product manager

Ten Commandants for Project Manager in Requirements Change Management

Requirements Change management if managed haphazardly may become a disaster for both customer and the product, so it has to be managed very wisely and tactically. And the role of a project manager in this is very crucial.

In such a case the role of Project Manager can be sequentially summarized as below:
10. He has to understand well the total requirements of the customer
9. He has to map these requirements in the software already catering to other customers
8. This way he will be able to find out and check what is the impact of these requirements on the software?
7. He also has to check out if some practices already built in the software are better than what the customer is asking for?
6. He has to revert back to customer to discuss (and rather educate him) the benefits of adopting the practices already built in over the changes asked for
5. Customer might agree to some, and might still ask for the changes at certain places
4. Now the project manager has to sit with his product manager to convince him to incorporate these changes
3. Understand the impact of these changes and get back to customer if there is any adverse effect
2. Finally get those changes incorporated in the software
1. But don’t assume that the story is over…

Project Manager – A Solid Bridge between Customer and Product Manager

Let us talk about existing software required to be implemented at a new geographical location. Definitely because of a different location there will be certain new requirements plus some changes here and there in the existing built to meet customer specifications. This need to be handled very minutely and tactfully in such a manner that on one hand it meets all customer requirements and on the other hand puts least burden on the team and software in terms of catering to those specifications or changes asked by the customer.

How it needs to be managed, monitored and done is an art that requires certain level of high skills in the project manager who has to act as a solid bridge between the customer and the product manager. If we consider Project Manager, Customer and Product Manager as three different islands – it is the Project Manager who has to synchronize and gel well together all the three different islands in the journey of building or moulding the software to meet all the requirements of the customer. The project manager in this case is the center point with Customer and Product Manager on his two sides.

Dear Product Manager don’t cheat your customer by bypassing final ‘testing’ of the product before launch

When work pressures are too high, deadlines are on head, we tend to bypass our own standards, procedures and policies. A product manager if affords to skip testing for that purpose, that means he is committing a crime which is quite serious offense. Any management supporting this idea becomes part of the crime. Testing on ‘wish’ of a person (the product manager), depending on time availability or delay in development clearly states there are no plans in reality. If development of the product is delayed, the implementation can be delayed, whatever be the pressure from customer. If customer is befooled by declaring that the product is ready to launch (which has in actual not been tested properly, and customer is unaware of this), that means the customer is being cheated.

The whole scenario calls for a delay or failure, but who cares – there is no discipline being followed and the confidence is – “we will handle any situation”. Had the product launch been delayed by clearly stating to the customer (or to the top management, if pressure if from there) that the testing and fixing of bugs will take some more days, the customer (or top management) would have always welcomed the decision and would surely have understood your compassion (and passion) towards product, organization and the customer. Definitely it is a call for troubles during launch and implementation stage if the ‘testing’ has been bypassed.

If this is so, we still are the same as we were, have learnt nothing from the past and are betting for failure in success. That also means that QA is being displayed as a ‘showpiece’ to customer or to top management.

Endnote – if you have an opinion that ‘testing’ or QC of the product is a useless activity, if you believe most of the bugs reported by the testers are useless, you are as right as your highest level commitment towards the product, development, yourself, your customer and your organization.