Hit
a Wall? Improve Your Product Lifecycle Management
By Lee Shaeffer, Director, Sissach Technologies
When properly
applied, the product lifecycle management process will lead to
better products getting to market faster…using fewer resources.
This article briefly describes the process and provides tips on
implementing it effectively.
In the beginning,
there was the dining room table…several developers seated
around, working on Release 1.0. Two to three years later, the
company has a nice revenue stream, 30 to 40 employees…and
chaos. Revenue growth has stalled, Release 3.0 is six months late
and its specs keep changing with every call from a salesperson
to a developer.
All too often,
the management at emerging companies focus exclusively on revenue
growth and view "process" as evil - the bureaucracy
that the entrepreneurs left behind at their former employers,
something that gets in the way of rapid progress. Indeed, too
much process, especially the wrong process, will be damaging to
a fast growth, highly responsive company. However, too little
process will be equally damaging: employees won't know what is
expected of them, certain tasks will be done redundantly by several
people, other crucial tasks will slip through the cracks, and
the team will have different views of what needs to be done next
so efforts are not coordinated. The result is inefficient use
of precious resources and ultimately stagnation…or worse.
For example,
there was a company with over 100 employees, no job descriptions
and no formal process - people were expected to figure out what
needed to be done and go do it. While this approach worked well
when the company was just starting out, the company was now bogged
down, employees were coping by inventing their own individual
processes on the fly, and the day-to-day direction of the company
was driven by vocal and aggressive "champions" who were
well intentioned but not always coordinated with each other or
aligned with corporate strategy. Not a pretty picture, especially
since precious resources were being squandered through inefficiency
and the company was losing customers and prospects as release
dates continued to slip.
The right
amount of process is indeed valuable for providing the appropriate
structure for defining and guiding activities. While there are
many processes that exist within a company, this article focuses
on the product lifecycle management process since it is comprehensive
and usually among the first to be formalized as a company grows
beyond the initial core team of founders.
As its name
implies, the product lifecycle management process addresses the
product from "cradle to grave". "Product"
in this context refers to packaged services or bundled product/service
offerings as well as tangible items. The product lifecycle is
typically parsed into multiple phases, which vary from company
to company but usually address:
- Idea generation
and capture
- Design,
which includes talking with customers to understand their "pain".
- Development
(the implementation of the design)
- Testing,
which may involve prototyping
- Launch,
which includes the internal transfer to operations and external
introduction to the marketplace
- Maturity
(the maintenance of the product while in the marketplace)
- Obsolescence,
including transitioning to the next generation product.
Within each
"phase" is a defined set of tasks, checklist items,
key milestones, deliverables and metrics that specify the nature,
scope and measurement of work within that phase. Collectively,
these phases become the foundation for a product lifecycle management
process. Most readers are probably familiar with this, and they
have worked with several product lifecycle management processes
during their careers. They therefore will appreciate that there
are many variations of the process and the terminology used to
describe it.
With this
as background, I offer the following tips and observations as
"food for thought" as you implement or refine your lifecycle
management process:
- The appropriate
amount of process depends heavily on the size and growth stage
of the company. A small company (e.g., $3 million) benefits
from informal, loosely defined processes that would produce
chaos at a $50 million company, while the appropriate process
for the latter would choke a smaller company. The key is to
evolve the process as revenues and employees grow. The problem
I have seen at most companies is that process woefully lags
the growth as management focuses on revenue. A little lag is
acceptable - process cannot be changed daily since it takes
time for the organization to assimilate - but more effort in
updating process will pay rich dividends longer term.
- Implementing
process properly requires time and effort, and it should be
considered an investment. Simply publishing a process flow chart
will not work. (Three months into the "process" a
VP Engineering actually said, "I don't know why people
say we have no process. I emailed it to everyone back in March.")
The process needs to be defined in some detail, explained to
employees, reinforced periodically. As with any change management,
there will be employees who resist change and want to continue
doing it the old way, so the message needs to be clear. Successful
implementations have involved training sessions and ongoing
coaching by the executive champion or by an outside consultant
acting on behalf of the executive. Executive champion? You definitely
need one, and the CEO (if not the champion) needs to be fully
supportive.
- There is
no "best practice" process for product lifecycle management.
Not only does is a process that works well at one company become
a disaster when enforced at another company (as noted above),
within a single company there often are -- and should be --
different variations on the process that accommodate various
circumstances: minor versus major releases, product families
at different stages of market maturity, etc. While it is beneficial
to understand what other companies (including former employers)
are doing and borrow practices that make sense in the local
context, it is never wise to import another company's process
wholesale or to repeat exactly the same process that worked
successfully on one product. Of course, effectively "borrowing"
practices requires an understanding of why the practice works,
not just what the practice is.
- There
is a tradeoff between rigid enforcement of process and rapid
time to market. A rigid "stage gate" process, in which
all activities in a certain stage must be completed and signed
off before work on the next stage can begin, is good for managing
risk, product cost development expense or adherence to contractual
specifications, but it lengthens the development cycle by reducing
the opportunities for concurrent engineering (e.g., working
on activities in several phases simultaneously.) While early
stage companies rarely have rigidly enforced stage gate processes,
it is something to keep in mind when the company considers a
more formal stage gate process.
- Since product
lifecycle management is a cross functional effort involving
virtually every department, it is possible but difficult for
a functional manager to perform effectively. Most companies
formalize a product management function that takes responsibility
for ensuring that all lifecycle tasks are performed. Often referred
to as the product champion, the product manager typically reports
in through marketing or development but is matrixed into every
department. The product management function is distinct from
project management, program management and product marketing,
although a product manager in a smaller company often wears
some or all of those hats.
- Much of
the product lifecycle management process is common sense - there
is no magic to it. The "secret sauce", if it does
exist, is developing a process that works in helping you accomplish
your business objectives, documenting it and investing in its
implementation so that everyone is clear and moving in the same
direction. And, just as a product must be maintained as it matures,
so must the lifecycle process behind it.
Improving
Product Lifecycle Management will be the focus of an upcoming
Impact! Sales and Marketing event on January 26, 2005. For more
information, visit www.scsc.org.
Lee Shaeffer
is director of Sissach Technologies, a firm that provides training
and consulting to companies wishing to implement or refine their
product lifecycle management process and strengthen their product
management function. He may be reached at 310-393-9259, lshaeffe@ix.netcom.com
