Product Management - Quality teams collaboration
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The document discusses the importance of collaboration between product managers and quality assurance teams. It notes that a lack of collaboration can slow down teams and lead to errors. The document provides tips for how product managers can work more effectively with engineering and QA teams such as including them in customer meetings, clearly defining requirements, and having regular status meetings.
Product Management - Quality teams collaboration
- 1. QUALITY – PRODUCT OWNER/MANAGER COLLABORATION Sreeram Kishore Chavali South Bay Software Quality Engineering (SBSQE) Meetup 4/23/2013
- 2. ABOUT ME Enterprise Products Satmetrix (SaaS Product – Customer Surveys) Product Management (2 years) QA (4 years) Informatica – Data Warehousing QA (6 years) Ramco Systems - ERP Development, Release Engineering, QA, Project Management (6.5 years)
- 3. WHY THIS TOPIC? Every team wants to be known for Productive Efficient Speed High Quality When interactions are not effective, it can slow down the team
- 4. QUICK POLL On a 10 point scale how effective are PM-QA interactions? What attributes are important? Clarity of Requirements Timeliness of inputs Willingness to answer questions Relay Customer Information Proactive communication Product Knowledge Domain expertise
- 5. 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 Customer feedback not known firsthand Missing in release planning/tracking meetings More…
- 6. PRODUCT MANAGER ‘ROLE’ EXPLAINED ‘CEO’ of product Value Investments Differentiation Everything ‘Janitor’ Take care of gaps, issues Remove obstacles to adoption/usage Goals
- 7. GOAL 1: PREVENT THIS
- 8. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE – ERRORS IN DEFINITION ARE MULTIPLIED Range of Possible Error Range of Possible Error Range of Possible Error Range of Possible Error True Custome Definition Developme Testing Sales/MarketinImplementatir Need Needs Assessment nt g Rollout on & Support -Usability Concept Testing Testing -Beta Testing Product Launch/Re-launch is Launch/Re- Expensive (Time/Money/Opportunity Cost)
- 9. GETTING READY? I know the needs, domain Let me work on ‘detailed spec’ Wait! Are you getting inputs from everyone?
- 10. GOAL 2: DEAL WITH THIS Customers Long Term New Fixes Technology Embattled Competitors Support Prod. Mngr. Cool Engineering Features Sales
- 11. 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!!
- 12. GOAL 3: DON’T KEEP ENGINEERS IDLE
- 13. 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 ‘detailed’ spec? Build v1 and I will come back
- 14. GOAL 4: MAKE RIGHT INVESTMENTS
- 15. 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!!
- 16. 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? Pre-Sales: Can you demo this feature today to customer? Execs: Where is updated roadmap? Blah, blah, blah
- 17. WHERE IS TIME SPENT? Product Strategy, Competitive Roadmap, Release Analysis, Market Planning, Research etc. Tracking, Execution Working with Sales, Marketing, Requirements Customers, design, validation Support
- 18. WELCOME TO DAILY ROUTINE Customers Long Term New Fixes Technology Embattled Competitors Support Prod. Mngr. Cool Engineering Features Sales
- 20. WHO GETS PRIORITY Sales Customers Engineering Support and QA Executives Escalations from everyone often without context
- 21. TIME ‘HOGS’ Customer visits Preparations, briefings before meetings to understand context Actual visit Follow up Escalations False Alarms Real Issues: Getting to root of the issue after sifting through ‘big unstructured data’
- 22. 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 invite/copy QA) I have too much information to deal with (emails)
- 23. 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) Reliability issues and corner cases
- 24. 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 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
- 25. GROUP DISCUSSION
- 26. 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
- 27. QUICK POLL On a 10 point scale how effective are PM-QA interactions? What attributes are important? Clarity of Requirements Timeliness of inputs Willingness to answer questions Relay Customer Information Proactive communication Product Knowledge Domain expertise
- 28. WRAP UP
- 29. PM HELPING QA Include Engineering, QA in customer meetings As passive audience Record and share ‘voice of the customer’ Webex recordings Written notes Both positive and negative feedback
- 30. 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 Feature status – bug list with severity Batch set of clarifications to optimize time Help with negative conditions of features
- 31. 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- 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