
Why is this interview a must-read?
DigitalSuits is a software development company that focuses on E-Commerce and SaaS solutions mostly for startups and small-medium businesses. The company was founded 5 years ago in 2016. We have profound expertise in such domains as e-commerce, real estate, insurance, and fintech. We are experienced in software development, but we also have our own experience with startups. One of our co-founders has founded 2 startups and got investments from accelerators so we know this matter inside out.
- Why is this interview important to share?
This interview is about our own practices that we use in our work and with our clients. These tips help us to achieve the best results and our clients — to get the results they are eager to achieve. Moreover, certainly, I would like to show what’s under the hood and to share my own and the company’s experience — how we work, how we provide our services and how we treat our partners and clients.
- How could it help your clients?
The readers can figure out and choose the most interesting and helpful practices that we use. They will be able to get an upfront understanding of our work, the model of collaboration we follow. It is always good to know a bit more about your future tech partner — our clients are able to learn about us a bit more in this interview.
- What are the reasons to share this information?
I’m eager to share my own tips, pros, and cons of every approach that we are going to discuss. It is a must-read for all business people who are going to be involved in the software development process. Here I want to answer all “Why’s and How’s” of the software product management process. Every startup and every product faces challenges. Thanks to our startup experience and profound knowledge of the industry, we could prevent or minimize their effect on our clients. This information will help you to collaborate in the best way, to achieve the set goals, get investments, deliver projects on time, and avoid any kind of challenges.
- How can custom software development help small and medium-sized companies?
Custom software development can leverage the process of automation within a company, for example, robotic automation or digitalization of the manual work. It is a great tool to reduce employee costs and to speed the processes. For instance, if a company wants to automate some internal processes, business owners will not only achieve cost reduction but also avoid mistakes and failures and be sure that the work will be done no matter what. Sometimes humans are not able to deliver work on time — from now on, everything can be automated and done by special programs and software created for the unique needs of the company.
Clients’ roadblocks and pitfalls
- Who are your clients?
We work with SMEs and startups. Some of our clients are tech agencies — they develop services and products for their clients and collaborate with us on partnership terms. Still, the majority of our clients are startups. We share our knowledge in software development with them and consult them on how software or a product feature may affect their future roadmap or future investments. Working with SMEs we help them to digitize and automate processes.
- What do they usually want?
There are three various types of client requests: Firstly, to develop a software solution so all people all over the world could use it, and secondly, to get investments. Just to give an example, the last client that we started to work with in the summer wanted to create an event platform that combines online and offline participants to be a part of their event. It doesn’t matter if you are staying at home or you are at a real event offline. We delivered it in less than 2 months — the 1st deployment was in 45 days from the beginning. Right now we keep improving this system, supporting on-going events and new events. Later on, we have plans to extend the system functionality.
Secondly, other software development companies require to extend their products or teams by software developers. Finding a tech partner to collaborate with is faster and more reasonable than hiring new developers. Companies need to equip office space and environment, provide a complete recruitment process for newcomers. Moreover, there are many corporate responsibilities with them. That is why it is easier and faster to find an agency that will provide experienced software developers when there is a need.
Thirdly, software development companies outsource and build partnerships with us if they don’t have enough in-house resources or domain expertise that we have. Thus, we collaborate with them to complete and deliver any type of project. We have such clients working from Canada and the US.
- What level of expertise in software product development do your clients have?
It varies. When we deal with startups, there are some technical guys in the team, but usually, it is not enough to deliver the project by themselves. They are aware of some technical tasks, but they focus more on doing business, attracting and retaining customers. The right way for startups is to entrust software development to us. We’re responsible for the technical side of the project, they go for business.
On the other hand, our outstaffing partners have teams of developers and profound knowledge in development. They require just to extend their team as soon as possible.
- What do you find most challenging for your clients in software development process?
In the beginning, the most challenging part for every client is to understand what they want to achieve in the shortest period of time. If we consider startups, they usually struggle with focusing on the main features of the project. They are eager to chase two hares at once — to be on track and to continuously add new features to the product. But this approach makes the development stage overcomplicated and doesn’t pay in the long run. That is the most demanding part of our communication.
Certainly, the next thing that our clients take into consideration is time. They are worried about time-wasting and tight deadlines. Every developer tries to avoid hard-coding and poor quality of code. But if you force the development team to work at a high speed and to hasten the development stage in general — it may affect the quality of the code and as a result the product quality. Secondly, being in a rush, startups don’t have enough time to make the product better and to finalize some features. They need to find the right balance between being in a constant rush, making never-ending product improvements, searching for game-changer features and wishing to please all customers.
- How do you feel about it?
Now I’m OK. At the beginning of the road, I didn’t understand that business can be different. Now I do. Sometimes you need to develop hot features and deliver the result fast at the expense of quality. It could pay you off and bring much more than doing everything in a correct way. But now I always remind our clients that it is really important to dedicate some time in the future to improving features that were developed at a high speed.
- What are clients’ pain points and how do you help them?
We put ourselves in their shoes and analyze the situation. Eventually, businesses may not understand all the consequences of different approaches in software development. We are like “referees” between their requirements and their needs. We help our clients to stop, take a breath, and think about every decision.
Here is a recent example: we were developing an online event platform for our client. They took a really fast pace to deliver the project and also tried to make every feature very special and important. It brought them to a point where they were overloaded and the team was demotivated. We highlighted this situation many times, but one day we asked them to join the call and discuss it. Eventually, we drew their attention to all the circumstances that they could face in the upcoming future if they didn’t stop being in a rush. Actually, it was not only about the fact that they may lose the team but also about the business and product as well.
They were so inspired to deliver their amazing project through COVID-19 times and provide people with the opportunity to be a part of any event. The point is, delivering a product of poor quality but full of features would not have worked out for their business, product, and team members. This is what we tried to explain and we did it successfully. After our conversation, they agreed with us on many points.
The definition of “Successful Software Product Management”
- What does the definition of “Successful Software Product Management” include?
It includes proper management at all levels. Our project management consulting team keeps their fingers on the pulse from start to finish to ensure successful results. I mean, not only development management but team communication and management, development management, client expectation management. There are also subpoints — communication, plan of delivery, clear requirements. Software product management consists of many parts. I can’t highlight just a few, because it depends on the situation — when dealing with different businesses, the prioritization may shift and some points will be more crucial than others.
When you have a product idea, there are a lot of steps between the idea and the product that can deliver it. That is why we start from the beginning — gathering the requirements. Basically, software product management is the list of requirements that the client should complete before delivering the product to customers.
The list of 10 best practices of software product management
1. Define a clear scope of work
It’s about the idea. When you have an idea, it seems easy to understand. When you try to explain this idea, it becomes more complicated. It makes you get a new angle on your idea. The key point is that if you have a vision, you can define a scope of work. Write it down — and you will be able to understand the idea better, improve and explain it to others. Our experience shows there are plenty of situations when a client only has a vision of the product. And here is our turn — our mission is to define requirements and help to understand the idea and product better. This is called “Discovery phase”.
Here is the guideline on how to define the product requirements:
- Write documentation where business goals, needs, and the way to achieve the expected result are described.
- If the above is too complicated, then prepare a list of questions to describe the main goals and achievements you are striving for. After that, answer the questions.
- Don’t hesitate to spend time on it. It costs you time in the beginning but will save you much more in the future.
2. Vendor selection
You need to outsource software