From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product
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This document discusses how individual coders can thrive while commercializing a new product. It outlines the new product development and commercialization process. It then discusses two approaches to new product development - fragile environments that do not welcome uncertainty versus antifragile environments that thrive on uncertainty. The document recommends ways for coders to improve their skills and environment, such as achieving requisite variety, practicing pair development, facilitating disintermediation, and improving focus and expectations. The overall goal is for coders and their teams to develop in a way that survives and thrives when facing unpredictable changes.
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From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product
- 1. From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product: How to Survive and Thrive Mark A. Hart, NPDP 1 March 2016
- 2. Outline • What is New Product Development and Commercialization • Two Approaches to New Product Development • Defining Winning • Development Options • Six Ways to Synthesize and Exercise more Attractive Development Options • Improving Focus and Expectations • You still have to master your coding skills but you can thrive while commercializing a product 2
- 4. New Product Development Commercialization: The process of taking a new product from development to market. It generally includes production launch and ramp-up, marketing materials and program development, supply chain development, sales channel development, training development, training, and service and support development. [PDMA glossary] 4
- 5. Expectations include: • Product vision, forecasts, guesses, hypotheses • Deliverables, artifacts, prototypes, minimum viable products, product/market fit • Resources, budgets, people • Metrics, milestones, schedules, timelines • Competitive responses • Relatively stable organization 5 The probability of being correct on all of these expectations is zero!
- 6. New Product Development Process 6
- 7. New Product Development Process from a management perspective 7
- 8. New Product Development Process from a Design Thinking perspective 8
- 9. New Product Development Process from an individual coder’s perspective 9 UX – User Experience Transform this into a GIF that has four builds. Add individuals to the network while the fidelity of the prototype and interaction increases. DX – Development Experience
- 10. Done “A winner is someone (individual or group) who can build snowmobiles, and employ them in an appropriate fashion, when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.” 10 John Boyd – fighter pilot, aircraft designer, and military strategist Proxy metrics in units of user stories, velocity, tests that passed, features,… Win (Boyd, Metaphorical Revelation, 1987
- 11. Defining Wins 11 UX – User Experience DX – Development Experience
- 12. Potential Roles of Coders during a Project that includes Commercialization • Providers of code that build to specifications in selected languages • Individuals that prefer to work in isolation or as part of a small group working separately from contributors with other specialties • Agents within a complex adaptive system that share responsibilities within a network • Professionals that are expected to shape the focus and direction of the project and thus impact the outcome • Individuals with other responsibilities 12
- 13. New Product Development Environment 13 Complex Adaptive System: A co-evolving system characterized by nonlinearities. It has the ability to adapt to a changing environment. Predisposed to self-organization. Changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network. The system impacts the individual. The individual impacts the system. Characterized by emergence through interaction with individuals and the environment.
- 14. Characterizations of development environments • Fragile • Robust • Resilient • Antifragile 14
- 15. Fragile development environments • Do not welcome disorder • When uncertainty is injected, the typical results are unpleasant 15
- 16. In a fragile development environment, one obstacle can prevent the realization of value 16
- 17. 475 million dollar key chain 17
- 18. The more fragile the development environment, the less likely it is to thrive 18
- 19. Antifragile • An adjective created by Taleb • The exact opposite of fragile 19
- 20. Antifragile An antifragile system thrives and grows when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and it welcomes adventure, risk, and uncertainty 20
- 21. How can you improve your capability to survive and thrive? 21
- 22. Development Options are more powerful than: • Operational, tactical, or strategic choices • Real options (delaying decisions until the last responsible moment) • A contract, like a financial option, where one group may obtain items at a specified price in the future • The creation of two versions of a component followed by comparative (A/B) testing within a specialty group 22
- 23. Development Options • Accelerate the most valuable learning • Improve the capability for a more valuable shared understanding • Add the appropriate adaptive capability to reduce the dependence on detailed forecasting and planning • Facilitate safe-to-fail experiments that may have the potential for asymmetric gains (more upside than downside) 23
- 24. Improve the development network’s capability to synthesize and exercise more attractive development options: • Requisite variety over the status quo • Synthesis via pair development over pattern matching • Disintermediation over barriers between decision makers • Harmony and synergy over sub-optimization • Recursion over iteration • Mismatch detection over error propagation 24
- 25. Formulated by W Ross Ashby = variety of potential responses = variety of disturbances (problems) = variety of outcomes tolerable by the essential variables Requisite Variety 25
- 26. Requisite variety requires a large repertoire of possible responses 26
- 27. Achieving Requisite Variety • Mobilize network of contributors with diverse specialties and multiple perspectives • Additional training • Access to expertise • Cooperation 27
- 28. Without requisite variety, familiar patterns may not be recognized as insufficient responses 28
- 29. Without a variety of potential responses at the appropriate times, a development environment may be fragile 29
- 31. To ensure the adaptability of the development network • Amplify appropriately • Attenuate appropriately 31
- 32. Pair Development • Interaction of disciplines • Synthesis of options • Develop self-correcting focus and direction 32
- 33. Pair Development • Not cross-training • Example: Novel approach produced by the interaction of Spock and Kirk 33 Publicity photo of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock#/media/File:Leonard_Nimoy_William_Shatner_Star_Trek_1968.JP G
- 34. Pair Development • Analysis/Synthesis • Novel solutions 34 Pattern Matching • Previous solutions • First pattern match • Availability bias • Availability heuristic
- 35. Disintermediation • Remove layers between individual contributors and data • Remove barriers between decision makers 35
- 36. Facilitate Disintermediation • Experience interactions of customers with prototypes • Direct observations that promote full- fidelity interactions 36
- 37. Harmony and Synergy Harmony: “Power to perceive or create interaction of apparently disconnected events or entities in a connected way” ( [Boyd, 1986. Patterns of Conflict 144] 37 Synergy: Results are better than predicted by the sum of the components. Each individual catalyzed better contributions from the other.
- 38. Harmony and Synergy • Improve group communication • Shape interactions between colleagues that share similar goals • Reduce dysergy by minimizing interactions with certain individuals 38 Sub-optimization • Also known as micro- optimization. • Compare to local maximum.
- 39. Recursion: Solving problems of the same type Using an early prototype, determine the words that customers use when describing this problem 39 Using a refined prototype, determine the words that customers use when describing this problem
- 40. Recursion: Solving problems of the same type • Benefits from continuous integration • Users engage in tasks with prototypes over completing surveys • Brief, frequent interactions (at least a few times per month) over waiting for elaborate integrations at the end of the project 40
- 41. Mismatch • Mismatch: the incompatibility of an individual’s conceptual model of a situation and the actual phenomena. • The magnitude of a mismatch may depend on deficiencies with the initial forecast or problems with perceptions. • The cause of a mismatch may be execution insufficiencies. 41
- 42. Mismatch Detection • Self-detection • Incorporate approaches to improve requisite variety, pair development, continuous integration, and continuous delivery 42 • If mismatches are not detected, the potential for winning is reduced • If mismatches are not corrected, errors are propagated
- 43. Employing the six approaches for the win • Requisite Variety • Pair Development • Disintermediation • Harmony and Synergy • Recursion • Mismatch Detection 43
- 44. Individual Contributors are Motivated by Factors that include: •Autonomy •Mastery •Purpose 44
- 45. Adapting Focus and Expectations (1/2) Focus: Short-term efforts. Focus determines the items that commanded attention and those that are secondary. Focus shapes hour-to-hour choices. 45
- 46. Adapting Focus and Expectations (2/2) Expectations: A set of items that include what we hypothesize will be important for success in the future and what we deliver when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change. 46
- 47. Developing Winners: Assimilating the Insights Encapsulated in Boyd's OODA Loop www.Developing-Winners.com 47
- 48. Mark A Hart www.OpLaunch.com Twitter: From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product: How to Survive and Thrive March 2016 Development Experience @OpLaunch 48
Editor's Notes
- From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product: How to Survive and Thrive Mark A. Hart, NPDP A presentation to Code & Supply. 1 March 2016.
- Outline My goal is to share several insights on how to survive and thrive while commercializing a new product. What is New Product Development and Commercialization Two Approaches to New Product Development Defining Winning Development Options Six Ways to Synthesize and Exercise more Attractive Development Options Improving Focus and Expectations You still have to master your coding skills but you can thrive while commercializing a product
- Typically, the project under consideration can be characterized by enough information to fill a page or two. The project under consideration is completing with other opportunities. The definition of win depends on the role of the evaluator. Often, winning is defined in terms of revenue forecasts. There are many recommendations on how to approach the intermediate portion.
- From the perspective of the buyer/user, commercialization includes all the efforts required to be informed about a product, select it, purchase it, train to use it, and have the support to retain the use of the product. From the perspective of the development organization, commercialization is proceeded by many decisions about how to approach this challenge in terms of people, ideas, and tools within an business. Note: Buzzwords such as DevOps do not cover most of this scope described in the commercialization definition.
- Expectations include: Vision, forecasts, guesses, hypotheses, milestones, Execution, deliverables, artifacts, prototypes, minimum viable product, product/market fit, Metrics, resources, budget, people There are many approaches to achieving these expectations. The probability of being correct is zero. This makes it difficult to thrive.
- The Business Model Canvas was popularized by Alex Osterwalder. His name is connected with Steve Blank and Eric Ries (known for the book “The Lean Startup” and the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept. Besides familiar items such as “Value Proposition,” this template prompts the development team to consider additional items related to commercialization. One takeaway from the Business Model Canvas is that success will required more than contributions from coders.
- A common way to present the development process is from a management perspective. Often this references a documented process. One of the trademarked versions of an approach is called Stage-Gate. This is a sequential, deterministic, waterfall process. Within a portion of the development organization, an Agile framework may be used such as Scrum. An approach called DevOps suggests cooperation between the development organization and the manufacturing group.
- Design Thinking has been popularized by Idea (the company that helped Apple commercialize a mouse), Stanford (with a D-School), and Roger Martin at the University of Toronto. It elevates ideas from the design perspective. The origin of the word design is ‘mark out.’ The word is similar to ‘signature.’ The connotation is consistent with the idea of a preliminary sketch. The origin of the word develop is unwrap or unfurl (a flag). The connotation is consistent with bring to a more advanced state. Everyone is a designer. Everyone is a developer. The important items relate to proficiency is isolation and harmony in practice.
- From the perspective of an coder, individuals engage and are released from the new product development effort throughout the project. If individual coders are not effectively engaged, the process or the metrics will not drive the maximum potential to win. For the individual contributor, factors such as happiness and professional satisfaction are important. Other factors are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Effectively engaged individual contributors drive success.
- Done and Win – One of these is a proxy A items such as a user story or feature can be assessed as ‘done.’ Items may be considered done when their card moves to the ‘DONE’ column of a Kanban board. GIT commit have a sense of ‘done.’ If the code it not used or the project is cancelled, the classification loses importance. There are many items that can be classified as ‘done’ in a project. In contrast, a win is an outcome. There are a few perspectives on winning. Boyd had a metaphorical definition of a winner. “A winner is someone (individual or group) who can build snowmobiles, and employ them in an appropriate fashion,w hen facing uncertainty and unpredictable change. (Boyd. Revelation. 1987)
- Defining Wins There are many ways to define a win in a commercialization project. One type of win is from the perspective of the customers. If an high percentage of customers are giving 5-star reviews, it suggests that there are no significant problems with features, prices, delivery, installation, support, performance,… It implies that sales have the potential to be abundant. Another type of win is from the perspective of individual contributors.
- Potential Roles of Coders during a Project that includes Commercialization How does a proficient coder help to commercialize a product? Beside coders, you need individuals with diverse specialties to produce a new product that gets 5-Star reviews. How can an individual survive and thrive in roles that include: - Providers of code that build to specifications in selected languages. [Code Monkey] - Individuals that prefer to work in isolation or as part of a small group working separately from contributors with other specialties. - Agents within a complex adaptive system that share responsibilities within a network. Professionals that are expected to shape the focus and direction of the project and thus impact the outcome. Individuals with other responsibilities
- It is shortsighted to model a new product development environment as deterministic. New Product Developments evolve. Complex Adaptive System: A co-evolving system characterized by nonlinearities. It has the ability to adapt to a changing environment. Predisposed to self-organization. Changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network. The system impacts the individual. The individual impacts the system. Characterized by emergence through interaction with individuals and the environment.
- In the book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shared insights on optionality that can be expanded to include new product development environments. Taleb's classification of systems as fragile, robust, resilient, and antifragile may be used to characterize development environments. Every development environment can be characterized in terms of its fragility, robustness, resilience, and antifragility.
- A development environment that tends to be fragile does not welcome disorder. When uncertainty is injected, the results may be unpleasant.
- In a fragile development environment, one obstacle can prevent the realization of value.
- The Pentium FDIV bug was a computer bug that affected the floating point unit (FPU) of the early Intel Pentium processors. Because of the bug, the processor could return incorrect decimal results during complex mathematical calculations. On January 17, 1995, Intel announced a pre-tax charge of $475 million against earnings, ostensibly the total cost associated with replacement of the flawed processors.[1] Some of the defective chips were later turned into key rings by Intel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug
- The more fragile the development environment, the less likely it is to thrive.
- The word ‘antifragile' is an adjective created by Taleb. It can be defined as the exact opposite of fragile.
- An antifragile system thrives and grows when exposed to a moderate amount of volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors. An antifragile system benefits from a moderate amount of adventure, risk, and uncertainty.
- As a code that has many roles in a project that include commercialization, how do you improve your hour-to-your and day-to-day capability to survive and thrive? Strive for better development options.
- Development Options are more powerful than: Operational, tactical, or strategic choices Real options (delaying decisions until the last responsible moment) A contract, like a financial option, where one group may obtain items at a specified price in the future The creation of two versions of a component followed by comparative (A/B) testing within a specialty group
- Development Options Accelerate the most valuable learning Improve the capability for a more valuable shared understanding Add the appropriate adaptive capability to reduce the dependence on detailed forecasting and planning Facilitate safe-to-fail experiments that may have the potential for asymmetric gains (more upside than downside)
- Improve the development network’s capability to synthesize and exercise more attractive development options Requisite variety over the status quo Synthesis via pair development over pattern matching Disintermediation over barriers between decision makers Harmony and synergy over sub-optimization Recursion (solving problems of the same type) over iteration Mismatch detection over error propagation
- Requisite Variety The concept of requisite variety can be used to explain the importance of having a diversity of attractive responses in a development environment Requisite Variety: For a system to be viable, only a variety in responses can force down the variety due to disturbances. The Law of Requisite Variety was formulated by W. Ross Ashby
- Requisite Variety For a development environment to be successful, only a large repertoire of possible responses can address the variety presented by a complex set of development problems that emerge throughout projects.
- Achieving Requisite Variety In a new product development environment, requisite variety may be achieved by mobilizing a network of contributors with diverse specialties and multiple perspectives. To be successful, individuals may require additional training, access to individuals with unique expertise, and cooperation.
- Without requisite variety, previously successful responses to familiar patterns may not be recognized as insufficient responses.
- Without a variety of potential responses at the appropriate times, a development environment may be fragile.
- If there is excessive variety, the agility of the development environment may be reduced.
- To ensure appropriate adaptability, the network determines that certain responses should be amplified. Other responses are attenuated.
- Pair Development is implemented by facilitating the interaction of individuals of different disciplines (such as a coder and a marketer). Pair development provides an opportunity for interaction through activities such as dialog and sketching. The result of pair development should be the synthesis of options, not a summary of previous activities. Typically, no slides sets are used during these interactions. The purpose is to develop a self-correcting focus and direction informed by the analyses of multiple perspectives.
- The purpose of pair development is not cross-training. The desired result is a novel approach produced by the interaction of Spoke and Kirk.
- Pair Development produces novel solutions. First pattern match is also known as availability bias or availability heuristic.
- Disintermediation removes layers between individual contributors and data. It removes barriers between decision makers.
- Facilitate Disintermediation One way to facilitate disintermediation in new product development environments involves individual contributors experiencing the interactions of customers with prototypes (or other experiments related to the product being developed). Direct observations that promote full-fidelity interactions are preferable to mediation approaches such as presenting individuals with reports that summarize activities.
- Harmony and Synergy Harmony: “Power to perceive or create interaction of apparently disconnected events or entities in a connected way” ( [Boyd, 1986. Patterns of Conflict 144] Synergy: Results are better than predicted by the sum of the components. Each individual catalyzed better contributions from the other.
- The potential for harmony and synergy can be improved by encouraging interaction between certain colleagues that share similar goals. Sub-optimization consumes energy that may not improve the overall results. For example, creating more lines of code may seem attractive with the coding group but it may not produce a better product. The same may be true for metrics such as velocity.
- Recursion: Strive to learn the language customer use when describing a problem. Test using early and refined prototypes.
- Recursion: Solving problems of the same type
- Mismatch: the incompatibility of an individual’s conceptual model of a situation and the actual phenomena. The magnitude of a mismatch may depend on deficiencies with the initial forecast or problems with perceptions. The cause of a mismatch may be execution insufficiencies.
- Some mismatches may be self-detected. Other mismatches benefit from approaches that include requisite variety, pair development, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. If mismatches are not detected, the potential for winning is reduced. If mismatches are not corrected, errors are propagated
- Some mismatches may be self-detected. Other mismatches benefit from approaches that include requisite variety, pair development, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. If mismatches are not detected, the potential for winning is reduced. If mismatches are not corrected, errors are propagated
- For individual contributors, such as coders, Dan Pink in the book Drive suggested that when the tasks involve rudimentary cognitive skill, the motivators were autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In new product development, stereotypical management techniques do not emphasize these factors.
- For individual contributors, such as coders, Dan Pink in the book Drive suggested that when the tasks involve rudimentary cognitive skill, the motivators were autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In new product development, stereotypical management techniques do not emphasize these factors.
- Expectations: A set of items that include what we hypothesize will be important for success in the future and what we deliver when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.
- This presentation included extracts from the book "Developing Winners: Assimilating the Insights Encapsulated in Boyd's OODA Loop" by OpLaunch founder, Mark A Hart.
- If you would like to learn more about “From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product” or explore other new product development resources, I invite you to visit the OpLaunch website at www.oplaunch.com The “Development Experience” podcast is available on iTunes. Copyright Mark A Hart, 1 March, 2016.