Enterprise MVP - Made in Captives and ODCs

The 5 steps listed below are from the session: Design MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) for Enterprise Customers by Owen Rogers from Pulse Energy. This talk was given at the Management track of the Agile India 2013 conference that was held in Bangalore, India on Feb 27, 2013 and Feb 28, 2013.

To build Enterprise MVP

Step 1: Start with fixed known constraints

Step 2: Defer commitment on everything else

Step 3: Leverage external products and services as much as possible

Step 4: Start simple and iterate quickly

Step 5: Tell a compelling story - user journey - focus on workflow not features

So can Agile teams in captive centers and in outsourced product development centers (ODCs) truly contribute to building MVPs?
For the large part, this ask may be a challenge since in captive centers the product manager is located onshore or in the parent company and in ODCs teams may be far removed from the real users of the solution when the real users are the customers of the client.

I recommend these three initiatives to enable Agile teams in captive centers and ODCs to contribute effectively to the whole process of building enterprise MVPs:
1. Build domain expertise
2. Create opportunities for customer contact
3. Have the product manager travel to the Agile team locations at significant milestones

Building domain expertise leads towards:
- building a knowledge base from which requirements can be validated
- ideating based on the knowledge gained about the painpoints and customer workflows
- increasing confidence in the solution
- actively contributing in the release planning phase

The organization should make allowance for teams to engage with customers face-to-face in user group meetings and product conferences. When the big picture of why they do what they do becomes clearer to teams I believe that Agile teams will be able to create realistic acceptance criteria,  simulate the right deployment environments, and identify customer candidates and/or scenarios for usability tests.

For every sprint 0, the Product manager can travel to the location of the Agile team which would help in:
- face-to-face communication which trumps the greatest advancement in telepresence
- providing an opportunity for Agile team members to directly contribute to the product backlog by making their suggestion, backed by research, to the Product manager
- optimizing the time taken for initial product backlog refinement
- building an Agile team that includes the Product Manager as the Product Owner

These recommendations are drawn from my experience as a Product Owner for Pivotal CRM at CDC Software (now Aptean).

Got 'em on the Same Roadmap

Sharing an account of a product release strategy in response to a situation that triggered the release. This is a first person account as a Product Owner.   

Scenario: 

A B2B CRM company, with a common platform on which were built add-ons for Financial Services, Marketing, Service/Support, and Homebuilding acquired a marketing product, (called MP for simplicity). MP had a loyal customer base renewing maintenance contracts annually and demanding new features to support their business.

Problem: 

• MP and the flagship CRM had independent roadmaps which brought challenges when aligning Sales and Marketing with the release pitches. 
• Features on MP were overlapping marketing features already available on the flagship CRM product. 
• Customer sentiment was that with the acquisition MP did not get as much attention as required to cater to their needs 
• New customers preferred the flagship CRM product 
• Share of the revenue that MP brought in was declining 
• MP had a dated technology base
• MP's user interface left much to be desired
• Cost of deploying MP on a hosted environment was high
• MP's support for mobile was text-based

Goal:

Bring the zing back to the marketing vertical

Time constraint:

Deliver in 3 months

Strategy:

To build a marketing automation add-on to the flagship CRM that included the most valued features from MP and the existing features on the flagship CRM.

Roadmapping activities in this approach:

1. Reviewed the features of the flagship CRM so that the marketing add-on includes an enhanced version of MP's unique features, and removes duplicate features
2. Worked with the Gartner analyst for Marketing to understand the industry trends and marketing automation vendor selection criteria
3. Reviewed support incidents of MP to understand the painpoints
4. Included the migration and feature integration plan in a common roadmap

Customer retention activities in this approach:

1. Offered the flagship CRM product with its hosting capabilities, mobile support, and improved user experience to MP customers
2. Drew up a migration plan with tools so that customers can confidently migrate their data to the flagship CRM with the marketing automation add-on
3. Presented the common roadmap

Post the roadmapping activities, worked with architects, user experience specialists, and the development team to design and deliver the first release of the marketing automation add-on in 3 months. The first release included the most important features of marketing automation that could be delivered in 3 months by 1 development team.

Results:

The Marketing Automation add-on:

• Was well-received by existing and new customers
• Moved back into a top revenue earner on the flagship product as well
• Received rave reviews from market analysts