Chapter 3 - Product Management PDF

Chapter- 3 Product management Certificate in Software Product Engineering Page 1 of 28 Confidentiality Statement This document should not be carried outside the physical and virtual boundaries of TCS and its client work locations. Sharing this document with any person other than a TCS associate woul...

Chapter- 3 Product management Certificate in Software Product Engineering Page 1 of 28 Confidentiality Statement This document should not be carried outside the physical and virtual boundaries of TCS and its client work locations. Sharing this document with any person other than a TCS associate would tantamount to violation of confidentiality agreement signed by you while joining TCS. Notice The information given in this course material is merely for reference. Certain third party terminologies or matter that may be appearing in the course are used only for contextual identification and explanation, without an intention to infringe. Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Contents Chapter - 3 Product management....................................................................................4 3.1 Product Management overview............................................................................. 5 Product Portfolio Management......................................................................................... 7 Product Planning...............................................................................................................9 3.2 Product Manager's Responsibilities..................................................................... 10 3.3 Deliverables of a Product Manager...................................................................... 15 3.4 Stakeholder Interactions in Product management............................................... 18 3.5 Triage..................................................................................................................20 Summary........................................................................................................................26 Page 3 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering Chapter - 3 TCS Business Domain Academy Product management Introduction Product Management is acutely involved in almost all phases of product development lifecycle and it plays a key role in defining output of each phase. Thus, Product management is the important factor which has huge impact on the product success and failure. This Chapter emphasizes on the need for sound product Management Learning Objective After Reading this chapter you will know Overview of product management Product portfolio Product Managers Responsibility Various Internal stakeholders Various External Stakeholders What is TRIAGE Page 4 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering 3.1 TCS Business Domain Academy Product Management overview Product Management is acutely involved in almost all phases of product development lifecycle and it plays a key role in defining output of each phase. Thus, Product management is the important factor which has huge impact on the product success and failure. Product manager plays a key role in engineering lifecycle right from making sure user needs are translated in terms where engineering team understands and implements to managing product release and schedule is met as per market demands. Role of product manager also goes beyond boundaries of organization to ensure product success; i.e. from managing stakeholders of multiple business functions within organization to directly working with customers for product improvement. Product management is not strictly confined to software products but it has gained more popularity during information technology (IT) revolution. Product management is applicable to all other domains wherever there is an organization and they offer a product which has a significant impact on consumers. Product management is of strategic value in many companies. However, it is also rather complex, since a product manager has many responsibilities covering requirements management, release definitions, and new product launches. What makes these responsibilities even more complex is that the product manager must take into account many internal and external stakeholders. Product management as a discipline is about what the product should be taking into account opinions from all stakeholders within and outside organization. Product managers are advocates for the customer’s needs and desires. A product manager’s responsibilities include the following: Defining and planning product lines and product enhancements Managing product contracts and sales Setting strategic direction based on customer needs and business goals Interpreting strategic goals into operational tasks Making proposals to senior management regarding implications of proposed plans Serving as a representative to internal and external clients. Taking the lead in establishing tactical plans and objectives Developing and implementing administrative and operational matters ensuring achievement of objectives Evaluating risks and trade-offs Proposing contingency plans Page 5 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Analysing business processes and creating applications to improve or support those processes Branding Working with graphic designers to create look and feel Defining navigational flow and user experience Defining feature sets and scooping releases Although product management has been established for several decades, software product management has some unique challenges. Software products, unlike other products, do not incur extra costs for the company for manufacturing and distributing extra copies. Also, software products can be changed or updated relatively easily using patches or release updates. However, the downside is that due to the nature of software products, the requirements organization is highly complex. Furthermore, the release frequency is high, since the product can be altered easily. Finally, a software product manager has many responsibilities, but does not have adequate authority over the development team. Because of these problems, it is necessary to integrate research efforts in this domain even as Product Management is gaining importance as a discipline in Software Industry. Figure 1 shows the organization of Software Product Management and the different stakeholders interacting with the sub-areas within this domain. The stakeholders remain same even if the product under consideration changes from software to something different. Page 6 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Figure 1: Software Product Management – Process areas and stakeholders Product Portfolio Management Product Portfolio Management can be defined as a business process to effectively manage new product development ideas, maximizing the value current on-going product development projects. For companies that have to invest in R&D (Research and Development) and other new product development activities like high technology and innovation centric companies, product portfolio management come very handy. It does resource allocation for achieving innovation based goals. Portfolio management for new products is a dynamic decision process. In this process, new projects are evaluated, selected and prioritized. Existing projects may be accelerated, killed or de-prioritized and resources allocated to the active projects.Portfolio management process varies from company to company. Figure 2 shows generic product portfolio management architecture. Page 7 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Figure 2: Product Portfolio Management Architecture There are four major activities that product portfolio management consists of (see Figure 1): Product portfolio maximization: Continuous selection and improvement of the opportunities for new product development is done in order to maximize their product portfolio. For doing this, companies also need to analyse the risks and uncertainties associated with all the opportunities. Project management: Project here means the new product development project, product enhancement project and maintenance projects. Firms need to undertake proper management of all the activities involved in those projects in order to meet the targets and the schedules. This is done by continuous monitoring of activities and resourceful planning. Pipeline management: Pipeline is a technical jargon for project which are about to start in recent future and are undergoing top management level considerations (generally with clients), in order to decide the commencement of the projects. This requires analysing whether the available resources will be sufficient for the projects in pipelines or the company needs to arrange for the same upfront. Scenario analysis like what if analysis is also done here. Product value identification: All the above mentioned activities are converged in identification and continuous monitoring of products’ value. In order to achieve this, many firms also implement ROI models which will identify the return on investment for the new product that would justify the consideration of the product into the firms’ product portfolio. Page 8 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Advantages of Product Portfolio Management Product portfolio management provides several advantages while performing product management. Some of them are highlighted in this section. Avoiding Go Error: A go error occurs when the firm launches a new product or starts working on a new idea which later proves to be ineffective or a failure. Go error can be in production/development stage or in product launch (commercialization) stage. Product portfolio management can lead to identification of possible limitations and weaknesses in the product, and hence avoid a go error. Avoiding Drop Error: A drop error occurs when the firm drops a high potential and great new product idea (at development or commercialization stage). Product portfolio management can lead to identification of potential and strengths of the product, and hence avoid a drop error. Innovation ROI Maximization: It can help in maximizing the return on investments for innovation activities. Centralized Planning: It gives the firms a centralized platform for product planning which can bring financial efficiency and transparency. Improved Pricing: Since the primary goal of this phenomenon is to determine and continuously monitor the product value, it facilitates the management in setting the right price or tweaking the existing price list with respect to the products’ actual value. Product Planning Product Road mapping Product road mapping is essential due to complex dependencies of the product plan on other related products, technology changes and organizations strategies, the term road mapping is used for two purposes, it is used for business oriented long term planning of product/product line and technology or market trend forecast. Product roadmap is essentially a document which provides layout of product releases that may be launched three to five years down the line. Product road mapping receives inputs from portfolio management Core Asset road mapping To identify the core asset of the company it is essential to perform Internal analysis Competitor analysis Page 9 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Internal Analysis: The Company’s product needs to be analyzed to determine products strengths and weak points on functional and technical aspects relevant stakeholders like PM’s and development department are involved in this analysis. Organizations SWOT can be performed in order for in depth analysis. Competitor analysis: An overview is created showing what competing products are doing in terms of product development in future. The general development trends among the competitors are shown and special attention needs to be given to most important competing products. Once the core assets of the company are identified the dependencies of the core assets are to be identified with respect to product plan this help in proper planning of the assets that lead to competitive advantage. 3.2 Product Manager's Responsibilities Product managers are generally accountable for this piece of business without having direct authority over the entities (e.g. Employees and suppliers) that “make it happen”. Product management may include but is not synonymous with project management, new product development or sales support. Product management is sometimes referred as a hub-andspoke system where the product manager is figuratively at the center with spokes emanating out to various departments. The role of product manager is multi-faceted role and requires interaction not only within but outside the organization as shown in Figure 3. Page 10 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Figure 3: Potential Interactions of a Product Manager (Source: Philip Kotler, Marketing th Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, 11 Edition Prentice Hall 2003) Keeping the general definition in mind, what are the competencies associated with the success of a product manager? To be able to manage a piece of business, product managers need a solid background in business skills. To be able to attain these results without direct authority over all of the people involved requires an ability to work through other people. To ensure customer satisfaction and competitive advantage, product managers must understand customers and infuse this knowledge throughout the organization. They must also be able to translate this customer information into technologically specific product and service requirements. And finally since product managers deal with new product development, numerous projects and ongoing sales support activities, time management, project management and organizational skills are essential. Several competencies are associated with top performing product managers. These competencies can be grouped into five behavioral clusters as shown in competency model in Figure 4 surrounding the entrepreneurial traits and skills required to do that job. The cluster highlights the necessary abilities to: Drive business results Page 11 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering Deliver results through people Guide product “fit” and function Ensure market driven duration Manage multiple priorities TCS Business Domain Academy Figure 4: Product manager competency model Each of the five clusters contains different competencies that will apply to product manager in varying degrees depending on the company and industry. It is useful to observe these competencies in top-performing product managers in your firm and augment the general set of requirements here with specifics unique to your situation. Drive Business Results: The product manager’s job is to oversee all aspects of a product or service line to create and deliver superior customer satisfaction while simultaneously providing long term value for the company. To be able to drive business results for a given area of responsibility, skills in business fundamentals (such as strategy, finance and planning) are critical. This competency set is perhaps the most concrete since performance can be measured with standard business metrics such as revenue, profit or return on investment (ROI). Weaknesses are also more visible allowing product managers to focus more clearly on areas of improvement. The remaining competencies are more subjective and require efforts in personal development. Deliver results through people: The business skills mentioned here help drive business but most product managers must implement their plans through other people- people they Page 12 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy have no direct line authority over. This is similar to situations where entrepreneurs need to use their interpersonal skills to be able to borrow money from the bank, outsource manufacturing capabilities and convince independent representatives and distributors to embrace their products. Product managers face similar entrepreneurial challenge and are referred as general managers of “Virtual Companies”. It is critical that product managers tend to develop the “Victim Mentality” – a belief that everything is beyond their control and they are therefore powerless. Product managers must be confident about their own competence and their ability to lead others. To deliver results through people, product managers must be able to lead upward, downward and sideways. Leading up can require perseverance from below. But if a product manager is to participate in propelling a company toward its strategic goals, he or she must supply the top management (and possible board of directors) with strategic insights and realistic options as they relate to a given product portfolio. Although most product managers have few or no direct reports, some companies have “senior product Manager” or “Product Group Manager” positions that do have direct reports. For these types of positions, hiring, training and performance evaluations may be part of the job description. Therefore the ability to develop the skills and capabilities of direct reports may become a necessary competency. Ensure Market-Driven Direction: Understanding customers has been a mantra in corporate world for half a century. Yet many companies become so caught up in internal crisis and firefighting that “Market Focus” is given only lip service. At this point, the product manager must setup and bring in the appropriate market-driven focus. The product manager must not only have “intimate” understanding of customers but also act as the customer advocate in the organization. To be a customer advocate, product managers need to develop a compelling vision of customer’s existing and future needs. This vision has to be beyond one customer and focus on the set of customers that comprise “the market”. This can occasionally be a challenge for product managers who have just been hired from the sales force and still think about customers in their territory rather than customers in all territories who may be a target for the products(s). Market research and competitive intelligence help ease this transition. Although not all product managers will personally conduct market surveys, they Page 13 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy nevertheless, must be able to manage the process. This could involve selecting market research firms and evaluating proposals or working with an internal research department. Regardless of whether the research is conducted by an internal or external group, product managers should be able to assess whether qualitative or quantitative research is most appropriate and interpret the results obtained. Armed with appropriate customer, market and competitive information, product managers can help ensure market driven direction through their leadership abilities, primarily through their ability to lead cross-functional teams. Guide product “Fit” and “Function”: Product manager strives to gain a thorough knowledge of customers in order to create competitively superior product and service offerings and to do it profitably for the company. This requires some level of technical and operation knowledge. Product managers must have sufficient knowledge to act as the bridge between customer needs and technical product specifications. Product managers take the “Voice of the Customer” and translate customer priorities into product specifications. These specifications provide a precise description of what the products has to do, not necessarily how the product will be made to provide for those needs. Although most product managers will not be actually designing the products, they should know whether a certain type of thickness of material will provide the strength of the customers’ require or whether a specific test will provide the information the customer is looking for. Manage Multiple Priorities: The fifth and final behavioral competency set of the competency model is the ability to manage multiple priorities. Product managers must be able to see the big picture while managing details and schedules. No amount of strategy or planning skills training can create competent product managers if they lack the ability to manage their projects and themselves. Entrepreneurial skills and traits: The central part of the product manager competency model consists of entrepreneurship skills and traits. Product managers who possess these traits are passionate and motivated to succeed. They are self-starters who are comfortable being held accountable for results and enjoy problem solving. Several traits are commonly associated with entrepreneurs: a high energy level, a “can-do” attitude, risk acceptance, hard work and persistence. On the other hand, entrepreneurship can sometimes get too Page 14 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy close to their product or service and not see the flaws that are evident to customers. Product managers must strive to embody the positive attributes of an entrepreneurial drive while controlling or minimizing the negative aspects. 3.3 Deliverables of a Product Manager A product manager is sometimes called the CEO of a product, who works close with the project and coordinates with Internal and External stake holders to make sure of products success. Also gets involved in solving the hurdles and glitches in the various phases of product development and ensure the smooth running of the product. The main responsibilities include Define product strategy and road maps Deliver MRD’s and PRD’s Tactical responsibilities Stakeholder management Market and competition Analysis Launch and Demo’s Define product strategy and road map: Product managers are responsible for defining the long term strategy of the product which will be aligned to the business strategy, mission and express the details in a product roadmap. This roadmap and vision becomes the schedule input for engineering team to implement. Deliver MRD’s and PRD’s MRD’s are the Market Requirement Documents which include the VOC (Voice of customer) the in large firms where there are two people “Product Manger” and “Product Marketing Manager” responsible for product development MRD’s are usually prepared by “Product Marketing Manager”. MRD’s are written by product manager/product marketing manager with assistance of all the departments of the organization like Finance, research, marketing communications, sales and engineering. This becomes the basis for preparing PRD’s Product Requirement Document which captures the prioritized features of the product. Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) Page 15 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy MRD is a document that is the document which defines the high-level market requirements for a product or project, this generally consists of following information: Who the target customers are. What products are in competition with the proposed one Why customers are likely to want this product At many companies, the MRD is used to create another document – the Product Requirements Document (PRD). PRD is then used by Engineering and QA teams to build the product. Product Requirements Document (PRD) This is sometimes joined with MRD, specifying the product in detail. It discusses the features end-user will have. Here are some guidelines and suggestions for what can be done to describe product requirements: If the product has an extensive user interface, you can provide mock-up that you and a designer can create with graphic design tools. Use simple graphics created with tools like Microsoft Visio or Adobe Photoshop. If you have less time, it can be as simple as a hand-drawn diagram If you have more time, you can try to create an interactive prototype using Visual Basic or some other tool. If the product does not have an extensive user interface, you need to describe it in functional terms. This is usually a technical requirement that may describe program behavior with specific performance characteristics. Functional Requirements Document (FRD) The Engineering department writes the functional requirements based on the PRD and the MRD. The FRD addresses the precise deliverables from engineering, including the exact deliverable, the schedule the product manager and engineering need to agree on, functional specifics, and so on. There needs to be a seamless understanding between the product manager and the engineering group on what is to be delivered. Page 16 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Remember that it may be impossible to state the requirements at an extremely fine level because you need to be responsive to market needs, but the overall goals and direction need to be set. Tactical responsibilities After preparing the MRD’s and PRD’s product manager is responsible for requirement analysis, prioritization, then collecting user feedback and work with developers, ISV's, to get feedback on the feasibility of the requirements, evaluation and negotiations of terms. Stakeholder Management Stakeholder management is recognized as a crucial part for organizational effectiveness, so product manager’s needs to acknowledge and actively monitor concerns of all stakeholders. The product concept and the design/approach need to be accepted and approved by the stakeholders, usually two types of stake holders are defined. Internal Stakeholder External Stakeholder. Internal Stakeholder: These are the people who are internal to the business and are committed to serve the organization. They include all the teams (cross functional teams) namely engineering, business development, sales force, marketing, and finance in the organization. Product managers need to closely work with all the teams to define, design and execute product plans. Product managers sometimes need to train and clarify the teams on the product, so as to ensure the success of the product. External Stakeholders: These are the people who are outside the organization perspective but are impacted by the work of the organization such as clients, community partners they should be engaged in contributing their views and experience on product decisions. Product manager needs to work with them in order to ensure the product acceptance to avoid conflicts and also needs to work with 3rd parties to judge partnership and licensing opportunities. Market and competition Analysis Every product manager/product marketing manager should be expert in analyzing the market trends and should have sound knowledge about competition. Page 17 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Product managers research the competition's technology and gathers data around market share, direction of the industry and threat to the current product and business. Launch and Demo’s The sales team often relies on product managers for good leads. At times its product managers who go in first to a customer to give a high level technical presentation and make a business case for the customer. A product manager is required to wear multiple hats, and to be successful in the product management role the product manager has to perform roles such as a project manager, visionary strategist, business owner, program manager, quality assurance, user experience police and sometimes even sales, business development and marketing. Schedule Working together with engineering, support and the technical writer groups, the product manager drives the creation of the schedule that includes the following: 1. Engineering Development 2. Documentation (Offline and online delivery) 3. Beta tests 4. Support a. Training for support and sales engineering b. Should include any support for beta tests 5. Post-release patch release if appropriate 6. Planning for end-of-life of previous product versions if any 7. Managing the release process 3.4 Stakeholder Interactions in Product management Product management requires the consent of all the internal and external stake holders from initial phases of Product decisions to release to the market, therefore product managers face the challenge with a large number of requirements, from different internal and external stakeholders. 3.4.1 Internal Stakeholders Company Board Page 18 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy The board is responsible for the defining and communicating the strategy, vision and mission to the rest of the company. It has the managerial supervision of all the organization departments that are responsible for product management. Occasionally, requirements are communicated through its strategy, but it can occur that a requirement is sent directly to the product manager. Research and Innovation/Development: R&D/I have two core responsibilities: (1) Doing research or innovation for new product opportunities (2) Finding ways for improvements or adding new features into the existing products. New product innovation results in requirements in the form of technology drivers that are communicated to the product manager. Development Development holds the main responsibility on the execution of the release plan. The functional explanation of the product requirements are included in release definition, which serve as input for the functional and technical design. It may occur that during the development process new requirements can arise, due to more complex requirements and change in the market conditions or any internal or external factors than was anticipated. Support Support stands for the helpdesk to answer questions (1st line support) and for small defect repair unit (2nd line support). Large defect repair is usually performed by Development (3rd line support). Services The consultants from service department will implement the software product at the customer organization. They are responsible for gathering new requirements from the customers, so they should coordinate with development team and should be aware of change request and validate the bug fixes thus helps customer in proper product installations which cater to customer satisfaction; hence they need to be aware of all the ongoing activities and new release of the product. Sales and marketing Page 19 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Sales & marketing play a vital role in new requirements gathering as they are the first contact with a potential customer. Through these contacts they analyze user needs by various methods like market research user experience research site analytics having this understanding of user needs will help organization to build products that customer value 3.4.2 External Stakeholders Market Market is an abstract stakeholder, with potential customers, competitors and analysts. Market sets numerous trends, either in an explicit way by one of the market players thus creating competition in the market which brings about the new customer needs or in an implicit way by product management. Partner companies Most companies have different kinds of Partners: (1) implementation partners, who implement the product at a customer; (2) development partners, with whom product components are developed; and (3) distribution partners, selling the product. They can be sometimes part of gathering user needs as they interact with customers while implementing the process Customer Customers often have new feature requests in the process of closing the deal or during the usage of the product. These requests can be communicated to Services, Sales & marketing, Support, but also directly to the product manager. Observe that the stakeholder names are generic, so that naming or grouping may differ in product software companies. It is obvious that external stakeholders are harder to be influenced in their operational execution and decision making, whereas internal stakeholders should act according to the corporate strategy. 3.5 Triage Triage (in French means “sorting”) concept was used by medical practitioners for prioritizing the patients based on the criticality (priority was key factor as the resource availability was a constraint). Page 20 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy TRAIGE software development in similar lines is about determining the priorities, with respect to new features and functionalities as software development has 3 major constraints namely “Time, Resource, budget”. So determining priorities help in normalizations of these constraints thus help in customer satisfaction. At a high level, triage is simply an idea of assigning priorities to the projects based on utilization of resources. While developing software think of triage concept to figure out what can be added to provide maximum benefit to the user with low cost. This helps team to gain the user satisfaction in short and also long term. Development with triage concept means the users will get most popular features. Triage concept is very popularly used by software development team for testing to allot limited technical resource when number of defects needing resolution exceeds the available resources to solve them, in such situation the team uses triage to prioritize the defects there by the high critical defects can be verified and corrected thus helping in solving greatest number of defects possible. Triage helps to make best utilization of limited time and resource; triage makes use of two concepts 1. Severity 2. priority Each defects is assigned severity and priority, many defect tracking systems use one or either both of these concepts. The ALM tool (Smart test manager) for defect tracking mechanism has severity concept based on which priority is assigned by the team. Severity is used to define the impact of the defect on the system by assigning the numerical ranking to the defect (1 being “High Severe” 4 being “least severe”) few test tools use the ranking in different way, regardless of how we rank it is important to define and document the criteria to assign severity. The severity levels are assigned by tester while logging the defects during testing which is then analyzed by the development team using triage to work on the defects (functionality blocking defects can be categorized as severity 1 defects whereas UI defects or typos may be considered as severity 4 defects). Severity and priority are used interchangeably because high severe defect is always considered to work with high priority which is not always true. So an effective triage system needs both severity and priority to complete the greatest amount of work. From the perspective of software triage priority is used to rank order in which defects are to be solved. Bug priority is typically set using following values: Page 21 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Must Fix: Fix this bug as soon as possible, Bug is blocking further progress in the area otherwise known as “Blocking defect” Should Fix: This bug should be fixed before product release, before the end of the milestone or even before the start of next iteration. These come under type 2 bugs such as missing fields in excel, data mismatch etc Fix if Time: This is somewhat minor bug which doesn’t hamper the functionality or data and can be postponed depending on product development stage. Few defects may be highly critical i.e. type 1 severity but they need high amount of time to resolve it where as a typo on the screen is low severity defect but takes few minutes to correct and typo error on the screen looks bad so fixing this can be considered as priority one as it can be resolved faster and user will get a feel good factor of resolution. Usually priority is assigned based two factors 1) Severity (impact on customers) and difficulty (impact on resource such as resource availability and time needed for resolution) Thus both severity and priority plays a key role in triage mechanism. Triage Team The Triage Team reviews, evaluates, prioritizes all detected defects they also assign defects to the technical/development person responsible for that functionality. Triage Team may require following members. Project Manager: The project manager serves as the process owner. Project managers are typically in the best position to evaluate impacts to the schedule and resources. Thus they can make quick decisions on the priority to be assigned to the team. They typically have “veto” authority. Lead of Product Management/Business Analysis Team: Business analysts, represent the customer by identifying needs of customer through direct interaction with customer. They are typically the best resource to evaluate a defect from a customer perspective. A BA’s or product manager also does the testing before UAT; a set of BA testing is carried out and defects are raised with assigning severity for defects Development Team Lead: The development team lead usually can evaluate a defect from a technical perspective, and can best assess the time required to resolve a defect and the impact on development resources for both current development efforts and resolution of defects. Thus can make decisions on prioritizing and assigning the defects to available resources, without affecting the current development Page 22 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Test Team Lead: The role of the test team lead is to evaluate the system and defects from a Quality perspective. Test or Quality Assurance Team Lead is usually likely to lead the Triage meeting since they are the owner of “software quality” and “Defect Manger”. In addition to meeting lead and quality person, test team lead is the best person to include schedule impact and potential impact of defect resolution on other existing and new functionalities they also provide feedback on test schedule impact and resources. The goal of triage team is to help team to successfully achieve Zero bugs in the product while giving maintenance support to the product. The software product at times will be delivered to the customer with severity 4 defects “good to fix/Fix if time” such bugs will be fixed later with time during support and maintenance of the product and end up with zero defect product. Triage Process Triage process is focused on defect review, assessment and assignment of defects. Triage teams usually reviews and make initial assessment of new and rejected defects, each defect is reviewed to determine the severity and clarify any further issues after which defects are prioritized for resolution. It is typically during this process defect’s Priority for the defects are set in the defect tracking system and assign it to a team member for resolution. Defect Tracking System needs to be setup for projecting all the open and ongoing defects, to track all changes as we go. Any defect that is rejected will also be reviewed to validate the reason for the rejection. In some cases the defect may be deferred to a future release or even closed outright if the team determines the defect, after further investigation, should be closed. Having a group of people to review both the bugs and fixes for those bugs ensures the implementation of bug fixes with high priority Goals of Triage Regardless of how you structure the process, the goal of Triage remains the same: evaluate, prioritize and assign the resolution of defects. As a minimum, you want to validate defect severities, make changes as needed, prioritize resolution of the defects, and assign resources. Page 23 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Bug’s life The “Triage team” regularly reviews all the bugs, prioritizes them and assigns them to the concerned person to review/investigate the defect and fix the defect or issue. After bug fix the triage team reviews the modifications in design and code before actually making the change. Few changes may be too risky to be made at last moment as they may alter the code actual functionality in such cases the bug fix can be too risky, so such changes can be postponed to later releases. There will be group of people to review both the bugs and fixes, to ensure the bug fixes are implemented with appropriate priority. Few bugs as mentioned earlier are categorized as “Won’t fix” which means that bugs are acknowledged but can’t be fixed in current release and is postponed for future release. Such type of “Won’t fix” and “postponed” bugs are maintained in the “Bug data base” otherwise known as defect/bug tracker. Sustained engineering and product support teams has access to bug database to access the bug data, information relevant to bug and review the bug for the product they support. These bugs once reviewed will go for bug fix approval, once that is approved by the team developer makes appropriate changes and integrates them into the application. The original bug in data base is marked/flagged as resolved, tester should verify the bug that is fixed and also the relevant functionality pertaining to that bug, if the bug is fixed then the tester can close the bug but if the bug is not fixed (i.e the bug still occurs) then the tester can reopen the bug fix and re-assign the same to the developer. Even if the bug is fixed bug’s life cycle doesn’t end at that point, these fixed bugs needs to be analyzed for root cause i.e root cause analysis needs to be done for identified bugs this data helps in finding out the problem to avoid any future bugs. The bugs life cycle and bug tracking mechanism helps the team to plan the release and develop accurate estimates for the work items planned for the release, this is because for a release along with the defined work item there will be list of bugs that are to be fixed which requirement development effort. Bug reports are maintained to provide information on remaining work, risk and overall project status. Many companies use bug tracking mechanism as project management system, teams maintain defect tracker along with requirement trackers. The advantage of using the bug tracking mechanism is as mentioned above to track all the requirements and bugs that will be taken up for release cycle thus can make effective release plan and to see the work items assigned to specific developer or a group. Page 24 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Attributes of Bug tracking System (bug data base or tools) To review the bugs they have to be properly documented, it means there should be efficient bug tracking mechanism. Attributes required for maintaining the bug tracking system. Below mentioned are the attributes required for effective bug tracking system. Ease of use Configurability Reliability Ease of use: This is one of the most important elements in bug tracking system; it should be easy to use for reporting the defect, extracting the same, review and close the defect. Individual testers use the system to enter bugs. The test management team performs various queries against bug data maintained in the system in order to track the defect status and generate the report of bug status. For this entering and viewing data in system must be simple and efficient. Configurability: The needs and expectations from bug tracking system differ from team to team. The ability to add fields to contain additional information or to remove other information is essential as the key decision making factors differ from team to team, so configurability is important attribute for bug tracking system. Few product teams require only title, description, severity, module, revision number to be entered for bug tracking Reliability: The bug tracking system must be available 24X7 without interruption, so it should be reliable. In few companies internal IT department maintains the hardware and SQL systems that support bug database. Page 25 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy Summary Product manager plays a key role in engineering lifecycle right from making sure user needs are translated in terms where engineering team understands and implements to managing product release and schedule is met as per market demands Product management as a discipline is about what the product should be taking into account opinions from all stakeholders within and outside organization. Product Portfolio Management can be defined as a business process to effectively manage new product development ideas, maximizing the value current on-going product development projects. Continuous selection and improvement of the opportunities for new product development is done in order to maximize their product portfolio. Project here means the new product development project, product enhancement project and maintenance projects. Pipeline is a technical jargon for project which are about to start in recent future and are undergoing top management level considerations (generally with clients), in order to decide the commencement of the projects. Product management is sometimes referred as a hub-and-spoke system where the product manager is figuratively at the center with spokes emanating out to various departments. The role of product manager is multi-faceted role. The product manager’s job is to oversee all aspects of a product or service line to create and deliver superior customer satisfaction while simultaneously providing long term value for the company. Product managers are responsible for defining the long term strategy of the product which will be aligned to the business strategy, mission and express the details in a product roadmap. MRD’s are the Market Requirement Documents which include the VOC (Voice of customer) the in large firms this generally consists of following information: o Who the target customers are. o What products are in competition with the proposed one o Why customers are likely to want this product PRD’s Product Requirement Document which captures the prioritized features of the product. Page 26 of 28 Certificate in Software Product Engineering TCS Business Domain Academy The Engineering department writes the functional requirements based on the PRD and the MRD. TRAIGE software development in similar lines is about determining the priorities, with respect to new features and functionalities as software development has 3 major constraints namely “Time, Resource, budget”. The “Triage team” regularly reviews all the bugs, prioritizes them and assigns them to the concerned person to review/investigate the defect and fix the defect or issue. Page 27 of 28