product management - quality teams collaboration

QUALITY – PRODUCT

OWNER/MANAGER

COLLABORATIONSreeram Kishore Chavali

South Bay Software Quality Engineering (SBSQE) Meetup

4/23/2013

ABOUT ME

� Enterprise Products

� Satmetrix (SaaS Product – Customer Surveys)

� Product Management (2 years)

� QA (4 years)

� Informatica – Data Warehousing � Informatica – Data Warehousing

� QA (6 years)

� Ramco Systems - ERP

� Development, Release Engineering, QA, Project

Management (6.5 years)

WHY THIS TOPIC?

� Every team wants to be known for

� Productive

� Efficient

� Speed

� High Quality� High Quality

� When interactions are not effective, it can slow

down the team

QUICK POLL

� On a 10 point scale how effective are PM-QA

interactions?

� What attributes are important?

� Clarity of Requirements� Clarity of Requirements

� Timeliness of inputs

� Willingness to answer questions

� Relay Customer Information

� Proactive communication

� Product Knowledge

� Domain expertise

LACK OF COLLABORATION

� Missing in action for a critical review

� Not enough details in spec

� No feedback on test scenarios

� No comments on bugs

No response to emails on clarifications� No response to emails on clarifications

� Customer feedback not known firsthand

� Missing in release planning/tracking meetings

� More…

PRODUCT MANAGER ‘ROLE’ EXPLAINED

� ‘CEO’ of product

� Value

� Investments

� Differentiation

� Everything� Everything

� ‘Janitor’

� Take care of gaps, issues

� Remove obstacles to adoption/usage

� Goals

GOAL 1: PREVENT THIS

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE –

ERRORS IN DEFINITION ARE MULTIPLIED

Range of P

ossib

le Erro

rRange of P

ossib

le Erro

r

True True

CustomeCustome

r Needr NeedDefinition Definition Needs Needs

AssessmentAssessment

Concept Concept

TestingTesting

DevelopmeDevelopme

ntnt

--Usability Usability

TestingTesting

--Beta TestingBeta Testing

TestingTesting Sales/MarketinSales/Marketin

g Rolloutg Rollout

ImplementatiImplementati

on & Supporton & Support

Range of P

ossib

le Erro

rRange of P

ossib

le Erro

r

Product Launch/ReProduct Launch/Re--launch is launch is

Expensive (Time/Money/Opportunity Expensive (Time/Money/Opportunity

Cost)Cost)

GETTING READY?

� I know the needs, domain

� Let me work on ‘detailed spec’

Wait! Are you getting inputs from everyone?� Wait! Are you getting inputs from everyone?

GOAL 2: DEAL WITH THIS

Embattled

Customers

SupportCompetitors

New

Technology

Long Term

Fixes

Embattled

Prod. Mngr.Support

Sales

Engineering

Competitors

Cool

Features

LET ME WORK MORE HOURS

� Ask for input and you get ‘loads’

� Prioritize vs Respond to all

� I am getting better at this

� Wait!! there is more!!

GOAL 3: DON’T KEEP ENGINEERS IDLE

CAN I RELY ON ENGINEERS?

� Big features need details

� Small features are not high value.

� I will give you an idea. Can you build based on

that?

You guys are smart. Do you really need a � You guys are smart. Do you really need a

‘detailed’ spec?

� Build v1 and I will come back

GOAL 4: MAKE RIGHT INVESTMENTS

ISN’T THAT OBVIOUS?

� Talk to anyone: customers, support

� Why do I need to justify problems to solve?

� I don’t get it

� How? Help!!

INTERRUPTIONS

� Sales: Hey Product Manager, we just lost a deal

to competitor. What are you doing about it?

� Support: our customers unhappy about this

feature. Can you confirm this is fixed in next

release? release?

� Pre-Sales: Can you demo this feature today to

customer?

� Execs: Where is updated roadmap?

� Blah, blah, blah

WHERE IS TIME SPENT?

Product Strategy, Roadmap, Release

Planning, Tracking, Execution

Competitive Analysis, Market Research etc.

Execution

Requirements design, validation

Working with Sales, Marketing,

Customers, Support

WELCOME TO DAILY ROUTINE

Embattled

Customers

SupportCompetitors

New

Technology

Long Term

Fixes

Embattled

Prod. Mngr.Support

Sales

Engineering

Competitors

Cool

Features

TIME MANAGEMENT GRID

WHO GETS PRIORITY

Sales

Customers

Support

Executives

Engineering and QA

Executives

Escalations from

everyone often without

context

TIME ‘HOGS’

� Customer visits

� Preparations, briefings before meetings to

understand context

� Actual visit

� Follow up� Follow up

� Escalations

� False Alarms

� Real Issues: Getting to root of the issue after sifting

through ‘big unstructured data’

COMMON (VALID)RESPONSES

� I am busy

� I don’t have context to your question

� I will explain to you orally and will update spec

later

I already told developer (sorry missed to � I already told developer (sorry missed to

invite/copy QA)

� I have too much information to deal with (emails)

PM IS NOT AWARE OF

� Hot fixes

� Each defect filed while testing feature

� Build challenges

� Performance issues (unless customer tells me)

Architecture issue details (I don’t get it)� Architecture issue details (I don’t get it)

� Reliability issues and corner cases

FACTORS IMPACTING PRODUCT MANAGER

EFFECTIVENESS

� PM to Engineering/QA ratio (1:10 or 1:20)

� Domain expertise/Product Experience

� Number of years with company/Familiarity with company products

� Product Lifecycle – New Vs Existing

� Cross functional staffing� Cross functional staffing

� Product Marketing, Sales

� Customer Issues

� Support, Customer escalations

� Understanding of Technology/Architecture

� Distributed team/Team Dynamics

� Communication Gap

� Working Style differences (email, skype or phone calls)

� Context Switching

GROUP DISCUSSION

GROUP DISCUSSION

� List and Prioritize 5 critical things that get

impacted due to lack of collaboration

� Suggest 1 or 2 ideas to help PM become effective

for each of the item

� Share some examples

� What is working?

� What is worst case scenario

� Pick up one example to share with everyone

QUICK POLL

� On a 10 point scale how effective are PM-QA

interactions?

� What attributes are important?

� Clarity of Requirements� Clarity of Requirements

� Timeliness of inputs

� Willingness to answer questions

� Relay Customer Information

� Proactive communication

� Product Knowledge

� Domain expertise

WRAP UP

PM HELPING QA

� Include Engineering, QA in customer meetings

� As passive audience

� Record and share ‘voice of the customer’

� Webex recordings

� Written notes� Written notes

� Both positive and negative feedback

QA HELPING PM

� Define and validate ‘business scenarios’ on

priority. This partnership is key to success.

� Have regular scheduled meetings and close out

open issues in these meetings

� Provide context of bugs for review� Provide context of bugs for review

� Feature status – bug list with severity

� Batch set of clarifications to optimize time

� Help with negative conditions of features

REFERENCES

� Prioritizing feature requests:

� http://svpma.org/eventarchives/SVPMA-02-2001-

Prioritizing_Feature_Requests-Fritz_Mueller.ppt

� Customer Focus

� http://svpma.org/eventarchives/SVPMA-09-2003-� http://svpma.org/eventarchives/SVPMA-09-2003-

The_Importance_of_Customer_Focus-

Geoff_Huckleberry.ppt

� Benefits Realization

� http://svpma.org/wp-

content/uploads/2011/04/Benefits-Realization-with-

Prashanth-Naidu-Hitachi-Data-Systems.pdf