The Challenge

Create a new, cloud-based service to dramatically simplify the deployment of conferencing and presentation technology for meeting rooms and classrooms.

Background

Since the early 2000s, automating the increasing amount of audiovisual equipment in conference rooms and classrooms involved hiring an experienced programmer to write custom code for each space to control and manage the equipment from various manufacturers. What made this worse was maintaining the system after the programmer was long gone. Changing out a display or projector required contracting another programmer to rewrite control code, adding to complexity and friction in expanding the market for audiovisual control solutions.

The company had tried to solve this problem three times before with limited success, putting forth significant software development effort each time without reaching the desired outcome.

Starting from scratch again provided design freedom, but also meant there would be a significant amount of development effort and the organization was already limited on developers and patience.

The Problem

This hardware-centric company was steeped in waterfall development for software because that is how it had always developed hardware. Valuable time was spent in developing requirements for a product, obtaining engineering estimates on how much capital, development resources and time would be required to complete the development, then going back to square one or begin jettisoning features if enough resources were not available in the desired timeframe. All this time was spent while customers were still dealing with the challenges of custom-coded room solutions.

As the company had done this three times before without achieving the goal of delivering a simple to install and manage room solution, it needed another approach to be successful.

The Solution

The year was 2011, and a few of the software managers had heard about Agile methodologies. Although it sounded interesting, there were concerns that stakeholders would never fund the development without a guarantee on what would be delivered in the first release. However, in the face of limited resources and desperation to get something of customer value created and released sooner rather than later, the decision was made to move forward with an Agile approach.

As the leader of the Product Management team, Shaun worked closely with the Product Manager, Director of Software and VP of Engineering to ensure the project executed successfully.

Putting the right people on the team

This was going to be a big change in process within the company, and required people leading the effort to think differently. An outgoing, energetic, passionate product manager steeped in customer empathy and understanding of the customer pain points was assigned to drive concept development and roadmap. In the software team, an engineer with a deep understanding of Agile methodologies and how it would apply in this organization was assigned to ensure best practices were implemented. A development team of creative, open-minded software engineers willing to try something new was assigned to take on this new challenge.

Educating stakeholders on Agile, with a key focus on the benefits to business outcomes

Expectations were set that not everything we wanted would make the first release, but the most pressing customer problem would be solved and solved well. User input would then drive future feature priority. Joint commitment between Product Management and Engineering was imperative to receiving approval from executive stakeholders to move forward.

Deciding on what problem to solve first

To avoid boiling the development ocean, the first release was limited to a small group of products that met the majority of customer needs for basic conference rooms and classrooms. Analogies of how this problem was being solved in other markets were evaluated, and best practices acted as a foundation for new concepts.

Educating the development team in customer empathy

In the past, the software development team was far removed from the customer. This time had to be different. The Product Manager assigned to the team, armed with exceptional interpersonal skills, educated the development team on the customer, their needs and motivated the team towards solutions. Direct customer engagement was a key guiding principle, and customer feedback obtained through interviews and user studies significantly deepened understanding and led to better decisions on how features should be implemented.

This was definitely not an easy road in the beginning. Some of the development team resisted Agile, wondering why the Product Manager was writing up something called 'user stories' that articulated the customer need, but did not define the feature requirement in detail as in the past waterfall development efforts. However, as the Product Manager continued to share the details on the plight of the customer and the vision to make their world better, the development team unified around the vision and began to understand that they could now use their creativity to be a part of defining the solution. No longer would a Product Manager tell them exactly what to do, but would have them be a part of how the problem was solved.

And this is where the flywheel started to gain momentum.

The Result

The first cloud-based configuration management software in the professional audiovisual industry was released within a year, and major releases followed every quarter, always guided by user feedback. Executive stakeholders were kept informed of progress, user adoption and provided input as we went along. The team formed deep bonds with each other, working hard and celebrating wins.

As the development team developed deeper empathy for the user, they became just as passionate as the Product Manager on solving the customer problem. And they became relentlessly focused on developing an exceptional user experience, overcoming obstacle after obstacle to deliver greatness. Once released, sharing positive customer feedback with the development team became a priority. Taking it a step further, the development team was invited to various customer calls to obtain direct feedback on what customers loved about the product and what they would like to see next. Development team members were also invited to trade shows and assisted in doing product demonstrations, getting more direct feedback from customers and excitedly shared the feedback with the team.

Starting the flywheel was difficult, but once in motion, this user-centric, agile development approach fueled by continuous customer feedback resulted in an innovative solution for the customer with a deeply passionate development team behind it.