October 3rd, 2003
Top 10 Things Needed to Create a Successful Product
Speaker: Ruth Hennigar

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Ruth Hennigar spoke to a large crowd on the Top 10 Things Needed to Create a Successful Product: Getting from Market Requirements to Final Software at the October 6th meeting of the SVPMA . Ruth focused on what it takes to get a successful product built and shared lessons that apply to both large and small companies alike. Ruth developed her rules after 20 years in Information Technology, most recently as the VP of Software at Palm. Prior to Palm, Ruth was in 2 startups, as the Executive Vice President of Systems at BarterTrust.com and as the VP of Products at OnLive! Technologies. Before joining OnLive!, Ruth was the GM of the Java Products Group at Sun. Ruth also spent 6 years at Apple in various engineering and management roles and began her career at Bell Northern Research (now Nortel) as a software engineer. Ruth currently serves on several Advisory Boards for startup companies. Ruth is passionate about shipping products people want. She delivered her top 10 list in Letterman like fashion with humor and punch. Recapping the count down:

#10. Define the customer. You must know for whom you are building your product. Close your eyes and visualize your customer. If you can't see them, you have not defined your customer. What attributes does the core customer base posses? What problem are they trying to solve? Along with knowing who is the customer, you also need to know who isn't the customer. This will let you assess feature requests and stay focused. Once you know the customer, write it down and share it with the whole team from engineering to QA and even the executives. Make sure everyone clearly knows the target customer.

#9. Set up-front product goals. Decide at the beginning what the "must have" features are and the release timing. Establish your quality goals and create tests to validate the goal, such as uptime or performance. Once again, write it down.

#8. Identify core team members. Once the team is identified, identify a project lead. This person is the general manager of the project. She will have her trusted lieutenants but take responsibility for tracking that all the pieces come together on time. You should then clarify roles and responsibility within the team. You must get buy-in and ownership from the other team members. If this doesn't happen "you are toast." Ensure you have an executive sponsor, who may not have day-to-day tasks, but is required to prepare for and attend the regular team meetings.

#7. Identify key issues early. Identify issues and get them on a list. Then assign people to resolve these issues as soon as possible. You must leave time in the schedule for these issues, be it licensing or additional research. Also, be upfront when you know you don't know and reserve time to figure it out.

#6. Learn from the last time. Use the last project to analyze what worked, what didn't, and what improvements can be made. Review these issues in the planning meeting. Because if it didn't work last time, don't expect it to work this time, unless you have changed something. Further, introduce change and new processes early; do not wait until you are mid-project to implement a new methodology.

#5. Understand the tradeoffs. Understand the variables from resources, features, quality, and delivery date and make your tradeoff decisions as early as possible. You will always need to make some tradeoffs, so remember to compare the options against the original product goals.

#4. Tell the truth. Telling the truth is critical to get teams working together. You should never shoot the messenger; doing this will make sure that in the future your team will only tell you what you want to hear. You want the truth and you want it as soon as it is known, because the sooner you learn about an issue, the more options you have. One trick of the trade is to build in a detailed level of granularity in the schedule; this makes it easier to track small slips before they turn into major problems.

#3. Communicate. Clear and frequent communication is essential to successfully deliver a product. Set-up non-meeting commutation channels such as a website for discussions. You should never assume, rather be clear and specific. The core team should meet weekly. This will likely be a team of 3-6 people. Then send updates to the entire team, which might consist of 20 or more individuals. Lastly, having effective meetings requires an investment - team members need to do their pre-work. For all meetings, have an agenda and keep minutes.

#2. Focus, focus, focus. Keep your eye on the ball. Ruth advises keeping a short list of critical items. She refers to this as "Ruthless prioritization." You should review new requests and data against the original product goals. Make sure to avoid feature creep and "last customer input trap."

#1. Make decisions. You should make decisions and stick with them. This will keep you from loosing precious time by revisiting old decisions. Have a consistent process for decision-making. Identify who gets to make the decision, who has to be included, and who gets a vote versus an opinion. Once the decision is made, write it down along with options reviewed, and support the decision maker. Ruth mentioned that if new information becomes available, it is ok and prudent to revisit a decision. Adding perspective, she advises that very few decisions are fatal that aren't obvious.

That's it! Follow these ten rules and you'll release a successful product that customers want.