Maker, Checker and a Checklist

"Jab koi sawal nahin karta hai, to sab kuch sahi ho jaata hai,

Lekin... Wahi sahi hota hai, jo sawal se guzar kar sahi nikalta hai"

(English Translation: When no one questions, everything that happens (seems) to be correct, but only those things are correct that pass through tough questions and prove to be right)

Wah Wah Wah.....said the team members when the conversation was up and high regarding how to put controls at every stage in the product development; Of course, to bring out a quality product...

This article outlines few tips for every Chief Product Officer and the CEO, to build a culture of high quality product and service.

Symptoms of a Bad Product / technology culture:

1. Every one in the organization is a Product Manager and most of them do not report to the product officer
2. Because there is little or no direction (which should come from a product team), Technology Team decides the Product roadmap and priorities
3. Too many customer queries on how to use the product
4. Heavy training efforts to train the customers on how to use the product
5. Most of the times customers are unable to say what's wrong with the product, they just say it as useless and not userfriendly
6. Everyone in the organization works for taking credit of a good feature
7. No reviews or measurement after the product or a feature is made live
8. Nobody acts swiftly to the pains of the customer
9. Most of the times it is unclear on who is the product manager or owner for a particular project ("There are many owners for this project sir")
10. Most of the times meetings run with no agenda; or complaints from minutes taker that the reverts from functional teams are pending.
11. Customer acts as the product tester and keeps giving feedback to improve his life using your product
12. Highly delayed projects, without any reason

The above symptoms are so common in many organizations and the problem is not with the quality of people or Technology; It is the problem with "Process"....

" Jo Kasht se marta hai, wohi customer hai" - It is implied that, the above symptoms will obviously get the customer into a deep pain!

What a CEO wants:

1. Faster Project Execution
2. Zero error
3. Awesome review meetings

Here are few important tips to develop a culture that runs for an objective and not for taking a credit:

1. Every project should have a single owner. Eg: Suppose we want to launch a Soap, everybody in the organization need not think about what colour it should be. The owner can consult everyone, but will do enough research and comeback with one or at most two options for the management to decide. The technology and marketing teams should simply execute.
2. All stake holders should be servants to the project owner and help the project owner succeed in orchestrating the project till launch
3. The owner should be given authority to rate, add or throw away people from the project
4. Every owner should have a checker; and the checker should be smartly built in the organization structure and workflows. Eg: If Technology is building the product, Testing should be done by the product team and assess the quality of the build
5. A maker should never be allowed to be a checker for him self. Eg: A process written by ops cannot be assumed to be right unless signed off by customer service and product teams
6. Project owner with the help of stakeholder should prepare a checklist for every project and use it for managing the life cycle (Read the book Checklist Manifesto)
7. The checklist should decide whether the product is ready to be launched or not; It is not a person who will decide at his will that it can be launched with bugs.

It is very easy for organizations to fail: what requires is just to work as individuals and not as teams.

A Strong Project Management / Product Management team, the maker-checker culture and a good checklist will improve the product development process and thereby the customer experience. Many organizations, the centralised product and marketing management teams are the checkers on behalf of the customers.