Going from Technology to Product
With VP Product & Engineering Chuck Gauvin
Every day, the boundaries of the imagination are pushed by new developments and research in new technologies. Going from a technology-focused company to a product-focused one is a process that can be fraught with many challenges. Fluent.ai’s recent addition to our executive team, VP Product & Engineering Chuck Gauvin, has years of experience doing just that. In this Executive’s Corner, we hear from Chuck on how to balance a push for products that solve real-world problems and a drive to be creative and innovative in voice AI and beyond.
What makes a “good product”?
The definition of a “good product” can vary, but in general the product is more than the “thing” itself; it’s the overall experience of interacting with it from start to finish, from emails with sales, to interacting with engineering teams, to delivering a 100% functional device or software and its maintenance. Apple, for example, has long been a leader in understanding and using the overall user experience as an integral part of their product design and success. That is why so much attention is given to the packaging design, for instance. The excitement of holding and opening that box stays with the user as part of a positive interaction with the company and that helps make the iPhone a “good product”. In Fluent.ai’s tech-product world, a “good product” is very much tied to performance and accuracy in the hands of the consumer. We at Fluent have to provide the user an excellent interaction experience with our speech recognition products.
What are the typical steps from idea to product?
It is important that companies establish a process for turning ideas into products early on. What the engineering world will say is that there are two main ways of developing a product. The most common approach is the “waterfall”, meaning you do one step, then another, then another… Essentially the steps cascade from one to the next like a waterfall, without much emphasis on safeguards. The phases of this approach might vary from project to project but in general, they are: defining the requirements of the product, development, testing, and launch.
The other common approach is called “agile” and is used primarily in the tech and software spaces. The image of a panther is a good analogy for this approach. Agile is meant to keep teams Iight on their feet, responsive and fast, much like a panther. The agile process typically involves more input from the customer all throughout instead of all at the beginning. It starts with basic requirements that lead to a prototype which will be demonstrated to the customer for feedback. In traditional development (waterfall), for example, the customer says, “I want a table.” The engineering team will take that instruction and take a certain amount of time to build a round table with three legs. The customer will know it is a table but their expectation might have been four legs and a rectangle. This back and forth could take up considerable amounts of time and effort especially in building new iterations of the product. The agile process brings the customer into the development phase, amongst others,) and involves refining the requirements so time and resources do not get wasted.
Is there a more holistic approach to product development other than these two engineering-focused approaches?
The product development process or PDP is a stage-gate process* that helps keep a project in line and avoids distraction and waste. The phases are similar to other processes but they are gated with verification of completion and benchmarks before a project moves onto the next stage. This process would favour moving projects through the gates if they align with long-term company goals or customer needs and would kill or park projects that do not. Killing does not necessarily mean it is a bad idea, sometimes it is but most of the time it is not low-hanging fruit or it is not the right time for that particular idea — and sometimes it’s just not worth it anymore.
First, there is the preliminary assessment both from the customer and from the company that will develop the new product. Defining the product requirements and working with the customer at this stage is crucial in ensuring that the business and customer strategies are aligned towards the same goals. If so, we move on to the next stage, the development phase — an exciting point of no return in the process. After investing so much time, energy and money, moving to development commits the team to seeing the whole project through. This version of development improves on traditional development processes: everyone starts planning in parallel. Beyond engineering, this is when marketing and sales considerations come into play. How do we build campaigns around the product ahead of launch? At Fluent, for example, we deliver software. How do we deliver that product most effectively? Do we do it over the internet or a USB delivery directly on the customer’s device? What about “read-me” documents, where are those stored and how are they delivered? How do we test this product ? Can we anticipate customer questions prior to launch ? And so on. This is where the prototypes, block diagrams and slides get developed, to explain how it all makes sense and works together.
Next is the all-important testing stage. Testing helps work out the kinks of a product before it goes to your customers. You can tell when a company doesn’t test as rigorously as it should when the product does not deliver on its promises. The launch stage is the last in the PDP where all the pieces of the product development puzzle are meant to come together and should, if the concept stage was properly fleshed out, fit together perfectly. All these factors contribute to overall product satisfaction with customers and generally reflect on whether what you are producing is a “good product”. As everything is coming together and each team signs their name on their piece of the puzzle, it builds a sense of ownership and accomplishment.
*The stage-gate process is not new, but yet it is still unknown to a large number of companies. Dr. Robert G. Cooper’s process (1990) is now deployed by thousands of R&D teams worldwide, and the majority of the Fortune 500.
What are your main tips for product development to avoid the pitfalls so many still fall into?
The biggest mistake that still comes up often today and even in organizations with somewhat rigorous processes is not fully clarifying the final requirements of a product. This can come from not listening to customers and not having clear feedback, but it can also come from falling into what I call the “while we are at it” trap in the development stage.There can be a tendency in the development stage to say, “while we are at it… let’s add capability x or feature y.” This can lead not only to unexpected costs but also issues with deadlines and an unhappy customer.
What many organizations come to realize after implementing rigorous processes for product development is that it actually helps employee morale. There’s nothing worse than putting in hours of work only to be told, “No, that is not what we wanted”, or “While we are at it, let’s add this new aspect to the product.” Having to explain why budgets or timelines were not met is demoralizing and discouraging. Building processes with clear expectations and gates at each step of the way makes building products smoother and a source of pride for employees.
Why do you think testing is too often overlooked when it comes to product development?
Testing has definitely become more important and rigorous in the last 10 years across tech but often the lack of testing has to do with disorganized development and a lack of fully fleshed out concepts. The test teams can’t test if they haven’t planned for it. Sometimes the lack of testing is painfully apparent in a product. Those are the moments you have to ask yourself, as the customer, if the president of the company uses their own product.
All the stages interact and affect each other and that is why gating is so important. The concept stage is to the development stage what drawing a floor plan is to building a house. The clearer we are coming to the concept gate, the smoother the development process will go. But if the concept is not clear and there is time wasted in the development phase, that will likely eat away at the testing period in order to meet the project deadline. Alternatively, you can choose to go ahead with testing and miss the deadline for the project, which in turn does away with customer trust in your brand. Having an experienced team can help mitigate this pitfall and help ensure proper resources are allocated for testing. At Fluent, not only do we extensively test our products but the products themselves are built to make sure the testing process is thorough in evaluating all the capabilities and features of a solution.
Killing ideas is difficult, especially when you have a talented team. How do you draw the line between ideas that can be turned into products and ideas that might be innovative but just do not meet that mark?
There are many ways to innovate. Taking a car that doesn’t have a sunroof today and adding one, that is incremental innovation. Adding a remote to a home AC unit instead of turning it on with a button is an innovation; adding voice capability to the AC unit like Fluent does is also innovation. But sometimes companies can be led down paths that may seem interesting or worthwhile until you hear from the customer and their needs. Listening to the customer is absolutely essential to knowing which ideas can become products and which might need to be set aside. The customer’s perspective on an issue is the one companies should focus on because that issue is the one their product or feature would be solving. For example, at this point wake word technology is not uncommon; most voice AI companies have some version of a wake word they can sell to you. But what did Fluent do early on? The company sat down and listened. It heard customers say they want a custom wake word solution, one that works perfectly in any accent or language. So that was the innovative idea that was developed into our Wakeword product.
Could you talk a little more about the importance of customer feedback and how important that can be for building products that will make an impact?
The sooner there is understanding between a business and its customers on the problem or issue the product will solve, the clearer and more straightforward the development of the product will be.
At Fluent, when we build a voice solution, we make it a point to design for the hardware the customer is intending to use, we customize it for use case, and for accuracy in different real-world environments the solution might encounter. We could skip this process if we wanted. We could simply give them our product and let them adapt it to their needs. But taking that step to adapt a model to the hardware and having a true understanding of the use case makes the overall product experience better. Building in silos and not listening to customers is not good for effective product development and is not good for business. Listen to your customers.
Rigid processes seem to keep companies on track but how do you foster creativity in that type of environment?
If you can build a company from the beginning that is structured and focused with processes to guide product development, you will reap the benefits much faster. Rigor is very important, and a lack of rigor will catch up to businesses as they grow and take on more projects. A good analogy would be to imagine you have a grain of sand in your shoe; you can ignore it for a time but if the grain of sand gets bigger and you don’t address it, you will hurt yourself.
Rigidity in processes doesn’t impede creativity, or at least if properly applied it shouldn’t. It just directs creativity in a way that it can be productive. We want everyone, from all over the company, to be creative and have ideas. There is creativity built into every stage of the PDP. For example, scoping an idea and outlining business use cases is creative, and building concepts and prototypes is also a creative process.
In addition, a good process evolves with time. It evolves with the company, the employees, and even some potential external factors as well. So if the process does not work, there is a need for creativity there as well to help build and adapt a process to work for the company as a whole.
