Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:04:10 -0400WeeblyMon, 30 Jun 2014 21:29:03 GMThttp://noonegrowth.com/johns-blog/metrics-for-development-organizations

The usage of metrics to measure all aspects of business has gained ground in this age of Big Data and Business Analytics. This trend has been incorporated into the management system for development in many companies. Regular operational reviews of organizations include a deep dive into the development process where measures are taken of things like bugs. These metrics are reviewed on a quarterly or even monthly basis and used by the highest levels of a company to drive decisions on strategy, funding, and resources. Given the ability to gather more and more information, such an operational posture seems to make the most sense for companies today.

Metrics are gathered from a wide variety of sources and posted on a regular basis on dashboards which are then used to manage functions. In the development environment, these metrics do provide a strong view to how the business is performing in the short term. However, if these metrics are not completely aligned with the goals of the business, they drive less than optimal results.

Product development is an area which has been challenging to manage effectively with metrics. Remember, in most organizations, a development organization’s primary goals are to provide the business with products or solutions that generate profits and growth over the long haul. This involves managing products through a long term process where measurements of operations will vary depending on the stage of development of each product. If you want to truly want to come out with products that are differentiated (and therefor, able to drive more profits) you need to innovate. And innovation is a notoriously difficult thing to measure accurately or in a timely manner.

Often development metrics used by enterprises often have the following limitations:

• Short Term - Metrics are generally short term. Metrics gathered and monitored on a short term basis tend to drive short term actions. Typical metrics include development costs, productivity, error rates, and schedules. All of these are key things to track, but they don’t take into account the entire product development process or provide means assess long term performance. Remember that the key to long term development is how well the products meet the market / customer needs and how well they sell. Since product development cycles are often measured in years, they are not captured adequately each month or quarter.
• Easy - Metrics are ‘easy’ to gather. Often companies identify metrics that can be extracted from IT systems related to the Product Development Process. This means that any parts of the process that aren’t captured in the IT systems, are hard to measure. Metrics related to innovation, new product areas, requirements gathering, and collaboration are notoriously difficult to measure accurately and generally don’t come directly from IT systems.  Metrics related to costs, productivity, and on time delivery are easier to capture and often become the basis for any development metrics. The net result is that metrics related to reducing costs overwhelm measures of developing products that generate the most growth.
• Multiple Sources - Development metrics often come from multiple sources. These include systems to track parts or code, quality systems, HR systems, financial systems, and customer satisfaction systems. Leveraging multiple sources of data without normalizing does not present an accurate view of performance, but the process of normalization is not always easy or even possible.
• Impede Innovation – As shown above, the use of metrics that are often gathered for development monitoring do not have the longer term horizon or provide for measures of growth in a way that foster innovation. In fact, they tend to favor strategies that will reduce your business’ innovation and therefor reduce competitive advantages that are needed to grow profitably.

I am not saying that measuring performance of development through metrics is not an important and valuable tool to assess performance. What I am saying, that such metrics management techniques can’t be done in isolation. Assessing the development performance must also include other means of assessment that won’t easily boil down to metrics that can be gathered and posted on a dashboard. In order to promote innovation, collaboration, and effective life cycle management, you can't always compare numbers and trends to get an accurate portrayal of performance.

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]]>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:32:30 GMThttp://noonegrowth.com/johns-blog/developing-winning-products-solutions-is-a-team-sport

With the Olympics in full swing, it comes to mind how much development of new products is such a team sport. Like any Olympic athletic team, no individual is going to perform as well as a coordinated team with a focus on the overall team goal. While individual team members may be able to score more points or goals in a game or make saves, they rely on their teammates to help them. This is where the coaching staff comes in. They must work with the team and coordinate their efforts, balancing the skills and capabilities of the team members with the overall team. Let’s take a look at how a well-coordinated athletic team works together and how comparable parts of a product development team can learn to collaborate and coordinate in the same way to go for the gold.

• Athletes / Design Team – Each athlete has their own strengths and weaknesses. In each game, they need to learn how to leverage their strengths and the strengths of their teammates more effectively in order to ensure that their team wins. Notice that the primary goal is to get the win. Scores, assists, and saves are important, but it is more important make sure that they team wins. The same is true for the design team. They must take into account their skills and capabilities and collaborate with their fellow designers. They also must understand their role in the entire development process and as the product development proceeds, they must be willing and able to take on different responsibilities to respond to the current situation and unknowns that may crop up during the design process.
• Coaches / Executives – The coaching staff is critical to assessing the players and balancing them on the field to ensure that they are aligned to the overall gameplan designed to maximize the likelihood of defeating the opponent. They need to be aware of what is happening on the field and are always making adjustments based on the current score, the time remaining in the game, the performance of his players, and the reaction of the competition. Executives are critical in the success the overall development process in a similar way. They are the ones who decide what it means to win (with the help of key members of the team) and are constantly monitoring progress towards getting out a product that will win in the marketplace. The good executive team understands that the they need to be in constant communication with the design team to understand where their progress and to guide the team on adjustments that need to be made.

What really determines if an Olympic team wins is the constant coordination and collaboration of the team members and the coaching staff throughout the training effort and through the games. Likewise a successful product  / solution is clearly tied to coordination and collaboration. This needs to include the interactions between the design team and the executives overseeing the development. But it also has to stretch further to other members of the extended team which includes marketing, sales, service, operations, and other groups inherently involved in bring the offering from initial idea to satisfying the customer needs. Make sure to get your whole team involved early and often to make sure you go for the Gold!!!

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]]>Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:09:14 GMThttp://noonegrowth.com/johns-blog/first-post

Have you noticed how the introduction of the technology of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) has greatly impacted our ability to get around? When I was traveling to a new place for the first time, I would pull out a map and plan my route. Or more recently, I would jump on the web and use Google Maps to give me directions to the proposed destination. Now, I jump in my car and just plug in the address of the destination and the system automatically guides me. It provides me with step by step directions with warnings about when to make turns, provides an accurate estimate of the time to the location, and will even adjust the route to respond to traffic tie ups or congestion along the planned route. I have found that I tend to get lost in an unfamiliar environment when I don’t have a GPS working. It essentially provides you with an automated, real-time roadmap to make sure that you get to where you want to go.

It would be nice to have a similar GPS type system to help plot the product roadmap for a business. The Product Development process has always been something of an art form. The planning aspects of it are often driven by internal strategic processes that are not always responsive enough to adjust to changing market conditions, competitor moves, or even technology capabilities. If such a Product Roadmap GPS was designed it would need to:

• Provide a standard sequence of steps to reach your destination on tried and true roads (you probably don’t want to be going off-road on this journey).
• Deliver accurate information about when you will meet your goals (acceptance of market and product requirements, development of prototype, testing, announcement, product release and roll-out and most importantly achievement of sales ramp up targets)
• Reroute your plan appropriately to adjust for changes in the marketplace that could impact the product release or overall success of the product

If you find such a device, let me know. In the meantime, I will continue to recommend that business manage their development efforts, with a robust, flexible, cross-functional new product development process.

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