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elPresidente
"offlined"? WTF? Does that mean they can come online when someone pushes the ...
I_B_GREEN
Massacre at IBM, a case study
Frank Robinson
8/9/2012 12:08 PM EDT
The pivot
“We gathered that night at the hotel, but we were changed. Humility had crumbled the walls between marketing and engineering. We had heard the voice of the customer as a team and they were unhappy! Thank God the whole team was there so we could decide on the spot.
“For appetizers, we slashed requirements. For soup we compressed schedule. For the main course we sliced up the configuration into bite-size pieces. For dessert we integrated customers into our testing. For after-dinner drinks we polished the new presentation and said a short prayer.
“The next day was sunny. Breakfast was actually jovial. We looked back at yesterday with humor, not to cover our humiliation but because we were changed.”
The next meetings went far better. We took wounds, but none like those at Fishkill. We continued with three more meetings. We returned to the factory and presented our new path.
“Are you nuts?” our product board asked. “You can’t change direction midstream!”
Without missing a beat, an engineer quoted the customer. The product manager explained how we’d manage technical risks. We were now convinced by a shared experience that we knew what to do. Better yet, because we had the data, we switched the burden of proof from ourselves to our management skeptics.
In December and January we met with ten customers in South Korea, Japan and China. Changes were minor. Now, instead of pivoting, we were building a virtual backlog.
In February, we returned to Fishkill. “Congratulations, gentlemen,” IBM said, “We apologize for November. With the train heading our way, we’ll get on now. We’ll take two more of your current units now (millions of dollars each) and replace all seven with the new one when it ships.”
In 90 days, the team pivoted the product, saved a major account, captured a large order, cut schedule from 18 months to nine and developed a virtual backlog. Within two years after release, product market share was up to 70 percent. Twelve of 17 competitors were gone. The division was the dominant global player.
Here’s why it worked:
“We gathered that night at the hotel, but we were changed. Humility had crumbled the walls between marketing and engineering. We had heard the voice of the customer as a team and they were unhappy! Thank God the whole team was there so we could decide on the spot.
“For appetizers, we slashed requirements. For soup we compressed schedule. For the main course we sliced up the configuration into bite-size pieces. For dessert we integrated customers into our testing. For after-dinner drinks we polished the new presentation and said a short prayer.
“The next day was sunny. Breakfast was actually jovial. We looked back at yesterday with humor, not to cover our humiliation but because we were changed.”
The next meetings went far better. We took wounds, but none like those at Fishkill. We continued with three more meetings. We returned to the factory and presented our new path.
“Are you nuts?” our product board asked. “You can’t change direction midstream!”
Without missing a beat, an engineer quoted the customer. The product manager explained how we’d manage technical risks. We were now convinced by a shared experience that we knew what to do. Better yet, because we had the data, we switched the burden of proof from ourselves to our management skeptics.
In December and January we met with ten customers in South Korea, Japan and China. Changes were minor. Now, instead of pivoting, we were building a virtual backlog.
In February, we returned to Fishkill. “Congratulations, gentlemen,” IBM said, “We apologize for November. With the train heading our way, we’ll get on now. We’ll take two more of your current units now (millions of dollars each) and replace all seven with the new one when it ships.”
In 90 days, the team pivoted the product, saved a major account, captured a large order, cut schedule from 18 months to nine and developed a virtual backlog. Within two years after release, product market share was up to 70 percent. Twelve of 17 competitors were gone. The division was the dominant global player.
Here’s why it worked:
- Meet customers as a core, cross-functional team authorized to act within a defined envelop.
- Report to a “board,” to explain and defend your strategy and business case.
- Meet customers’ decision making teams, not just users.
- Meet on site in the customers’ habitat: Home, office, lab, factory or playground. See what they do. Meet their colleagues, form relationships, help fix broken stuff while you’re there and return to the site as required.
- Test sell a validation prototype: Renderings, specs and props. Don’t sell a vision! It will result in dangerous false-positive interest.
- Ask questions. Take notes. Ask question of fact, not opinion, then shut up. Take notes. Tag data and quotes.
- Disclose limitations to surface objections. It enhances your credibility.
- Conduct trial closes.
- Meet in waves, two customers per day, Tuesday to Thursday, to get hit over the head by the patterns that emerge.
- Find and fix bad news. Bad news early is good news.
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george.leopold
8/9/2012 12:53 PM EDT
A critical part of boosting U.S. innovation is finding ways, as lean startup Steve Blank says, to help startups NOT fail. Blank and Frank Robinson have figured out that startups need to get out of the office and meet with as many potential customers as they can find. In a startup course at Stanford, Blank makes student entrepreneurs meet with at least 100 customers. This is one way we can get our edge back in the global tech competition.
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junko.yoshida
8/9/2012 1:16 PM EDT
I love the recommended practices listed at the end of the story. Especially the part that says: •Ask questions. Take notes. Ask question of fact, not opinion, then shut up. Take notes. Tag data and quotes."
So true.
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ChrisGammell
8/9/2012 1:48 PM EDT
Agile is nothing new for anyone who does software. I see it moving into the hardware world more and more as well. It's a great idea, but takes a lot of leaps of faith on the part of the team involved (and an even bigger leap from the upper management). With the story above, the amazing part isn't necessarily that this new methodology worked...it's that it was accepted immediately once the team decided upon it. That kind of sea change can cause a lot of turmoil in a company.
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FrankRobinson
8/9/2012 8:48 PM EDT
Hi Chris,
You're very right. Synchronous customer and product development (SyncDev)in large companies requires a lot of choreography, especially with Sales. But, large company or small, a GM or CEO is the must-have sponsor. She's the only one who can put engineering, marketing, design, product management, and sales into one van.
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FrankRobinson
8/9/2012 2:27 PM EDT
Thanks for your comments. To learn how to do synchronous customer and product development go to:
http://www.productdevelopment.com/training/index.asp
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Daniel Payne
8/9/2012 9:35 PM EDT
As a product marketing manager I often met with clients and prospects who wanted new features, then I would ask, "If I deliver you that new feature tomorrow, tell me how much time or money you will save. Will it be a time savings of 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, or 1 year?" The answers were always very revealing about what mattered in their business.
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elPresidente
8/10/2012 6:13 PM EDT
Distasteful article titling
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The MicroMan
8/10/2012 8:21 PM EDT
Agree. Sensationalism. And the whole "article" feels like a shameless commercial.
Yes, listening to customers needs and addressing them is the only successful route.
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Turkman
8/11/2012 9:41 PM EDT
Agreed. Tasteless title and shameless commercial. The case study is somewhat interesting but the only thing new in the approach seems to be the name (TM!).
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double you cubed
8/11/2012 2:20 PM EDT
totally agree w/ microman... #shamelessselfpromotion
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krh
8/11/2012 6:14 PM EDT
This is an EETimes "Top Story"...must be slow August for real news.
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I_B_GREEN
8/12/2012 5:04 PM EDT
These two managers should be offlined.
Two years in the goulog and still not listening 18 month fix program ignored the real problem or out it off th "phase2"
If it aint cooked into phase 1 then the whole code gets jacked to add it.
Fear of bad vibes wit ones bosses, passing on tough messages fources one to ignore the customer imperiling the companies future, with the upside of a few more years of employment for the managers.
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elPresidente
8/12/2012 10:24 PM EDT
"offlined"? WTF? Does that mean they can come online when someone pushes the right buttons?
FIRED. Not "offlined".
But they never do get fired or laid off, since they are the ones who pick the winners in a layoff (winners because they no longer will be working for idiots)...they do get offlined, don't they, then go online to screw up a completely unrelated position they get onlined into?
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