TechJunkies series: Importance of “Quality” in application software, myth or reality
September 17, 2008
I have been working in the IT industry for quite sometime and one word that i really fail to understand is “QUALITY“. When i say i fail to understand i do not really mean the meaning of the word “QUALITY”, this is probably the first most or second most spelled out word in the IT industry today so understanding the meaning is no big problem.
What i really don’t understand is the “QUALITY” practice (followed in many companies). Many companies speak a lot about the importance of quality, if you are one of those blessed souls who get a lot of opportunities to visit many events in this tough economic situation then you must have heard executives boasting about the sophisticated quality processes, quality by design etc etc etc.
What keeps me wondering is whether these companies really mean what they claim? Do they really give enough importance to quality? is it just a marketing gimic to capture the imaginations of a prospective customer or is it really taken seriously? Honestly, i am struggling to find answers for all these questions.
In my opinion, quality is just another step in the software development life cycle for many companies. Quality is never taken seriously by product managers while defining the product, never taken seriously by architects during design, never taken seriously by developers while programming (and unit testing), surprisingly not taken seriously even by so called quality testers (they just do a monotonous job of testing the product based on the test specification, what happens if the test specifications are biased towards the happiest flow of a produdct – in many cases it is).
How is the situation if you start thinking on parameters like ratio of number of quality testers per developer? Is it dismal or healthy (many cases it must be pretty dismal). Due to the crowded development organization, the amount of code generated in a software development lifecycle is humungous, many many times more than the capacity of the quality management team.
How is the situation if you start thinking on other important parameters like product planning? How much time an executive allocates for quality management to test a product? In many cases it is minimal leaving the quality testers to do fire fighting.
I am not being pessimistic about the current situation, i am sure there are many companies in the IT industry that are exactly not doing what i have outlined above but how many such companies exists? how many companies are hungry to launch a quality product and not just another product?
Closing remark: Companies must start looking at quality right from minute someone starts talking about an idea that has the potential to become a product. Hitting the market early might help a lot in early sales, but hitting the market early with bad quality product shall keep the product in the shelf (and not an inch beyond that). Quality may be a myth now but companies must make quality a reality to be successful in the prevailing competitive environment.
Product management in my books is an art of assimilating raw information from multiple sources and channelizing the same in the best possible format to an audience that expects nothing less than cent percent clarity.
Challenging isn’t it? Yes, if one wants to get into the role from another profile, sometimes frustrating for people who are actually doing the job on a day to day basis. Let me speak my mind on what i think about this….
IT/FMCG/Manufacturing – name any industry, product managers play a vital role today. Interaction with the external community, interaction with the in-house shop floor, interaction with in-house stakeholders, countless hours on the phone, countless hours traveling are just part of the day of a typical product manager. As i come from (a niche silo of) IT, excuse me if my assessment of product management is too IT centric and cannot be generalized. Readers comments are most welcome, this will further help me in my self assessment of this profile.
I would broadly classify the job into the following categories:
a) Product definition – “WOW” factor of Product Management
b) Product roll-out and related activities
c) Product execution – “OH WHAT A MESS” factor of product management, might end up as a contradictory statement
Let me start with product definition that happens to be my favorite topic, sometimes i wonder, why am i not asked to just define products though in reality this is not feasible. Product definition is all about thinking and thinking correct. I look at product managers as potential thought leaders and i guess it starts right here. My definition of product management is derived more from product definition than the other two aspects i have mentioned earlier. So what is product definition after all?
The first indicator of a good product manager is the listening skills. For effective product definition a product manager must be a good listener. Initial few steps of product definition is all about listening to multiple information sources. This could be the sales , marketing , business development, value engineering and customers hence one must place listening and asking the right questions on top of the priority list.
The next step is the right interpretation of what one heard from multiple information sources. From my perspective this is an important milestone of product definition as incorrect interpretation can lead to incorrect information for the target audience.
The penultimate milestone would be to convert the interpreted information to a clear, flawless, unambiguous and well articulated specification for the target audience. This is an important aspect of product definition as the audience usually expects cent percent coverage with no scope for errors or excuses. Lack of which can have a negative impact on the final finished product.
Let me try to throw few challenges, few show stoppers and many of them are very interesting to handle:
a) Product manager for an emerging product operating from a non-customer centric location faces a stiff task to define the right product staying far away from the prospects.
One easy solution that i hear from many experts is “World is a global village which is very well connected” so why don’t you connect with customers/other stake holder to overcome the said deficiency? Being far away from the epicenter of customer dynamics does not really help though there are many sophisticated collaboration tools that enables efficient interaction. Face to face any day is better than other modes of interaction but with challenging economic arithmetics one needs to overcome this challenge with a lot of innovative measures.
b) Stakeholders:
In most situations there are stakeholders eagerly waiting for the results of your definition and in most cases stakeholder lend a helping hand towards efficient product definition. In some cases stakeholder can end up putting you in midst of a tricky puzzle. In such cases solving this puzzle takes the limelight and the core task of product definition takes a backseat.
Getting out this situation can be difficult and impossible in many cases, In impossible circumstances i recommend usage of my WMD called “ESCALATION”, push it up the hierarchy if a situation cannot be handled at your level. Well, this comes at a cost which is EXTRA NON-AVAILABLE TIME.
I am still evaluating other possible solutions to handle the “Stakeholder MESS”, i hope i can arrive at some concrete “NON ESCALATION” methods
c) Validation:
Product definition is just one part of the complete definition storyboard, the other important aspect is validation of definition. This takes us back to the information sources and stakeholders. I have seen that product managers spend days and nights trying to define the right product mix by sorting out the challenges mentioned above. A lot of us fail to validate the correctness of definition. I would recommend this as an important and integral part of the product definition process. Product specification according to me must not flow to the audience till the same is validated to the satisfaction of the product manager and the stakeholders.
Once it reaches the target audience, it is definitely more complex to handle change management so i will avoid this if given a chance.
I hope this substantiates why it is a “WOW” factor in my books.
Let me jump into the next set of activities performed by a product manager which is product roll-out related activities. I am writing this section from what i have observed or facilitated rather than a practitioner.
Roll-out of a product in definition is basically roll-out of a concept which can be very challenging. Many times customers want to hear the vision, in many cases customers expect the product company to help them realize their goals with the stated concept. I have seen companies hosting region specific marketing events to put company’s vision into customer road-map. These “WINE AND DINE” high profile events attended by top notch executives (from customers) create a footprint (or leads in marketing terminology) for an emerging product in the market.
How is this possible without a top class roll-out material? A product manager has to be extremely innovative in his/her thoughts to capture customer imaginations in few Microsoft power point slides.
Where is the challenge? I covered one of the aspects earlier which is creation of a presentation worthy material. The other most frequently faced challenge is the request for creating these highly imaginative/innovative materials and not getting a chance to attend these events to feel the pulse of customers/prospects. Unfortunately economic arithmetics wins here as not all product managers get an opportunity to attend these lavish events but still prepare these roll out materials based on request from marketing/sales folks, executives etc.
Companies must realize that economics must not win every time and product managers must be given an opportunity to hear, feel what customers feel about the product they will be defining. I am sure all product managers look forward to this “rare” event.
Last topic before i close my blog, one of the lesser imaginative tasks performed by a product manager is the execution of the product defined by the product manager.
I called out this task as “OH WHAT A MESS” factor of product management and there are many reasons for the same.
Execution is indeed an important and interesting part of product management if performed in logical sequence of steps. Unfortunately due to sense of urgency (in many cases), logical thinking takes a back seat and product goes through an inevitable failure phase. Failure of execution is a failure of definition as the product is not realized in a way it was conceptualized.
I always wondered the reasons for the execution failure, i have listed out top three reasons here:
a) Inappropriate product vision, which results in definition of an unwanted product, which results in execution of an unwanted product. End of the cycle questioning the inappropriateness of the product results in chaos and inevitable failure.
This is most frustrating part of the story not just for the product manager but for all the stakeholders involved in the development of the product from scratch to reality.
b) Right product vision, perfect product definition, perfect execution but during the execution cycle because of many reasons questioning the appropriateness of the product, which results in minor/major changes in the definition, chaos and product failure is inevitable because of complicated eleventh hour change cycle to handle the changes.
I am not sure if this can be avoided, may be not, may be yes, depends on why the appropriateness of the product initially perceived as perfect is questioned towards the end? Was this an executive decision? Was this reaction based on customer feedback?
c) Right product vision, perfect product definition, perfect execution plans but failure of execution due to lack of coordination between stakeholders executing the plan, due to differing priorities between stakeholders executing the plan (very much possible in a large organization) which results in a product that is incomplete or a product that does meet anyone’s expectation or a product that stakeholders (in some cases product managers themselves) do not want to be associated with……
This sums up my thoughts around what product management is all about. I am sure this not yet another job but definitely an ART.
