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Agile Project Management & Product Strategy - A Case Study - Introduction

April 2, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices, Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management & Product Strategy - A Case Study - Introduction (#1 in the series Agile Project Management and Product Strategy - A Case Study)
By Eric D. Brown

Note to readers: When I use the word ‘agile’, I don’t want to imply that I am explicitly talking about iterative or agile software development methods such as eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Feature Driven Development (FDD) or other types of “Agile” methods. Agile methods like XP and Scrum are the framework for my project management methods for managing software development projects but I am not a strict proponent of any one method or process over another. By using the word agile, I am trying to capture the frame of mind that someone should have to be able to accurately focus and respond to clients’ needs in today’s competitive world.

Over lunch recently, a good friend and very experienced project manager shared his thoughts on managing software development projects when he said:

“Software developers are so hard to manage. They never do what I tell them, never report status and are always behind schedule and over budget. Most times, they never finish the project!”

I asked him to think about what he just said and to think about whether he is ‘managing’ the project or ‘leading’ the project (a project manager should be a good leader first and foremost). I then jumped into my philosophy on managing projects using a more agile mindset and finished with the following comment:

“Perhaps software developers aren’t any harder to manage than any other function…perhaps it’s the system that has been put in place to manage the developers and their activities that causes the problems.”

I believe most software developers are bright and hardworking people…but they tend to be put into situations that drain all of the initiative and drive they may have. Traditional software development methods (e.g., Waterfall, etc) can and have been used quite successfully in software development projects but the large up-front requirements gathering, milestones and end-of-project testing usually result in software that is late and buggy. Of course there are successful projects that have used these traditional methods. The majority of successful projects are those that are given the appropriate level of resources, people and time and give the product development team the ability to get their job done without much hassle. Some smaller organizations have a difficult time with these traditional methods because they aren’t able to fully resource the project and aren’t able to be as flexible and responsive with these methods.

I recently encountered one of these smaller organizations who needed some help crafting a product development plan. As you will see, we were able to change the development plan from one that delivered a revenue generating product in 12 months to one that delivered a product with ~85% of the same features in 6 months at less than half the cost. Oh…and we were able to capture $3.5 million in revenue after 6 months.

Case Study - Software Development

I was approached by a small technology company to see if I would be interested in helping them re-design their product development strategy to release a product within 6 to 9 months in order to beat their competition to market and gain an edge over their competition. The product had to be something that clients found useful, valuable and worth paying money for and needed to be able to compete with the ‘big boys’ that were moving into this space. It appeared to be a pretty daunting task: take a product that was planned for release in 9 to 12 months and have it ready for market in 6 months.

The company is a small startup focused on a niche market in the technology field product uses a third-party content management server package to serve up large amounts of data from the enterprise network. They had some very good developers and had hired a consulting company to develop a product development strategy to provide for a product release to their client base in 9 to 12 months. This same consulting company had been planning on actually doing the development work as well.

After reviewing the plan, the senior leadership team and board of directors felt that 12 months was much too long to wait to enter the market. They had heard rumors that some very big names in the industry were starting to make moves that would allow them to enter this niche market within 12 to 18 months and felt that they needed to be first to market in order to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

I agreed to help with the project and joined the company in a consulting role to help them create a new plan that would see a product released within the next 6 months.

About Eric D. Brown:

Eric is a consultant specializing in IT Strategy, Selection and Implementation with over 14 years of experience in project leadership roles. Eric’s blog, found at http://ericbrown.com, provides an insight into the struggle of trying to align technology, strategy, people and projects.

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