development, IntraPace

After reading the report, if you want to give Contour a try, you can download a free trial with unlimited users here.  Let’s build great products.

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Requirements management meets Agile development – best of both worlds.

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Want to adopt more lightweight agile methods for software development?  But you can’t throw the book out and go pure Agile, because your company needs to maintain proper requirements management practices for product planning, requirements traceability, requirements specification documents and tight change control.  No worries.  The JIRA Connector for Contour brings these two worlds together, by connecting business teams responsible for product requirements and planning with development teams responsible for implementation.

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The JIRA Connector for Contour has been selected as Atlassian’s Plugin of the Month for December.  Join Frank Charron, Jama’s development manager, and watch the recorded webinar on how to succeed with proper requirements management on the product planning side of the house, while providing the developers and QA testers the freedom to work within JIRA for agile project management, tasks and defect tracking.

This hybrid approach is proving to be very successful for many organizations, especially those in industries such as medical devices and aerospace where requirements management is critical to meeting compliance standards.

Watch the webinar on Atlassian TV >

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System Engineering: Top Design Tips to Increase Profit Margins & Speed Development

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

The Aberdeen Group today released an independent research study conducted by Michelle Boucher, product innovation and engineering analyst, that examined the best practices of companies building smart products.   The 27-page report summarizes the results of a detailed survey conducted with over 150 organizations early this year. The report, co-sponsored by Jama Software and IBM, reveals the leading strategies for system design that lead to greater profitability while reducing the risk of excess cost.

“Requirements should be linked to higher level system functions as well as to the overall customer need it meets.”

The paper is title, “System Engineering: Top 4 Design Tips to Increase Profit Margins for Mechatronics and Smart Products“, but has broader impact and value to any company building products with complex requirements that can change during the development process.  The research finds that what is making the difference for successful companies is how they:

  • Capture what their customers want
  • Manage those requirements effectively throughout the product lifecycle
  • Take advantage of system engineering best practices

The key findings of the report demonstrate the financial gains and overall value that requirements management and system engineering best practices deliver to enterprise organizations.  Best-in-Class companies:

  • Earn 2x higher profit margins
  • Achieve 6x faster development cycles
  • Meet product launch deadlines 20% more often

Request a complimentary copy of the complete report from Aberdeen’s web site.  To put these industry best practices into action, explore Jama Contour.

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Capturing the RIGHT product requirements isn’t child’s play…but should it be?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

What are the real problems you’re solving for your customers?  Which features will entice customers to enthusiastically buy your product?  Do the ideas being discussed in your online forum match your company’s DNA and product strategy?

These are questions that many people in our industry work, and work, and work, really hard to solve every day.  But, maybe more work (as we normally think about it) isn’t the answer.  Maybe it’s time to play.  Seriously.  Skip the urge to round up the whole team in a stuffy meeting to debate it out, the next time you have uncertainty on your product plans.  Bring in some Legos, take your team outside to play a game or experiment with a few of the creative techniques that others are using to spark new insights, prioritize features and elicit the right requirements.  There’s tons of research on the study of how children learn through play – how it sparks creativity and enhances problem solving skills.  Yet, in the corporate environment, play isn’t a norm.  But, that may be changing.

Think this sounds crazy or too ethereal?  Maybe…maybe not.  Skepticism is understandable, but there are some very smart people at some very successful organizations challenging the myth that play and work don’t belong together.  In fact, they’ll tell you just the opposite, and they have plenty of research and success stories to back it up.  They suggest you should encourage collaborative play at work, and that specific to product development, it can make all the difference between creating the right product or missing the boat completely.  Undoubtedly, one of the toughest challenges of innovation is accurately understanding what customers really want, need and value most (translation:  what they’ll gladly pay you for).  Even when you ask customers, they often struggle to clearly articulate their needs.  So, what do you do?

My goal of this article is provide you 2 groups of links – the first is a list of books and resources with creative techniques to inspire innovation; the other includes resources for mastering requirements fundamentals.  This summary of resources is the intellectual capital of others based on their many years of experience and expertise.  As a point of disclosure, Jama has no financial interest in these resources – so the purchase of books, training courses, etc. have no impact on me or Jama.  The resources I highlight are ones I read, and I respect their content.  This article intentionally excludes software tools (sorry sales team and partners), I wanted it to focus on educational resources.  I obviously believe in the value of tools, but we won’t cover that here.  Since time is a real constraint for all of us, I’ve invested 10 hours pulling together this list – so you only have to spend 10 minutes to learn about them.

Creative Techniques for Sparking Ideas and Uncovering the Unspoken Customer Needs

Resources for Mastering Requirements Fundamentals

In summary, whether you use these resources or others, there’s 5 things that I’ve learned to be true over the years:

1.  There is no silver bullet technique for magically eliciting requirements.  You have to test different techniques, try different interview questions and learn which combination works best for each situation and audience.  And, it will change from project to project.

2.  Customers know what they like and what frustrates them, but they don’t know how to perfectly articulate their needs.  That’s your job to figure out.  You can ask direct questions, but usually the “a-ha” occurs during more authentic conversations and your observation of the unspoken problems they’re experiencing.

3.  Not to be dramatic, but the stakes are high.  The difference between getting requirements right or wrong can make or break your business.  No amount of beautiful design or agile engineering will compensate for the fact that you aren’t solving a real problem customers care about.

4.  The task of understanding the needs of your customers and capturing their collective voice isn’t owned by one person.  It’s a shared responsibility and its valuable to have a high level of collaboration continue throughout process.

5. When work is enjoyable, people perform better.  Thus, there’s merit in having the lines between work and play blurred.  It’s not a coincidence that some of the most successful and innovative companies in the world have high employee retention, fun corporate cultures and loyal customers who love the products they build.  That isn’t by luck, it takes work to have work feel like play.  Enjoy the journey.

For it to flourish, innovation’s future lies in a less disjointed approach – we’re already seeing signs of it becoming more holistic and collaborative.”  – Tim Hulme, business strategist at IDEO and author of The Future of Innovation

I’m sure I’m missing some really valuable resources, so please let me know others you’d like to share, post a comment here or email me.  Thanks to those who shared their insights and resources with me earlier to include in the article.  Feel overwhelmed by the list?  Just commit to trying one new technique this month and take it from there.  Let’s build great products.

For customer success stories, visit: http://www.jamasoftware.com/customers
For more info on Jama, visit: http://www.jamasoftware.com

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Product Innovation spotlight: IntraPace is solving a heavyweight issue using Contour.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

The World Health Organization predicts by 2015 that 2.3 billion people around the world will be overweight and 700 million will be obese.  The growth rates for weight issues in the U.S. alone has tripled since 1980.  Ouch!  But, Americans aren’t alone in their growing waist lines.  Many other developed countries are experiencing increasing obesity rates as well.  Despite billions being spent every year on weight loss products, few people actually achieve the long-term results they need to reduce their weight to a healthy range.  Thus, obesity is reaching epidemic proportions and remains one of the biggest global healthcare issues today.  Hmm, starting to feel a little guilty about eating that 2nd doughnut?

IntraPace, a medical device company based in Mountain View, California, is working on an innovative product that is tackling obesity in a new way.  Backed by Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific and other investors in healthcare and bioscience, Intrapace is developing the first “intelligent” implantable device for obesity intervention called abiliti, which is currently in clinical trials in Europe and not yet available in the marketplace.  As the product team at IntraPace develops this unique medical device, they’re managing all the requirements, both hardware and software, along with its related documents within Jama Contour – enabling them to control changes and keep everyone in sync.

I searched through many solutions and Contour was by far the best implementation of a tool for managing requirements.  It is simple to use and intuitive to learn. - Mace Volzing, software development manager, IntraPace

Recently, I spoke with Mace Volzing, the software development manager at IntraPace and asked him a few questions about his team’s use of Contour and their process for developing products.

What are the goals of the projects you’re managing within Contour?  Tell us a little about your role and the new product your team is building?

I manage the software development for our new abiliti medical device that is used by people to lose weight.  Once implanted, the abiliti system is designed to detect when a person consumes food and drinks.  Using sensors, the system tracks what they eat and their physical activity, then it uses this information to delivery therapy at the right time and monitor the patient’s progress against weight loss goals.   It works using what is called “gastric stimulation” by delivering a series of low-energy electrical impulses to the stomach to give a person the feeling of being full before they actually are full, thus helping them consume fewer calories.  Most people often eat until they feel full, so abiliti acts as a kind of an internal gatekeeper between them and the Supersize Fries they don’t need.  The system then also provides a detailed picture of the data, which can be downloaded and reviewed by patients and their physicians at the doctor’s office to track results over time.

In terms of Contour, I was looking for a tool to manage the flow of requirements from a Marketing Specification to System Requirements down through to the detailed hardware and software requirements, and finally to validation of Test Plans.  Keeping the interactions between all of these documents up to date is a challenge and finding the right tool makes a laborious task painless.  Contour is the right tool, we use it to manage all of our requirements.

What development process do you use?

In the medical device world, requirements documentation is very important for compliance.  It all starts with a Marketing Specification and flows down to a Product Requirements document.  We have design descriptions, API definitions, risk analysis and validation test plans all being managed and kept in sync by Contour.  All of the documents are cross-referenced for traceability, and Contour makes keeping these relationships up to date an easy task.

What’s the biggest challenge you and your organization face in managing this process?

Change!  Any single change can ripple through many different documents.  Having a way through Contour to manage the “ripple effect” is incredibly valuable.

Why did you choose Contour?  How is Jama helping you be more successful?

I searched through many solutions available for this capability and Jama Contour was by far the best implementation of a tool for managing requirements.  It is simple to use and intuitive to learn.  I was able to get our entire staff to buy into using the tool within 3 weeks of launching the software at our company.

What were you using before Contour to manage requirements?

Word documents and needles in my eye.  Actually I was lucky, I came into this project at the right time and was able to secure Contour in the early stages of development.  Contour is one of the best tools we have added to our process!

Bonus question:  What’s your favorite band of all time?

That is a tough question.  My taste in music constantly changes… Right now I’m a big fan of The Fray or Maroon 5.

Thanks Mace for your insights and sharing your story with us.  Good luck with the clinical trials, I think those who struggle with serious weight loss will be anxious to see abiliti hit the market as an alternative to other surgical procedures such as gastric bypass.  Personally, I’m thinking I’ll have to skip the Honkin’ Huge burrito cart today and go running at lunch instead.  Here’s to good health (and the occasional doughnut)!

For other customer success stories: visit Jama Customers page.
For more info, videos and a free trial of Contour: visit Jama Software.

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Product Innovation spotlight: Vertical Power uses Jama Contour to bring the cockpit into the 21st century.

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

My four-year old son loves airplanes and anything that has to do with flying, and so when I was showing him the image gallery of Vertical Power’s flight system and told him that daddy’s company helps them build it – his eyes lit up.  Daddy cool.

Airplanes - Whoohoo!

To be honest, my son could care less about requirements management and the development process, but he knows a cool product when he sees it, and Vertical Power definitely is cool.  Then, he asked me if he could have the VP-200 for his birthday.  And, if we could go flying later.  So, when I told him I didn’t have a pilot’s license or a plane, his look changed.  The net conclusion:  Vertical Power = cool.  Daddy = lame.  Kids = brutally honest.  Tough crowd.

Take a test flight with Vertical Power

We use a variant of an agile method for development.  We use Contour to track which requirements are in the current Sprint as well as a relative priority for when we want unimplemented features developed. - Kevin DeVries, lead developer, Vertical Power

In all seriousness, Vertical Power’s products have been called, “The next important advancement in general aviation.”  Their innovative electrical systems for recreational and experimental aircrafts are bringing the modern digital world to the cockpit, enhancing the flight experience for pilots.  You can watch a demo flight and other videos on their site.

Recently, I spoke with Kevin DeVries at Vertical Power and asked him a few questions about his team’s use of Jama Contour and the process they use to design their innovative products.  Kevin brings to Vertical Power’s management team over 15 years experience in design, development and testing of state-of-the-art embedded and real-time processing systems – having worked for Boeing developing advanced systems for the Air Force and other government agencies.  While finishing his Masters in Computer Science, Kevin developed the flight software for the Imager on the Mars Pathfinder.

What are the goals of the projects you’re managing within Contour?  Tell us a little about the products your team is building at Vertical Power.

Vertical Power develops Enhanced Circuit Breakers for the experimental aviation industry.  Our goal is not only to power the different electrical devices on the aircraft, but do so in a manner that reduces pilot workload, increases safety, and simplifies the wiring process.  Our innovative “Flight Mode”, based on the physical environment of the aircraft, allows us to perform actions, provide alerts, display checklists, along with other functionality within a consistent context.

How large are your projects in terms of the number of requirements involved?

The high-end VP-200 system has nearly 800 requirements; the VP-50 model has over 200 requirements.

What development process do you use?

We use a variant of an agile method for development.  We define which requirements are needed for the next release, along with a set of issues to resolve.  A general schedule is laid out for that work and usually within a few months the next release is available for general release.  We use Contour to track which requirements are in the current Sprint as well as a relative priority for when we want unimplemented features developed.

What’s the biggest challenge you and your team face in managing this process?

Many of the requirements, especially for the VP-200 are conceptual.  Vetting out the concepts to actual requirements, not only from a use case perspective, but engineering the integration of the new functionality in the old code base, can be a difficult exercise.

Why did you choose Contour?  How is Jama helping you be more successful?

We chose Contour because of its Web-based interface and data tailoring.  Because our development team is fairly small and agile, we needed to have low overhead when it came to storing and updating requirements (and test cases too!).  The ability to quickly edit, find and update status for the requirements within Contour has allowed us to focus on development, not requirements tracking.

What were you using before Contour to manage requirements?

We had put a significant amount of requirements and conceptual functionality in a Word document.   It quickly became over-bearing to track priorities, requirements for the current Sprint and the changes in such a linear format.  Contour gives us the freedom to manage requirements at an item level and create specification documents and other reports at a summary level as needed.

Bonus question:  What’s your favorite band of all time?

Jethro Tull is my favorite band, and of their albums, “Rock Island” and “Broadsword and the Beast” were instrumental in my enjoyment of Ian’s flute playing.  “Rainbow Blues” and “Bungle in the Jungle” are high on my favorite song list.

Thanks Kevin for your insights and sharing your story with us.  I’ll have to take my son for ice cream tonight and drive him by the air field to watch planes take-off, should land me back on the cool list.  BTW, don’t be surprised if you get a letter in the mail written in blue crayon from a 4-year old named Emmit asking for a VP-200.  What can I say, the kid loves planes.

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Fueling innovation through collaboration. Contour v2.6 is here.

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

We’re pleased to announce the availability of Contour v2.6, the collaborative way to succeed with requirements management.  We continue to enhance Contour to provide unmatched flexibility, customization and ease of use for global teams that are building sophisticated products and systems.

This new release centered around three key themes:

  • Custom Reports – Output requirements and other related data into true Micrososft Word format, and run context-sensitive reports on the fly.
  • Release Management – Customize what’s viewable in your product releases and include downstream relationships for enhanced requirements traceability.
  • User Experience – Cleaner design, enhanced customization of layouts and improved email notifications

A special thanks to our growing customer community for your valuable feedback on the enhancements we’ve made to Contour.  You drive our product roadmap.  See what’s new >

Jama Contour can easily scale to thousands of users and geographically distributed teams.  Experience for yourself how it can help your entire organization capture, connect, control and collaborate on requirements like never before.  Take Contour for a trial run >

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7 Essential Tips to Ensure Success with Requirements Management.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

As fast as things change in the software development world, it’s amazing how the fundamentals stay true to form.

Innovate or die.  Go Agile or die.  How about just get the freakin’ requirements right or die!  That might be a more accurate perspective that many development managers are taking today.  Especially during this tough economy, taking a “back to basics” approach can prove to be a good strategy.

Recently, we had an opportunity to speak with a few well respected consultants in the field of requirements management, including Karl Wiegers and James and Suzanne Robertson, and we were reminded of just how important it is to nail the fundamentals of the requirements management process – from writing good requirements to managing change requests  to prioritizing new features and requirements.  Whichever product development methodology or process you’re using, it’s critical to nail the fundamentals.

Requirements Management Tips - Download Guide

Download Requirements Management Tips

To help with this effort, we put together a new whitepaper on the 7 essential tips to ensure success with requirements management, along with a few free templates you can use right away to help you with your requirements process.  For some, these tips might be new. For others, these tips will serve as a  good reminder of the fundamentals that are easy to lose sight of during the heat of a project. You can download the requirements management resources directly from our web site.   Feel free to share these with others and add links your favorite templates.

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The 5 Signs You Know You Need Web-based Requirements Management.

Monday, November 17th, 2008

If you’re like 80% of companies, you’re still using documents, spreadsheets and email to manage product requirements.  It’s easy enough.  You fire up Microsoft Word, you start writing your Software Requirements Specification (SRS) or the Product Requirements Document (PRD).  When you’re done, you email it to the team, maybe post the content up on a Wiki or in a document management system.  No problem, right?

What happens when change occurs and the document is 200-pages long because what you’re building is a complex software product?  When do you reach the tipping point of needing a specialized solution for managing all the requirements and scope of what you’re building?

In the vein of a classic Cosmo article, here are the 5 tall tale signs you know you need an extreme make-over.  Umm, sorry, we mean you need Web-based requirements management…

1. Complexity.

Rule of thumb:  The more complex the project, the greater the need.

The complexity of software products is doubling every 2-3 years.  If you’re managing development projects with hundreds or thousands of requirements, you’re ready.

Benchmark:  72% of teams have projects that have at least 100+ requirements.  For 5% of companies, their average project has over 5,000 requirements.

2. Team Size Matters.

Rule of thumb:  The bigger the team, the greater the need.

If you’ve ever worked on a large team, you know that keeping everyone on the same page is a never-ending challenge.  If your team exceeds 10 or includes someone as disorganized as me, you’re ready.

Benchmark:  Over 40% of teams have at least 25 members and stakeholders.

3. Location, Location, Location.

Rule of thumb:  The more geographically distributed you are, the greater the need.

Teams today are virtual, working from offices in different time zones and countries.  If 10% of more of your team is virtual, you’re ready.  The single whiteboard of requirements and development tasks on sticky notes just won’t work anymore.

Benchmark:  Over 60% of teams have at least 10% of their team working in different locations.

4. Change Happens.

Rule of thumb:  The more change you have to manage through, the greater the need.

Requirements aren’t “artifacts”, that would imply they don’t change.  Requirements in today’s world are alive – they grow, they change, they evolve over time.  Managing revision after revision of requirements specification documents is painful, both for the author and the recipients trying to decipher what changed.  If you spend 10% or more of your week dealing with changes to requirements, you’re ready.

Benchmark: Over two-thirds of teams spend at least 10% of their time just managing changes to requirements.

5. The Other “F” Word – Failure.

Rule of thumb:  The lower the success rate, the greater the need.

Don’t worry, this isn’t group therapy, we all know the historical failure rates for software projects.  If your last project didn’t end well, then you already know you’re ready.

Benchmark:  Three out of four teams have a success rate of 60% or less, so you’re not alone.

Note: these benchmarks are from the industry survey data available in the 2008 State of Requirements Management Report.

So, how did you score?

If you’re experiencing 2 or more of these signs, then it might be time to explore using a specialized product requirements management tool.  There are a few 3rd-party sites that provide the full list of tools available:   Laatuk, INCOSE, and Jiludwig.

At Jama, we can help you with product requirements management.  Now, when it comes to the Cosmo extreme make-over, you’re on your own.

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The State of Requirements Management Report – over 1,500 downloads and counting…

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

What’s the link between requirements management and product innovation? Where are companies getting their next great product ideas? What are the real challenges and barriers to success? Agile, Waterfall, Iterative – which processes are teams really using?

These are a few of the questions we explored in a recent survey with product managers, project managers, business analysts, development directors and executives responsible for the planning and development of new software products and systems at their respective companies.

Download the full report, “The 2008 State of Requirements Management Report” and discover the latest trends in software product development.

A snapshot of the findings:

  • Challenges: There’s no substitute for fundamentals. The top 3 challenges to innovation were: gaining a clear understanding of customer needs, documenting all the requirements and ensuring what’s being built is what was planned.
  • Metrics: Which success metric is most important? Revenue? Buzz? Time to market? Customer satisfaction is #1 to business analysts and project managers; revenue was most important to product managers and executives. Team alignment to same goals and metrics is key.
  • Risks: Beware of scope creep. Scope creep tops the list as the #1 cause for project failure. Followed closely by “missed or poorly defined requirements” and “unrealistic schedules and expectations”.
  • Processes: There’s a lot of mojo around Agile processes, in fact we use a modified Agile process ourselves, but only 6% of organizations have shifted to being a pure Agile shop. Most organizations are using a mix of processes, so it’s important that the tools you use be flexible to work for different processes.
  • Tools: Over 80% of professionals still manually use MS Office to capture and communicate requirements using basic documents and spreadsheets. When you think about it, those are the same tools our kids use to do their homework. However, when asked which tools they plan to use or would like to use this year, Requirements Collaboration and Management tools top the list.

Join over 1,500 other professionals and download your free copy of the report.

Let us know what you think. Are the survey results surprising in anyway? Does the report validate things you already knew? How do these trends map to what you’re doing at your company?

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