Which customer? I have 100,000+

The success of agile approaches depends on how close you are to your customer. This is an indisputable fact. So, if you’re an independent software vendor (ISV) that is producing commercial software products (like me at Pacific Edge Software), then how do I get my customer "on the team?" It’s likely not possible or practical and this is where effective Product Management kicks in.

The Product Manager (PM) is the proxy for the customer on an agile team in an ISV or for that matter any company building products for customers that they are at least once removed from. Being on an agile team will change how a product manager elaborates and drives their product to market. And I've had some interesting challenges on retooling classically schooled PMs (some of them didn't make required adjustments and didn't survive the organizational change). While the roles and responsibilities are the same, the behavior patterns must change.

The PM is integrated into the development team. He elaborates the feature and sees it through all stages of development. He does not produce monolithic MRD and PRD documents and hand them over the fence to engineering. He produces lightweight artifacts and insures they are implemented in a way that meets his customer's requirements. He makes sure that the testers understand the features in detail. And he ensures that the technical documentation is spot-on. In the end, if the product and/or feature does not meet the customer's requirements, it’s the PMs failure.

Producing monolithic MRD, PRD and requirements documents is a failure mode. The elaboration should be done as mini documents. Preferably as discrete "user stories." We dog-food our own PMM system (Mariner) and store them as individual records in its database. That was each one can be individually prioritized and triaged into the appropriate "sprint" and/or product release. Monolithic documents also reinforce "stove-piped" organizations where the PM can disengage from the product until test has verified and validated the final deliverable. This is another failure mode.

Making these adjustments has greatly improved the product development process at Pacific Edge. Our products are better aligned with customer needs and expectations, and our through-put of feature development is higher.

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