These are the slides from Dan Comyns's workshop at Product of Things Conference in Tel Aviv on July 2018: Who this workshop is for: This workshop is for software product managers who find themselves in need to develop hardware components and wish to follow agile methodologies in the process of hardware manufacturing After this workshop you will be able to: - Define a work process that enables software companies to move at the same pace while working with hardware manufacturers - To push hardware manufacturers to be ‘problem solvers’ and to work against product requirement rather than specs - Start working with Chinese manufacturers What is covered: - How to deal with Chinese manufacturers and counterparties - Lessons learned from working with various hardware manufacturers simultaneously - ‘Tips and tricks’ on how to implement modern agile software development processes to traditional waterfall managed hardware companies In this workshop, Dan will share his first-hand experience on the successful implementation of agile software development processes in traditional Chinese hardware manufacturers.

1. Workshop by Moriya Kassis
Pushing traditional
manufacturers towards
agile hardware manufacturing
Workshop by Dan Comyns,
Product Manager at

2. Let’s Productise!
I am Dan Comyns
I am here because I love to give presentations.
You can find me at Dan Comyns
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3. OUR GOALS FOR TODAY (THE WHAT)
▰ Short iterations on developing hardware product
▰ Discussing what is an Outcome driven
development
▰ Presenting tips for working with an external
development team
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4. OUR AGENDA FOR TODAY (THE HOW)
▰ Workshop: Imaginary Postmortem (25 min)
▰ Sharing Nexar’s challenge and learning process (20 min)
▰ Presenting:
Outcome development vs. Working against specs (10
min)
▰ Tips and lessons learned (20 min)
▰ QA (15 min)
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5. Workshop: Imaginary Postmortem
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6. An Israeli company that is working on
an electric scooter rental service was
supposed to launch on June 15th in
Haifa.
However...
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7. My case study
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8. The Project
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9. THE ECOSYSTEM OF DASHCAMS AND NEXAR
▰ Massive growth of dashcams in the world
▰ We want to develop growth channels
▰ We are a software company - we are not in the
business of hardware
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10. We can’t use off-the-shelf cameras
as they don’t meet our needs
NEXAR’S CHALLENGE
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11. Required Outcome
vs. Required Spec
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The principles:

12. #1 THE USER EXPERIENCE IS THE NORTH STAR
▰ North star Should be detailed as possible
▰ You (and your partner's) can’t compromise on the user
experience
▰ A technical specification can limit the manufacturer.
▰ The manufacturer will offer solutions that you never
thought about.
▰ Hardware specification is a pitfall for software experts
▰ Example: WiFi camera
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13. #2 KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW.
AND SHARE IT WITH YOUR PARTNERS
- Acknowledge you are coming from a software
development company; you don’t know a lot about
hardware development.
- Create an environment where both sides can learn from
each other.
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14. #3 DEFINE YOUR AND YOUR PARTNER RISKS AND WORK
BACKWARDS TO MITIGATE THEM
▰ Don’t rely on one manufacturer (if you can)
▰ Shared gantt to compare progress
▰ Milestones - ask to test/see.
▰ Do only what is must to be done.
▰ Learning their risks
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- For us, the vendor selection was the biggest risk

15. Tips
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16. ➔ Search for the unknowns as soon as possible (Fail fast)
➔ Many milestones during the manufacturing process.
➔ share with the manufacturer the riskiest assumption
and make sure they validate it ASAP
MVP
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17. ➔ Share your priorities with the manufacturer
(Camera manual vs. the camera it self)
➔ Understand the manufacturing process
➔ What are the most time consuming tasks?
➔ Where are the risks?
➔ Which task has a dependency of another
➔ Can we do tasks in parallel?
➔ How Can we make it faster? Is it a question of budget?
(Even if you don’t have the money to spend, it’s
important to understand what are the factors that
effects timeline)
PRIORITIZE TOGETHER
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18. ➔ Make sure they understand you.
➔ Emails - Make sure your partner understand. Always
summarize your conversation on email
➔ Fly to China
➔ Download WeChat
➔ Communicate with the R&D - Not with sales
➔ Work only with those you feel confident to work with.
(Sign an NDA with everyone you work with)
COMMUNICATION
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19. ➔ Weekly emails:
◆ Progress
◆ Photos
◆ Risks
◆ Timeline
➔ Questions + Daily standups
➔ Gantt
◆ Jira/Trello/Monday (or an equivalent)
➔ Share risks and updates with your company
WORK PROCESS
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20. THANKS!
Any questions?
You can find me at
@dancomyns | comyns@getnexar.cam