PEARSON’S SUCCESS MAKER: PUTTING THE CUSTOMER FIRST IN TRANSFORMING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

PEARSON’S SUCCESS MAKER: PUTTING THE CUSTOMER FIRST IN TRANSFORMING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES Case Solution

1. What challenges does the vice-president of product management (Greg Adams-Wood ford) face in developing a five-year product road map?

The Vice President of product management, Greg Adam Wood ford, was entrusted with the employment of making the road map for the following 5 years for the product’s improvement. Pearson was the head of programming to help the students to enhance their perusing and math aptitudes, and this was their first success maker product. The company went from a nold customer server model to this new web delivered model as it was changing the whole program, however it did not go as planned.

As Adam established the road map of product, he has to make three important decisions which are;

To make changes from one form of the Aigle process (Scrum) to a newer process (Kanban)
To spread the Aigle methodology to other teams within the business unit
To increase the use of Aigle to other teams outside of the business unit in the organization at large

Challenges faced by Greg Adams:

The system didn't take after the organization's internal objectives, nor did it meet its clients' requests, therefore this was the test he was confronted with at such a time during his employment.

He took the agile advancement procedure to focus on the organization, something the organization had not chipped away. The company was effective, however as time passed by,it faced more issues by using Scrum strategy, there it had to go towards kanban framework, as it felt scrum didn't fit with the product cycle now. Greg was hesitant to move away to something he didn't know much about. With the crisis of education budget, the company had to guarantee that it was providing various services on the web, particularly with the growth for the advanced channels.

Along with this, Greg analyzed the main reason for the initial failure, which was that the decisions were taken by the development team, and not from the product management team. Moreover,there was quick transformation from waterfall to agile, and it required trained employees. Wood ford, through his casual meetings, began to analyze certain groups and individuals who were not ready with agile. They were not comfortable with it, and did not had the skills to proceed. Along with this, they doubted agile and began bringing waterfall methodology back. This was the most serious issue, not having the groups on board, but gradually Greg was successful in getting the development group on board, and he took that as a win, and continued with his plan.

2. How do product and software development methodologies influence a firm’s ability to respond to market demands?

The product ad software development methodologies help the company to achieve its goal and to fulfill the market demands. Pearson has an excellent market reputation among all the students as well as it has strong development and operational teams to develop any change.

Firm’s ability to respond on the market demand:

It improves speed, efficiency and quality
New product development results in optimization of direction and guidance
Enhancement of structure to facilitate internal exchange of information
Change in technology attracts new opportunities
The expectations and requirements from customers would result in more demand
Market demand is pulled with the development of new products and software
New software means the customers would have more choices as per their demands

3. Transition from waterfall to agile:

Pearson was the first major redesign of its Success Maker when Greg Adams-Wood ford joined the firm. Regardless of the best actions of the considerable number of individuals included, the update was not going as planned due to which Pearson moved from the conventional waterfall model to the new agile development technique. (Linders, 2016)..................

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