Eating Our Own Dog Food

@RayGallon @AndyMcD_TECH
@TransformSoc @techad_fr
Ea#ng Our Own
Dog Food
Ray Gallon Andy McDonald

Ea#ng Our Own
Dog Food
Ray Gallon Andy McDonald
Unifying a content strategy for software publishers

 A service company with
a handful of major
clients
 Developed internal
authoring tool for
delivering contextual
information to software
 Could we turn it into a
product and market it?
There Was a Tool…
Lots of small
software companies
don’t have
“documentation”

How can we do it?
  How do we convert that tool into a product?
  How do we move from service to software publisher?
Market Positioning Niche The PRODUCT Mktg Plan

A Clear Roadmap
Go/no go RoadmapBudget Ressources Technology

Virtual marketing as we understood it
  Drive the funnel through a
persona-based content strategy
  Test & tune the roadmap as we go
  Build success through successful
onboarding

Then we had an idea
  Product strategy and content strategy are one
and the same
  As a software company, designing a tool for
software publishers, surely we have a unique
position ?

  What if we had a nimble, agile approach,
everywhere?
  What if content people work with techies?
  What if everybody contributes to design
and content?
  What if features are planned via content strategy?
  What if we inject content strategy into the agile model?
  What if our product is the user experience/journey?
Product Strategy and Content Strategy:
One and the Same

Content in the
agile process
Product Strategy and Content Strategy:
One and the Same

Content
What is our dogfood?
  Content includes pre and post sales
  Content embedded deep in UI –
integral to user journey & UX
  Continuous update and integrated
feedback embedded in the design
  Content strategists collaborate
with developers
  Continuous testing conducted by
users, content strategists, and devs
ü  Product’s real added value
ü  We prove it by doing it

  Features correspond to
real persona requirements
  Quick concept testing
allows refinement
  Develop just good enough
and reiterate
  Be nimble: rapid implementation
of game changing requirements
  UI/UX design with content people
  Onboarding in the product,
not only in content
Features
What is our dogfood?
ü  Product’s real added value
ü  We prove it by doing it

Painful Practical Truth
  We had all the components for success – in silos!
  Distributed around France – many had never met
  Agile terminology and procedures ≠ AGILE MINDSET
  Service oriented developers resisted design input from
content and marketing people
  Development schedule ignored market requirements

Finance
Impact of virtual marketing (VM)
  Balance of power
Marke=ng Development Support
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
% revenu

Content
  Addresses people’s needs –
“let us help with your pain points”
  Selective messages to targeted groups
with common interests via personas
  Snowball effect
  Window of opportunity is a moving target,
must be planned
  Affects the product roadmap (semi real-time)

Features
Address pain points and fulfill the promises we
made in content
Conceived and added to roadmap based on
real-time user feedback
  Need to be just good enough –
“Perfection is the enemy of the Good”
Adapt and improve in relation to user response

Development
  As much as possible, developers’ priorities
driven by customer needs priorities
  Agile priority changes
Staged development – make it work for today,
scale it up tomorrow
  Let product team and beta testers break it

Support
  Customer care is primary
  Responsive, accessible, visible
  More and more bot driven
  Incorporates user feedback and know-how
sharing among ALL stakeholders

Digestible?
  NO
Changing process for a
dev team is a nightmare
  In a service company
with bespoke clients,
customer journey is
unknown
  Agile is easy to
masquerade,
impossible to impose

Digestible?
  NO
Success required a
transition which
challenged practices,
habits even company
culture
  Product is really a tool for
a new CS paradigm in
software, but dev knows
nothing of this – no buy-in
Walls errected between
product and dev

Error Codes
  <001> Failure not acceptable
  <002> Invalid Sequence:
development initiated before strategy
  <003> Product ownership ≠ project
management
  <004> HR allocation error
  <005> Tools proliferation error
  <005A> Unused tools error
  <006> General failure: information
sharing fault

If we started again?
Spend time onboarding
ourselves
  Content strategy should
drive agile governance
Everybody needs the same
agile experience
  Charter core values:
transparency, rapid delivery,
reactivity, collegiality

A CS role in small software companies?
 4 key roles:
  Understand
  Design
  Negotiate
  Interface

  Understand the role of the customer/user
journey in entire life-cycle
  Define it through personas
  Deal with how pain points are addressed (content),
catered for (features) and relieved (support)
  Understand the market and the niche
  Understand how developers work
  Understand management objectives

  Design persona-based strategy
  Consider the entire journey and not
just marketing
  Features, UI design, interaction
design, onboarding, service and
support
  Be garantor of the promise fulfilled
and what satisfaction means

  Negotiate the adequate
  Everything costs
  There is a balance between
content and features, just as much
as there is between features and
support

  Interface with marketing, dev,
support & management
  Delivering a strategy to management
is not enough
  Must ensure, facilitate and accompany
its implementation

  There is significant overlap and a
blurred boundary between
content strategist and
product owner
  In some situations, they may be
the same person

Lessons learned
  Everyone must understand the marketing
funnel – how it affects the entire project
  In digital marketing, everyone – development
included – needs to be on the same page
  Onboarding is critical
  Onboarding cycles influence priorities in delivery
  Difficult for developers to digest, creates insecurity
Marketing

  Agile is not just methodology, it’s a mindset
  Product owner is not a director of development
  Chief navigator piloting a complex vessel
  Multiple teams collaborate, using their particular
expertise
  Upstream preparation saves time downstream
Agile
Lessons learned

  Unqualified support from highest level is essential
  Team building cannot be ignored
  Transparency is of the essence, especially in agile.
  Planned, specific contract between all participants
  The shorter the cycles, the more transparent
everything must be
Team
Lessons learned

Our Next Steps
OURSELVES

BeIer
late than
never!
§  Reality check
§  Agile education
§  Change some roles
§  Team & confidence
building
§  Roadmap adjustment
Re

Thank You!
Want to know more? Talk to us!
@AndyMcD_TECH
@techad_fr
Webs:
www.transformationsociety.net
www.easydoccontents.com/en/home/
@RayGallon
@TransformSoc

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