Process Excellence
June 30th, 2008 by Jeff Jaffe
Usually I write about our business and product strategies. Powering our strategies is an execution engine that ensures we build the right products with the right features for our customers – on a timely basis and with high quality. The execution engine is Novell’s people: programmers, engineers, product managers, project managers, marketing specialists, and our sales force and channel partners.
>The engine is driven by our internal processes – the methods with which we gain information about customer needs, market trends, and technological innovations and synthesis this into high quality products that meet customers requirements.
Novell has four business units. Some originated in Novell, while others, such as our Open Platform Solutions (Linux) unit, came principally through acquisitions. Others are a combination of organic and acquired elements. As a result, through the years we developed different processes.
Last year we commited ourselves to process consistency and process excellence. Consistency is important externally because it enhances the unity of our products in the marketplace. It is important internally because our engineers work together and, over time, move from one team to another.
We are always focused on excellence. Novell has always been great at understanding market needs and translating them into high quality products – but there is always room for improvement. So, as we examine and standardize core processes, we also ensure that we are performing them in an excellent fashion.
Integrated Product Development
The first area we addressed was excellent process for Product Management. Product Management focuses on the lifecycle of a product; understanding market and customer needs and translating them into products. We now have a standard approach for Integrated Product Development (IPD). Indeed, we have gone beyond product management and provided a standard approach to business management. Key features in our approach to IPD include:
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A cross-functional team for each business unit (BU), called the Business Management Team (BMT). The BMT is led by the BU General Manager, and involves BU personnel as well as leaders from sales, marketing, services, finance, and other advisory functions. The BMT makes cross-functional decisions on product content, product readiness, marketing programs, channel readiness, selected markets, and R&D investments.
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A set of readiness that each product must pass through so that appropriate decisions are made at the right times. This ensures alignment in the company and readiness for the entire product lifecycle: development, marketing, sales, and service.
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A set of artifacts or documents that must be completed to ensure that each step of the process has considered everything that is necessary to be considered. These start with the Market Requirements Document to ensure a market focus. These are reviewed at the aforementioned readiness gates.
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A complete management system for products; detailed dashboards which show schedule, quality, resource consumption, resource planning, etc.
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Operational business planning: focus on sales, channels, marketing.
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A cadence of reviews so that BMT members are well prepared for gate reviews (with the artifacts, inputs from their colleagues) and BMT decisions are promptly disseminated.
Summary and next steps
We have developed a staged roll-out for IPD: Too often, heavy processes introduced all at once can do more harm than good. So our approach is lightweight and staged. We are in the middle of a several year maturation and key elements are already in place.
Aside from product management excellence, we also need excellence for our core engineering processes. This post is getting long, so I will discuss that at my next posting.