Outsourcing - BPO
Five Steps to Create Your Software Product with Outsourcing
Many executives and investors are skeptical that software products
can be developed using outsourcing. Even more skepticism is expressed
at the idea of outsourcing version 1.0 of a product. Yet Accelerance
clients are using outsourcing to create their products right now.
What is the secret to using outsourcing to successfully develop
a software product?
Many people believe outsourcing is useless when you are in the
Fuzzy Front End - that fuzzy zone between when a market opportunity
is known and when serious software development can begin. They
think you need to slog through the Fuzzy Front End by coding a
prototype of your product. If so, you need the development team
here, not several oceans away.
Another false assumption is that you need to write a comprehensive
specification for your software during the Fuzzy Front End. Many
companies use a very formal product definition process, optimized
to remove as much "fuzz" as possible. How long should
it take to design a software product before development can begin?
Obviously time is of the essence when developing a new product,
but before the development process can begin you must have some
idea of what your software will do. It is best to find this out
from your prospective customers. But how can you involve your
customers early and often in a collaborative process, when both
of you are not sure of what they need or want? And what does that
have to do with outsourcing?
According to Steve Blank, founder of several software startups
and now lecturer at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, you
don't need a product development process. You need a customer
development process. You need a process to discover what ornery
problem your potential customers have that will cause them to
part with their hard-earned money to solve that problem by buying
your software.
The first step of Blank's customer development process is Customer
Discovery. Here are his steps of customer discovery:
* Create a product (or product demo)
* Meet with customers and answer these four questions of customer
discovery:
1. Have you identified a problem customers want to solve?
2. Does your product solve these customer needs?
3. If so, do you have a viable and profitable business model?
4. Have you learned enough to go out and sell?
* Change your product to reflect what you learn
* Iterate until all questions can be answered positively
Is there a way to shorten these iteration cycles? The Accelerance
answer is, don't code up your product or prototype at the start.
Use an HTML editor to create screen mock-ups. Then link them together
to tell the "user stories" of your software product.
They show the major use cases of your product. Demonstrating the
use cases this way is like putting your product requirements in
motion. It simulates how the real product will be used.
HTML is easy to edit and requires no programming. You can make
quick iterations before committing your product ideas to code.
Here is the five-step Accelerance formula you can follow to successfully
design your product:
1. Describe your product idea and its benefits
2. Create a demo of the major use cases showing the biggest benefits
of your software
3. Perform the Customer Discovery steps described above, iterating
until you & customers are satisfied
4. Write an MRD using screen shots from your demo as illustrations
5. Develop and test your software
In modern business, you should focus on your core competency
and outsource the rest. In the Accelerance five-step process,
the first 4 steps of defining your product idea, completing the
customer discovery process and documenting the requirements must
be part of your core competency. The last step is not.
***
Anybody can develop software. But only you can figure out what
your customers will buy. And that makes your software development
a non-core process. Use this five step formula to take advantage
of low cost outsourcing as an effective way to get your product
developed quickly.
Steve Mezak is a successful Silicon Valley technical entrepreneur
and international outsourcing expert. Get your copy of his free
report on "Outsourced Development - A Secret Weapon for Quickly
Creating Software Products" by visiting his Accelerance outsourcing
company web site now.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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