PRO-WHEEL: A Progressive Product Review Process

Srinivas Annambhotla Email: vasu444@gmail.com

In this age of internet and ever changing technology, most product development organizations spend billions of dollars building novel products in the hope of creating new markets and redefining existing ones. For such organizations, especially for those engaged in the fast moving technology sector: bad design, flaws in execution, quality problems, excessive pricing etc., can often spell doom and the cost of failure along with the opportunity cost involved can be prohibitive and dilute shareholder value. In such a dynamic scenario, Is there a way for the management and the key decision makers in a company to somehow get a preview for the response, a product would receive upon launch, way before it is actually launched? We believe there is one. In this paper, we describe a simple yet a powerful process that emphasizes progressive feedback and can give a preview to the key decision makers on the potential response to a product, upon formal launch. In the following sections we highlight some of the current practices adopted in product development organizations, present their drawbacks and subsequently define and describe a new process that we firmly believe, if employed could drastically cut down the failure rates in creating new and successful products, let companies kill unsuccessful products before the customers do so and let them deploy financial and human resources on products that would truly amplify shareholder value. Current Approaches and their Drawbacks: Let us begin by looking at two very important steps in the product development process: a. User Focus Groups and Consumer Research b. Dogfooding The aforementioned steps occur at the beginning and the end of the product development lifecycle respectively. Product managers tend to utilize user focus groups and consumer research for conceiving products. Such studies are usually front loaded, ie. these form the basis for product concepts and are rarely revisited during the subsequent phases of the product development life cycle (hereafter PDLC). Towards the end of the PDLC, i.e., when the product is at an advanced stage of development, many organizations use the dogfooding concept where products are used by employees within the organization and provide feedback. Between these two stages, most organizations focus primarily on the minutiae of execution and rarely look within the organization and treat employees as potential users/early adopters of the product under development. At the dogfooding stage, they are at an advanced stage of development, giving little room for the management to make radical changes. It is often too late for any course correction. In a usual case of dogfooding, employees within an organization are supposed to use the products and provide feedback for quality improvements. However, we have found the following drawbacks in this process:

A) Feedback tends to be very vague, generic and subjective (e.g.: touch panel is not sensitive enough). This significantly reduces the efficacy of the feedback and does not give the product managers sufficient material to make a strong case and press the engineering functions to make improvements. B) Employees who may also be involved with the development of the dogfood product tend to be impaired with emotional bias and thus product managers do not have the privilege of receiving unbiased feedback. C) A combination of the two reasons cited above along with the usual anonymous feedback mechanism results in non actionable, biased and often chaotic views for the product manager. In our view, these defeat the very purpose of dogfooding and rob the company of valuable lessons and critical first impressions of the product before its launch.

Pro-Wheel
Pro-Wheel is a progressive product review process that provides the management and key decision makers in a product development organization a valuable preview on the potential success of a new product. This process, described in greater detail in the following sections is a broad framework for leveraging employees with diverse backgrounds as the first line of customers, collecting and analyzing actionable feedback from them and eliminating any emotional bias in their responses. This process is designed to be lightweight, quick and can be very easily adapted to suit an organization's unique situation. A typical Product Development organization and the various functions involved are illustrated in Figure.1 below:

NOTE: This could vary based on the type and size of an organization.

Each of the functions illustrated in Fig. 1 can be correlated to one or more elements of customer experience which has/have the potential to influence the buyer's choice and thus contribute to the success of a product. These approximately corresponding elements of customer experience are illustrated in Figure.2 below.

Description of Pro-Wheel
A complete cycle of feedback and analysis is termed one 'Pro-Wheel Rotation'. In organizations with an iterative development model, a Pro-Wheel rotation should be held after every iteration or prototype. The first Pro-Wheel rotation would be held after the implementation of an early prototype. More such rotations could be held for subsequent stages of development. This would ultimately lead into the dogfooding stage. Each Pro-Wheel rotation should take no more than two weeks and has 2 parts: 1. Feedback stage 2. Analysis stage. Note: Each stage should take no more than one week. Week 1: Feedback Stage In this stage, employees belonging to the various functions are assigned a focus area of the product. Each employee is strongly encouraged to spend a few minutes (suggested: 15-30 mins per day) and review the various aspects of the focus area assigned to their function on that particular day. At the end of the review, each employee shall provide his/her feedback via a simple web based form, a sample of

which is shown in Figure. 8. This process is illustrated further in the following figures and is based on Fig.1 and Fig. 2:

Figure 8

Having experienced first hand the bureaucratic hurdles involved in heavily process oriented organizations, we strongly recommend that employees in various functions spend no more than 15-30 minutes each for providing feedback on the assigned focus area each day. The end of first week should signal completion of the feedback collection phase. An observation of the activities performed in week 1 will make it clear that each function reviews the product with a focus on every other function except itself. This ensures the exclusion of any emotional bias in the feedback process. Experience shows that feedback within organizations tends to be honest if there is no emotional bias involved. In such cases, employees tend to take an outsider's (similar to a customer of the product) perspective and are able to more accurately critique features and functionality. Week 2: Analysis

In the Analysis phase, the product management function shall isolate and distil feedback from week 1. This analysis shall give the product manager visibility of the most prevalent problems in each area. Upon the availability of such data, the product manager shall set up sessions with each function to discuss key takeaways, make a strong case for solving the top concerns and drive decisions. Subsequently, he could also share the findings with the executive management and other key decision makers within the organization. This would go a long way in giving them indications about the response their product would receive upon a formal launch. This data can also help a product manager arrive at other conclusions, e.g. the response in a certain age group or in a group of people with a certain background and this would help him adapt his product pitch continuously and look at ways to improve the experience for the intended audience in subsequent iterations. The major benefits organizations could gain by employing Pro-Wheel are highlighted below: 1. Eliminates emotional bias in feedback cycles and therefore provides decision makers with objective data. 2. Helps identify possible audience and their reactions/reviews to the product. 3. Helps product managers identify a suitable product pitch. 4. Early feedback for the various groups involved in product development: software, hardware, design, marketing etc.) thereby providing an opportunity for course correction. 5. Identify potential risks and adapt forecasting models and resource deployment appropriately. 6. Promotes a culture of co-creation in the organization. New product fatalities have become increasingly common and there is an urgent need to develop tools, methodologies and processes that will help organizations become better at identifying unsuccessful products early in the development lifecycle. Pro-Wheel is a sure step in this direction and we hope that its little appetite for resources and participatory approach will drive widespread adoption.