22 - The quality elements of a winning product with John Zilch (Senior Director of Product Management @ SugarCRM)
Nov 16, 2023
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John Zilch, expert in determining product quality, discusses the six pillars of product quality. The podcast covers topics such as the importance of security, accuracy, performance, and stability, aligning product quality with corporate strategy, common pitfalls in research for a product, and prioritizing outcomes and quality in product management.
Understanding the corporate strategy is crucial in aligning the product strategy and quality dimensions with the overall goals of the company.
Measurement and tracking tools, along with a culture that values and prioritizes product quality, are essential for ensuring long-term success.
Deep dives
Understanding Corporate Strategy
The first step in ensuring product quality is to understand the corporate strategy. This involves identifying who the company is targeting and what advantage they want to focus on, such as being a low-cost provider or offering a differentiated product. Understanding corporate strategy is crucial in aligning the product strategy and quality dimensions with the overall goals of the company.
Analyzing Quality Pillars
After understanding corporate strategy, it's important to analyze the six quality pillars: security, accuracy, efficiency, intuitiveness, performance, and stability. This involves setting benchmarks and metrics to measure the current state of each pillar, as well as determining the desired level of quality based on the corporate strategy and customer expectations.
Influence and Prioritization
Once the quality pillars have been analyzed, the next step is to influence the organization to prioritize and align with the desired quality levels. This involves communicating the importance of quality and how it supports the corporate strategy. It may require overcoming resistance and making trade-offs to ensure the prioritization of the right quality aspects.
Measurement and Culture
Measurement is a crucial aspect of ensuring product quality. Implementing metrics and tracking tools allows for constant monitoring and assessment of product performance in each quality pillar. Additionally, creating a culture that values and prioritizes product quality ensures long-term success. This includes fostering a sense of pride and ownership among team members and instilling a mindset of continuous improvement.
How do you determine the quality of a product? John and I discussed this topic and came to the conclusion: there are six pillars. Which? Well, you better listen to this episode!