product management – The Making of Software

Speed up On-Premises Product Delivery

Fast delivery of value to customers is today’s business mantra – especially in the software industry. In this blog I reflect on delivery challenges of companies which offer the same product as SaaS AND on-premises solution. I will also present a case study that shows how a company has dramatically improved its on-premises delivery speed.

Within the past 15 years we have seen several approaches how to foster fast delivery of software products. Two prominent ones are:

Agile development
Cloud based solutions

The agile approach to software development produces software products incrementally and frequently. This is achieved by close interaction with customers and a set of development principles that are based on the agile manifesto. It is not uncommon that software companies create new versions of their software products on a monthly or even shorter frequency.

How are these product increments delivered to the customer?

Currently there are two major mechanisms in use:

The fastest way for on-premises provisioned products, is to check during launch if there is a newer version of the product available. If so, the newer version will be automatically downloaded and installed. This practice is often used within the software games industry. E.g. games that are provisioned by the steam gaming platform. Traditional ways to deliver a new on-premises version are customer notifications combined with manual on-demand-downloads.

SaaS provisioned products are often under control of the company in charge for the development of the product. Whenever the development organization has produced and tested a new product increment, it will be moved to the SaaS server. Customers that launch the product through their web browser are automatically connected to the latest version of the product. Cloud-based solutions enable software vendors to deliver new software features quite often to their customers. The only thing left to do is to update the software on the runtime environment that is often under their own control. In such environments it is not uncommon that bug fixes and new features are delivered on a weekly or even on a daily basis.

The dual-delivery challenge

Companies which started business after the millennium focus often on cloud based solutions and do not provide on-premises products. In contrast, companies that have been around for more than 15 years are used to on-premises delivery and have established their business around that channel. However, more and more of those companies start to deliver their products as SaaS-based products in addition. Prominent examples are Microsoft with their office suite and HPE with their ALM solution.

Serving two channels with the same product creates new challenges. Customers that utilize on-premises products often have to wait for more than a year to get new features. Features which they can already see within the SaaS version of the same product. This situation creates quite some tension. Therefore, product companies try shortening the delivery cycles for on-premises solutions as well.

The company Jama Software was faced with this challenge and recently came up with a new release model for their on-premises release stream of the requirements product named Jama.

Case study Jama

Jama Software prefers the SaaS delivery channel. However, they accept that some of their customers do not want data managed outside their company’s intranet. Especially, if the data contains sensitive information about upcoming product releases which is usually the case when managing requirements.

As a consequence, Jama Software delivers its product as a hosted solution via SaaS AND as an on-premises solution. Typically, they release two on-premises versions within a year. However, customers using the SaaS version get access to new product features much earlier.

In summer 2016 Jama Software announced a significantly changed new release mechanism: On-premises Express. With the on-premises express channel they aim to deliver new versions on a monthly base. Compared to the half year release schedule so far this represents a stunning acceleration in delivery.

What are the secrets to Jama Software’s cycle time reduction?

First of all: A thorough analysis of the current situation. Finding out the areas of work that need a lot of time for each release. The current server part of the product Jama is delivered on two operating systems: Windows and Linux. All used 3^rd party components need to be available on both platforms at the same time. So far Jama Software supports two database systems: MySQL and Oracle. Features and bug-fixes need to be tested on both platforms and DBs. Testing bug fixes and new product features on the various configurations consumes quite some time.

Jama product management made the tough decision to drop support for Microsoft Windows server and Oracle DB. This enabled the QA organization to substantially reduce time for testing. Now Jama Software delivers the same software configuration to their customers that they use on their hosted platform as well.

Second, they analyzed their current architecture in regards to ease of modification. They found out, that they could improve their product significantly by a new way of modularization.

Third, they decided to utilize top-notch technology for isolating the product into distinct independent components, thereby easing software distribution. Jama Software decided to utilize Docker containers. They now encapsulate product dependencies like Java and Tomcat into containers, so that customers don’t need to care about specific Java or Tomcat versions.

Fourth, accelerating deployment. Jama software now uses Replicated. This technology takes advantage of Docker and deploys containers not only to the SaaS server of the vendor but also behind a customer’s firewall. Using Replicated Jama Software now builds the product just once and deploys the result simultaneously to their own hosted instance and to registered customers.

Encapsulating product services into Docker container and managing deployment with Replicated enables Jama Software to manage deployment of the service-oriented architecture much faster, more flexible and more reliable than before.

Summary

Achieving cycle time reduction in development is just one element to deliver software to customers more frequently. It needs to be matched by fast deployment methods, so that the whole DevOps chain can be covered. On top of that the product managers of Jama Software needed to make some tough decisions what not to support in the future. These decisions took complexity out of the product and significantly reduced testing time. Product managers are responsible for the overall product success. They have a holistic view of the business and need to look at all aspects along the delivery chain of a product in order to come up with solutions that enable sustainable business success. Jama Software has rebuild major elements along that line.

We may expect similar moves by other vendors this year as they all face similar pressures.
Stay tuned.

Further information:

Jama delivery channels

Replicated Technology: SaaS vs. on prem solved

Docker

Software Product Management: Key to software product success

How Product Managers Learn

Reflections from PMF 2015

On November 18 and 19 I participated at the Product Management Festival 2015 in Zürich Switzerland. This was a great event for product managers to get together. Besides networking opportunities it provided numerous insights into product management practices. Most of the talks were experience reports. Young product managers as well as high profile product directors shared their insights. Some of those insights were morphed nicely into pictures, like the one from Nilan Peiris (VP of growth from TransferWise). He illustrated the relationship between Product Management and Product Marketing with a nice picture in the tweet: The great mexican standoff of product management

Learn from failures of other practitioners

What the audience really appreciated is the fact that speakers shared their failures as well. Where else do you get such insights? Learning from failure is a theme that has become prominent with the agile movement: you are allowed to fail, but you shouldn’t fail twice with the same topic.

Learn from good practices of other practitioners

Sharing good practices is another good source of learning and we could listen to numerous recommendations from the speakers, like the ones from Martin Rusch – vice president Xing. He provided insights into the Xing way of launching new initiatives using “Auftragsklärung” as a key success element. The German word “Auftragsklärung” is explaining the situation so excellent, that Martin and his colleagues at Xing didn’t find an equivalent English word for it; “project clarification” would be a rough translation.

“Auftragsklärung” may work for Xing, however, each practice should be evaluated carefully, whether it fits to other environments as well. Already 30 years ago Fred Brooks coined the famous term “there is no silver bullet”.

Learn the foundations

Several attendees came to the festival to learn how to establish product management as a discipline in their company. For them a product management framework like the one from the International Software Product Management Association (ISPMA) is a good starting point. Based on that Software Product Management Body of Knowledge training providers have established curricula that teach software product management as a discipline. See our training offerings on swpm.de/spm as one example.

Learn from references

There is also a growing body of knowledge available in text format. Books, blogs, online presentations and research articles about the field of software product management. Watch out for upcoming information about this topic in this blog.

Learn from your own practice

The most important learning source for product managers however is provided from own practice. Nothing is more worthwhile than making your own experience.

That of course, wasn’t possible at the product management festival, but will be done every day at work. May be we can hear about your experiences at next year’s festival?

Aha

Recently we updated our annotated collection of requirements management tools. In this update we introduced a couple of new tools, which we got notice from. One of them is the product Aha!.

Aha! is a cloud based solution targeted at product managers. It has been created in 2013 and focuses on product planning aspects. The company Aha! positions the product as roadmapping software. Product managers can specify high level goals and visions for products. Continue reading “Aha”

Software Product Management Survey

Have you ever wondered how your product management practices stack up against others in the software industry?

Well, here’s an opportunity to find out: the International Software Product Management Association (ISPMA, http://ispma.org ) is for the first time conducting a survey to find out about software product management practices in the real world – and you are invited to participate.

To complete the survey, please go to the URL http://bit.ly/spm-survey and answer the questions about your organization, your product, and your product management practices. Filling out the survey will require about 20 – 25 minutes of your time and you’ll receive the following benefits:

Immediately after filling out the survey, you will get access to an overview document on state-of-the-art software product management. This document is a compilation of the most frequently cited scientific publications in the field of software product management.

Once the survey has been closed and evaluated, you’ll receive a personalized evaluation that shows your results in comparison with results of the entire survey panel. This way, you can compare yourself with the state-of-practice and you get insights into how practice varies from one organization to another. This will help you to further evolve your own approach to software product management.

The survey is conducted by Andrey Maglyas from Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT, http://www.lut.fi/ ), Finland and Dr. Samuel Fricker from Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH, http://www.bth.se/ ), Sweden with support from the International Software Product Management Association (ISPMA, http://ispma.org ).

The survey will close on 25.12.2012 and we plan to complete the survey evaluation in early 2013.

Was ist so speziell am Produktmanagement für Software und Internet-Angebote?

Schon bei der Definition des Produkts und insbesondere der Produktfunktionalität hat man bei Software und Internet-Angeboten mehr Freiheiten als bei physischen Produkten. Software ist sehr flexibel und man kann damit fast “alles” machen. Diese große Freiheit stellt eine Herausforderung dar, denn es ist im Gegenzug oft schwer, zu fokussieren oder sinnvolle Kombinationen von Funktionalitäten zu definieren.

Auch beim Geschäftsmodell und bei der Preisfindung gibt es bei digitalen Gütern große Freiheitsgrade: zumeist sind die Grenzkosten sehr gering, d.h. sobald das Angebot einmal verfügbar ist, kostet es fast nichts, es einem weiteren Kunden zur Verfügung zu stellen. Damit sind z.B. Freemium-Geschäftsmodelle möglich, bei denen die Mehrheit der Kunden eine Grundversion des Angebots umsonst nutzt und nur eine Minderheit für eine erweiterte Funktionalität zahlt.

Versuchen Sie so ein Geschäftsmodell mal mit einem physischen Gut, zum Beispiel als Automobilhersteller: das Basis-Modell gibt es umsonst, und anspruchsvollere Kunden können dann optional zum schnelleren Modell oder zum Cabrio wechseln und nur dann müssen sie etwas bezahlen. Würde sicher helfen, Marktanteile zu gewinnen, aber es ist klar, warum das nicht geht.

Aber auch hier gilt: der höhere Freiheitsgrad macht die Aufgabe des Produktmanagers schwieriger, denn z.B. bei der Preisfindung ist einer der klassischen Einflussfaktoren, nämlich die Stückkosten, wenig hilfreich.

Einerseits stehen Produktmanager für Software und Internet-Angebote also vor speziellen Herausforderungen, andererseits hat die Branche spezifische Techniken entwickelt, um mit diesen Herausforderungen besser fertig werden zu können. So unterstützt beispielsweise das Instrumentarium des Requirements Engineering die Produktplanung und Qualitätssicherung und hilft damit den Produktmanagern, die Herausforderungen bei der Produktdefinition zu meistern.