The document discusses the importance of collaboration between product managers and quality assurance teams. It notes that a lack of collaboration can slow down teams and lead to errors. The document provides tips for how product managers can work more effectively with engineering and QA teams such as including them in customer meetings, clearly defining requirements, and having regular status meetings.

1. QUALITY – PRODUCT
OWNER/MANAGER
COLLABORATION
Sreeram Kishore Chavali
South Bay Software Quality Engineering (SBSQE)
Meetup
4/23/2013

2. ABOUT ME
Enterprise Products
Satmetrix (SaaS Product – Customer Surveys)
Product Management (2 years)
QA (4 years)
Informatica – Data Warehousing
QA (6 years)
Ramco Systems - ERP
Development, Release Engineering, QA, Project
Management (6.5 years)

3. WHY THIS TOPIC?
Every team wants to be known for
Productive
Efficient
Speed
High Quality
When interactions are not effective, it can slow
down the team

4. QUICK POLL
On a 10 point scale how effective are PM-QA
interactions?
What attributes are important?
Clarity of Requirements
Timeliness of inputs
Willingness to answer questions
Relay Customer Information
Proactive communication
Product Knowledge
Domain expertise

5. LACK OF COLLABORATION
Missing in action for a critical review
Not enough details in spec
No feedback on test scenarios
No comments on bugs
No response to emails on clarifications
Customer feedback not known firsthand
Missing in release planning/tracking meetings
More…

6. PRODUCT MANAGER ‘ROLE’ EXPLAINED
‘CEO’ of product
Value
Investments
Differentiation
Everything
‘Janitor’
Take care of gaps, issues
Remove obstacles to adoption/usage
Goals

7. GOAL 1: PREVENT THIS

8. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE –
ERRORS IN DEFINITION ARE MULTIPLIED
Range of Possible Error
Range of Possible Error
Range of Possible Error
Range of Possible Error
True
Custome
Definition Developme Testing Sales/MarketinImplementatir Need
Needs
Assessment
nt g Rollout on & Support
-Usability
Concept
Testing
Testing
-Beta Testing
Product Launch/Re-launch is
Launch/Re-
Expensive (Time/Money/Opportunity
Cost)

9. GETTING READY?
I know the needs, domain
Let me work on ‘detailed spec’
Wait! Are you getting inputs from everyone?

10. GOAL 2: DEAL WITH THIS
Customers
Long Term New
Fixes Technology
Embattled Competitors
Support
Prod. Mngr.
Cool Engineering
Features
Sales

11. LET ME WORK MORE HOURS
Ask for input and you get ‘loads’
Prioritize vs Respond to all
I am getting better at this
Wait!! there is more!!

12. GOAL 3: DON’T KEEP ENGINEERS IDLE

13. CAN I RELY ON ENGINEERS?
Big features need details
Small features are not high value.
I will give you an idea. Can you build based on
that?
You guys are smart. Do you really need a
‘detailed’ spec?
Build v1 and I will come back

14. GOAL 4: MAKE RIGHT INVESTMENTS

15. ISN’T THAT OBVIOUS?
Talk to anyone: customers, support
Why do I need to justify problems to solve?
I don’t get it
How? Help!!

16. INTERRUPTIONS
Sales: Hey Product Manager, we just lost a deal
to competitor. What are you doing about it?
Support: our customers unhappy about this
feature. Can you confirm this is fixed in next
release?
Pre-Sales: Can you demo this feature today to
customer?
Execs: Where is updated roadmap?
Blah, blah, blah

17. WHERE IS TIME SPENT?
Product Strategy,
Competitive Roadmap, Release
Analysis, Market Planning,
Research etc. Tracking,
Execution
Working with
Sales, Marketing, Requirements
Customers, design, validation
Support

18. WELCOME TO DAILY ROUTINE
Customers
Long Term New
Fixes Technology
Embattled Competitors
Support
Prod. Mngr.
Cool Engineering
Features
Sales

19. TIME MANAGEMENT GRID

20. WHO GETS PRIORITY
Sales
Customers Engineering
Support and QA
Executives
Escalations
from
everyone
often without
context

21. TIME ‘HOGS’
Customer visits
Preparations, briefings before meetings to
understand context
Actual visit
Follow up
Escalations
False Alarms
Real Issues: Getting to root of the issue after sifting
through ‘big unstructured data’

22. COMMON (VALID)RESPONSES
I am busy
I don’t have context to your question
I will explain to you orally and will update spec
later
I already told developer (sorry missed to
invite/copy QA)
I have too much information to deal with (emails)

23. PM IS NOT AWARE OF
Hot fixes
Each defect filed while testing feature
Build challenges
Performance issues (unless customer tells me)
Architecture issue details (I don’t get it)
Reliability issues and corner cases

24. FACTORS IMPACTING PRODUCT MANAGER
EFFECTIVENESS
PM to Engineering/QA ratio (1:10 or 1:20)
Domain expertise/Product Experience
Number of years with company/Familiarity with company
products
Product Lifecycle – New Vs Existing
Cross functional staffing
Product Marketing, Sales
Customer Issues
Support, Customer escalations
Understanding of Technology/Architecture
Distributed team/Team Dynamics
Communication Gap
Working Style differences (email, skype or phone calls)
Context Switching

25. GROUP DISCUSSION

26. GROUP DISCUSSION
List and Prioritize 5 critical things that get
impacted due to lack of collaboration
Suggest 1 or 2 ideas to help PM become effective
for each of the item
Share some examples
What is working?
What is worst case scenario
Pick up one example to share with everyone

27. QUICK POLL
On a 10 point scale how effective are PM-QA
interactions?
What attributes are important?
Clarity of Requirements
Timeliness of inputs
Willingness to answer questions
Relay Customer Information
Proactive communication
Product Knowledge
Domain expertise

28. WRAP UP

29. PM HELPING QA
Include Engineering, QA in customer meetings
As passive audience
Record and share ‘voice of the customer’
Webex recordings
Written notes
Both positive and negative feedback

30. QA HELPING PM
Define and validate ‘business scenarios’ on
priority. This partnership is key to success.
Have regular scheduled meetings and close out
open issues in these meetings
Provide context of bugs for review
Feature status – bug list with severity
Batch set of clarifications to optimize time
Help with negative conditions of features

31. REFERENCES
Prioritizing feature requests:
http://svpma.org/eventarchives/SVPMA-02-2001-
Prioritizing_Feature_Requests-Fritz_Mueller.ppt
Customer Focus
http://svpma.org/eventarchives/SVPMA-09-2003-
The_Importance_of_Customer_Focus-
Geoff_Huckleberry.ppt
Benefits Realization
http://svpma.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/04/Benefits-Realization-with-
Prashanth-Naidu-Hitachi-Data-Systems.pdf