CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 13

CTO STRAIGHT TALK | ISSUE 3

biggest challenges, says Bostic. The result
is a product-development process that is
"outcome-based versus feature-oriented,"
says Bostic. "It's about telling stories, not
ticking off a box on a spec list."
Many product-management organizations
think that they are collecting features
and functions from their customers that
will enable them to give customers what
they want. "Totally wrong," says Hicks
of Llamasoft. "The job is to build what
customers don't know that they want
but can't live without. In good product
design and development, your would-be
customers aren't supposed to tell you
what to build; they're supposed to tell you
what they wish for."
At Embotics, "every feature we build
has an upfront business case that every
engineer is expected to understand," says
Jamensky. "In fact, most of our engineers
are involved in writing them." That process
begins with customer interviews and
ultimately ends with a set of customer
personas that guide the development of
the products. "From there we move to
rapid prototyping, which we then take
back out into field," says Jamensky.

IT'S ABOUT
TELLING
STORIES, NOT
TICKING OFF
A BOX ON A
SPEC LIST.

THE MINIMUM
VIABLE PRODUCT
Putting a basic prototype of a new
product in customers' hands is a great
way to get candid and valuable customer
input into product development: the
so-called minimum viable product. The
only problem is that everyone has a
different definition of what that is. "It's a
huge buzzword," says Waters. "But for
some people, minimum viable product
means spending a few thousand bucks to
develop something. For others, it means
spending a few million to build it."
In most cases, less is more. "Ask yourself:
What's the smallest possible experiment
that could tell me the most?" says Waters.
"If building a prototype that has one
key feature would tell you a lot because
the entire product hinges on whether
people want that key feature, don't build
a minimum viable product with 100
features." Sometimes taking ten people
out for a cup of coffee to comment on
a product sketch tells you more than
spending $100,000 on market research.
Llamasoft invites customers to spend time
in its usability labs. "We feed them great
meals and don't try to sell them a thing,"
Hicks says. "Watching them use the stuff
tells us much more than having people fill
out surveys that attempt to get at that."
Letting customers work with early versions
of the software can be risky. One usability
lab that Llamasoft conducted with the
customers of an acquired competitor met
with significant skepticism. But the simple
act of involving customers brings benefits.
"The value is not in the specific customer
tips on what we've built. In fact, if you
listen too closely to what customers say,
the product gets worse," says Hicks. "The
value is in establishing real empathy and

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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3
