In the “real world” software development does not occur in a vacuum. In the risk management exercise you and your group members focused on the development risks that might impact the success of your project. Now it’s time to broaden your view. If your group project were developed in a fortune 500 company as a product, a number of factors would be taken into account to ensure the success of the project. These include the concerns of marketing, sales, support, and upper management.
You work in the software division of a fortune 500 company. The company has developed a checkpoint process for all software development projects. At the outset of a software development project a series of checkpoints are set at key points during development and delivery of the software. At each checkpoint a representative from each of the parties involved in the software development project come together to review the current status of the project, assess any risks that have impacted the project, and make any modifications necessary to the project’s staffing, schedule, or scope of work.
You are going to represent the sales force’s concerns during the checkpoint review. Ideally you want upper management to be in the sales team’s corner. You want them to understand the current status of the project and the impact the project modifications discussed during the checkpoint would have on the sales team’s ability to successfully sell the project. During this exercise it is also imperative that you make a compelling argument to upper management of the importance of the following sales concerns:
¨ The product being developed was highlighted in the company’s recent worldwide marketing conference. A customer who heard about the product at the conference has been in negotiations with their sales representative. The deal is worth $500,000 in revenue to your company. The catch is the customer wants two features added to the product. (You fill in the two features to be added.) The customer is willing to wait until mid June for the product if the two features are in the product otherwise the deal is off and they will go with our competitor.
¨ The product being developed is completely new to the sales force. In order to successfully pitch the product to customers and demo it the sales team will need some training. Currently the Technical marketing team who is responsible for training is short staffed. The sales team wants a commitment to a training date prior to the release of the product and someone identified to create and deliver the training. They don’t know who will do the training but want upper management to find someone to do the job.
¨ The sales force would like upper management to commit to the purchase of additional hardware to be added to the 4 demo centers across the globe to accommodate the installation of the new product being developed. Once the product is included in the demo centers sales representatives won’t have to spend time at a potential customer site installing our product before doing a demo they can simply do a remote demo using the hardware in the demo center.
¨ The company is currently in the process of developing several new products. As a result the sales team is having a tough time coming up to speed on all of the products and sales on new products have been slow. One suggestion to improve the sales force’s performance is to motivate them with money. Any product marketing sees as a real money maker, like the product being reviewed in this checkpoint is included in a special category. Any time a sales person sells a product in the special category they get a higher cut of the profit than they would with the other products. Convince upper management to include the product in the special category.
In addition you should bring up any other issues that you may think of that would affect the successful sale of the product being developed.