The role of product and project manager has never been as important as it is today, and it’s likely the importance will increase. The challenge to do “more with less” has been the standing order for many years. However, it’s particularly acute in today’s environment with economic pressures, global competition, technical advances and customer demands. All too often, project managers suffer from having to react to customer ideas, needs and preferences. They find out about issues during software testing or even worse from customer complaints directly or through the help desk. This is often too late in the product lifecycle to find out about missed customer expectations, not to mention product sponsor expectations. Another disturbing fact of dealing with issues reactively is the amount of money it costs to remedy the errors and omissions. And those costs are both in real dollars and missed business opportunities.

Managers face challenges on how to prioritize features for release management. All too often, features are prioritized based on organizational influences exclusively. Organizations don’t effectively solicit customer ideas and preferences relative to prioritization directly. This lack of customer involvement very often leads to stakeholder disappointment or overall project failure. Developing the unexpected, even when developed well, disappoints customers. This can be the case even if the project is completed within budget and schedule constraints.

Customer-driven development is an approach for helping with these challenges. At the heart of customer-driven development is the proactive elicitation of customer ideas, needs and preferences. As the name implies, customer participation is central to customer-driven development. This participation involves various types of customers and projects. Customers can be either internal or external to a company. To an independent software vendor (ISV), customers are the people who purchase and use the software. Obviously they are the lifeblood for the company, providing the sustaining revenue for survival. Some ISVs might think that customers are happy, but don’t really know for sure because they never really hear from them. If the phone is not ringing very much, the ISV may assume that the customers are satisfied. The dilemma here is that dissatisfied customers may have stopped complaining. They simply may have become customers of competitors. For internally-developed software, customers are the end users who utilize the software to help automate business processes. Again, they are the lifeblood for company survival. The dilemma here might be that dissatisfied customers won’t stop complaining. The phone on the product manager’s desk and at the help desk rings too often. The product manager spends a lot of time reacting to complaints, change requests, software bugs, et cetera.

Leveraging the voice of the internal or external customer helps product teams determine ideas, needs and preferences, and address the problem of missed opportunities and expectations. Proactive customer involvement enhances product planning and eventual acceptance of the delivered software. It strengthens customer loyalty and increases their satisfaction.

Bottom line:

• Solicit customer ideas relative to perceived customer needs
• Determine the customer needs relevant to the gathered customer ideas
• Determine the high-level features within scope associated with the customer needs
• Identify business use cases associated with the features
• Prioritize features and uses cases utilizing input from customers and the development staff
• Present a consensus-based release strategy for review and approval

By utilizing a customer-driven software development approach, customers are more likely to remain loyal to the product, which is the goal of any stakeholder in software development.