From Coding to the Development of a Commercial Product:How to Survive and Thrive

Mark A. Hart, NPDP

1 March 2016

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

New Product Development

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New Product DevelopmentCommercialization: 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]

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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

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The probability of being correct on all of these expectations is zero!

New Product Development Process

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New Product Development Processfrom a management perspective

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New Product Development Processfrom a Design Thinking perspective

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New Product Development Processfrom an individual coder’s perspective

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UX – User Experience

Transform this into a GIF that hasfour builds. Add individuals to the networkwhile the fidelity of the prototype andinteraction increases.

DX – Development Experience

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.”

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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

Defining Wins

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UX – User Experience

DX – Development Experience

Potential Roles of Coders during a Projectthat 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 responsibilities12

New Product Development Environment

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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.

Characterizations of development environments

• Fragile• Robust• Resilient• Antifragile

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Fragile development environments• Do not welcome disorder• When uncertainty is injected, the

typical results are unpleasant

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In a fragile development environment, one obstacle can prevent the realization of value

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475 million dollarkey chain

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The more fragile the development environment, the less likely it is to thrive

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Antifragile• An adjective created by Taleb• The exact opposite of fragile

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AntifragileAn antifragile system thrives and grows when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and it welcomes adventure, risk, and uncertainty

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How can you improve your capability to survive and thrive?

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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

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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)

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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

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Formulated by W Ross Ashby

= variety of potential responses

= variety of disturbances (problems)

= variety of outcomes tolerable bythe essential variables

Requisite Variety

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Requisite varietyrequires a large repertoire of possible responses

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Achieving Requisite Variety• Mobilize network of

contributors with diverse specialties and multiple perspectives

• Additional training• Access to expertise• Cooperation

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Without requisite variety, familiar patterns may not be recognized as insufficient responses

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Without a variety of potential responses at the appropriate times, a development environment may be

fragile29

Excessivevariety may reduce agility

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To ensure the adaptability of the development network• Amplify appropriately• Attenuate appropriately

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Pair Development• Interaction of disciplines• Synthesis of options• Develop self-correcting focus and direction

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Pair Development• Not cross-training• Example: Novel

approach produced by the interaction of Spock and Kirk

33Publicity photo of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatnerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock#/media/File:Leonard_Nimoy_William_Shatner_Star_Trek_1968.JPG

Pair Development• Analysis/Synthesis• Novel solutions

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Pattern Matching• Previous solutions• First pattern match• Availability bias• Availability heuristic

Disintermediation• Remove layers between

individual contributors and data

• Remove barriers between decision makers

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Facilitate Disintermediation• Experience

interactions of customers with prototypes

• Direct observations that promote full-fidelity interactions

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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.

Harmony and Synergy• Improve group

communication• Shape interactions

between colleagues that share similar goals

• Reduce dysergy by minimizing interactions with certain individuals

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Sub-optimization• Also known as micro-

optimization. • Compare to local

maximum.

Recursion: Solving problems of the same type

Using an early prototype, determine the words that customers use when describing this problem

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Using a refined prototype, determine the words that customers use when describing this problem

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

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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.

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Mismatch Detection• Self-detection• Incorporate approaches to improve

requisite variety, pair development, continuous integration, and continuous delivery

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• If mismatches are not detected, the potential for winning is reduced

• If mismatches are not corrected, errors are propagated

Employing the six approaches for the win• Requisite Variety• Pair Development• Disintermediation• Harmony and Synergy• Recursion• Mismatch Detection

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Individual Contributors are Motivated by Factors that include:•Autonomy•Mastery•Purpose

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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.

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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.

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Developing Winners: Assimilating the Insights Encapsulated in Boyd's OODA Loopwww.Developing-Winners.com

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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

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