CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 12

COVER ARTICLE

ASKING THE
RIGHT QUESTIONS
It turns out that when you develop
new products, even if you have a team
of brilliant engineers working on the
design, the "smartest guy in the room"
will actually be the customer. But you
need to know how to get that customer
into the room-that is, engage him in the
development process. Simply asking
people what they want won't work. "If
Apple asked customers what they wanted
from a watch, they'd probably say they
want it to tell accurate time," says Chachra
of Tivix.
For example, many clients approach Tivix
with very specific product requests. They
need to build a mobile application. They
want to implement Internet of Things
technology. Very often they leave with a
very different product. One life-sciences
company came in convinced it needed to
create an online patent marketplace. After
a few days of workshops and discussions,
it was clear that all they really lacked was
a marketing website for collecting leads.
"Their needs shrunk from a massive
product to a licensing form," says Chachra.
"Design thinking is all about opening up the
solutions space by asking the customer
'why?'" adds Waters. "If someone comes
to you and says they need a bridge,
you're immediately asking, Suspension
or cantilever or beam? But if you ask why
they need a bridge, and the answer is
to get to the other side of the river, the
solution set suddenly includes a boat or a
tunnel. If you ask them why they need to
get to the other side of the river, and the
answer is to get a message to someone,
that opens it up even further to radios,
walkie-talkies, or smoke signals."
Mark Jamensky has been putting together
product-engineering teams for 20 years

12

and has the battle scars to prove it. When
he joined Embotics, maker of cloudmanagement software, he inherited the IT
policy-automation technology the company
had purchased along with a few engineering
resources. His goal was to find a market
that would be ripe for leveraging that
technology in two to five years.
"You can have a great team and a great
product, but if you get the market
timing wrong, you're hosed," he says. By
spending time with IT leaders, not with
the aim of selling a product but simply to
hear their needs, Jamensky's team found
that virtualization management was an
emerging challenge. Those interviewees
helped direct the earliest stages of
product development and became the
first adopters. The company now boasts
a 90% customer-retention rate.

AVOIDING
FEATURE SHOCK
Understanding not just the what but also
the why can also help companies avoid
what Ramanjuam and Tacke call "feature
shock": when every piece of functionality
any customer ever asked for is built into a
product, but nobody likes it. "Companies
mistakenly gravitate towards building
a one-size-fits-all product [because]
they didn't spend the time to prioritize
the features and truly understand what
customers need, value, and are willing to
pay for," says Tacke.
In traditional product development,
customer specifications are gathered and
handed off to the engineers with fingers
crossed. The customer is at the center of
the process, but the product-development
organization is really just taking dictation.
The best way to avoid that is to spend
time observing customers in their natural
habitats, seeing what they do rather than
asking them about it, and discussing their



CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3

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

Contents
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Cover1
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Cover2
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 1
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Contents
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 3
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 4
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 5
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 6
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 7
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 8
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 9
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 10
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 11
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 12
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 13
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 14
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 15
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 16
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 17
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 18
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 19
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 20
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 21
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 22
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 23
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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 25
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 26
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 27
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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 30
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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 35
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CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 65
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - Cover4
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue4
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue3
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue2
https://magazine.straighttalkonline.com/cto/issue1
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