When building products, some of the issues that need to be addressed range from whether the product being designed reflects market requirements and is robust, maintainable and future-proof. Engineers also need to verify if the product is of industrial-strength and quality and meets market demands.

Object orientation, use of frameworks and product lines with significant component re-use are engineering principles adapted by all disciplines of software engineering. However, when developing products, adhering to and adopting these principles become of vital importance and are needed at their highest degree of application. Hence, product engineers have to be conscious of this fact and geared to deliver accordingly.

Processes for product development also vary vastly from generic application development. Dealing with product roadmaps, which includes devoting time for maintenance of older product versions; catering to frequently changing new product requirements based on market needs; and managing scope without compromising time-to-market or budgeted costs mean that while the development process needs to be meticulous, it must also have enough flexibility built in to cater to changing needs.

Essentially, Product engineering goes beyond application development and requires solid engineering expertise to get a well-architected, high quality and robust product with sufficiently flexible processes to accommodate evolving requirements.

Recognizing that the various aspects of engineering a product differ greatly from traditional software engineering, Aspire Systems has coined the term “Producteering” to refer to the discipline of “Product engineering”.

The requirements and corresponding skills and processes involved in developing a product vary vastly from those needed for building an application. Some of the key differentiators of a software product compared to an application are as follows:

1. Technology-related

An application is “custom-built” for a single organization or set of users, but a product is “generic” and is built to cater to the demands of a wide variety of users. However, each user needs to be able to use the product in a way that suits him/her. Hence, a product must be customizable, scalable, robust, well-architected, and must have a solid framework on which new features can be built.

Generally, in the case of an application, it is enough if the specified functionality requirements are met. There aren’t too many enhancements and changes made once the application is built. For software products, however, as time goes by, newer versions are released and several versions may have to co-exist at the same time. Therefore, if “under-the-hood” engineering of a product is not strong, maintenance could turn out to be a nightmare.

In comparison to an application, a product needs to be more easily integrated with other applications or products and support multiple environments. Support for globalization needs, adaptability to new pricing models and enhanced security are vital in software products, whereas they are not required or at best optional for applications.

2. People-related

Building a “well-engineered” product requires a higher level of skills than what it takes to build an application. Typically, customers for application development look at and test the screens of an application to know whether it works. Whereas, product customers look into the code base to see how it meets the attributes of scalability, robustness, customizability and architectural finesse. Products also demand superior usability skills.

An important consideration in product engineering is being quick to market – therefore, knowledge continuity of the engineering team becomes important to reduce the learning curve for existing product designs/architecture framework etc. and in maintaining older product versions.

3. Process-related

Proper documentation, configuration management and strict adherence to coding standards are important when building applications, but not mandatory. For software product development however, they are “mission-critical”. Frequent release of new product features and getting to market quickly are pre-requisites in product development and demand strong processes to deliver quality products. At the same time, the product engineering process needs to be flexible enough to accommodate frequently changing market requirements.

The differences outlined above highlight the fact that product development is not the same as software application development. It requires a different approach and a specialist product engineering team to be a success.

A comparative study of product development with rocket science will throw up the similarities between the two and highlight the complexities involved, and characteristics needed for product development.

Vision

Every space project has a vision that acts as a preamble to guide rocket engineers through the project, from start until launch. In the case of nations building their space program, several political, scientific and economic factors influence the program’s vision.

Similarly, every software product has a vision that attempts to solve a business problem. The vision for any product should always be significant and precise, in order to guide the evolution of the product over time. More importantly, it should create a blue ocean strategy for the product to create uncontested market space and capture new demand.

People

Quality resources make the vital difference between the success and failure of any project. A space project, for example, requires hardworking, explorative, process-driven, imaginative, persistent and meticulous scientists. They must also possess a can-do attitude and a team-player mindset, in order for the overall project to succeed.

Same is the case with a product development team. Highly skilled people with all the above mentioned attributes, who can work as a team, help in accomplishing the defined goals of developing a product. The product development team must have the capability to understand the product requirements and work around challenges to meet the exact needs of the end-users of the product.

Management & Communication

Rocket building entails pulling together millions of parts, designed and built by different in-house and external agencies. Therefore, there must be close coordination with all the agencies involved to get a complete rocket built within a stipulated timeframe. Communicating with different teams and managing system engineering, technology and organization integration are key factors of successful rocket building.

Likewise, effective management and communication plays a decisive role in developing a successful product. Transparency while communicating the requirements between the project lead, project management team and the development team will result in developing a product that matches its vision. The project management team takes the responsibility of developing the product from scratch to finish while product management takes care of product positioning and other related activities.

Rapid Engineering

Rocket science involves developing products and technology that have never existed before and can never be practically tested until it is actually used. Hence, engineers designing rockets have to rely on their design skills and engineering acumen, rather than experience, to solve complex problems that arise during development.

Comparatively, complete business requirements are typically unavailable when a product is conceived. Adapting to market requirements necessitate that the development team be capable of incorporating constantly changing requirements into the product. This has to happen in such a way that the base product itself does not change too much – which means that the architecture is flexible to incorporate changing needs. Only skilled product engineers can build a product which accommodates rapidly changing requirements.

Testing and Simulation

Before putting a rocket into space, scientists must take into consideration several functional requirements and environmental factors. Multiple scenarios are simulated and tested several times to ensure that the rocket will not malfunction when launched or in orbit.

Excellent products should also be able perform well in different scenarios. The product should be well engineered and tested against various combinations of scenarios. Functional testing, performance testing, load testing and security testing all play their role in making a software product successful.

Budget, Time and Quality

Space projects often involve tough decisions with respect to cost, quality and time. Compromising any one of the factors would adversely affect the others and the entire project.

In the same way, for any product development effort, even before the development process begins, the product development team must be made aware of the product launch date and the features to be developed within the budget. Thereafter, the product and project management team should consciously choose the best approach (from structured engineering to unified modeling) that would suit their product development effort.

Perseverance

Failures or accidents are always a possibility when engineering products are built, especially when it is a very complex project that is attempted. Hence, the ability and willingness to learn from mistakes and overcome them are important lessons in space science.

Every product evolves before it matures and becomes a success. The product should not be abandoned when faced with a challenging situation. Instead, the experience gained by facing and overcoming challenges must become a lesson for the future. Courage and perseverance are key factors in the success of a product development effort.

To be successful, product development efforts require more than just software engineers who can design and develop code as per requirements. Just like rocket science, software product development is a stupendous task and demands dedicated, highly skilled and knowledge thirsty resources.

While developing software products may not be in the same league as developing rockets and space technology, in today’s competitive world, product development requires similar strengths as those required for rocket science. Hence, product development is indeed rocket science!

There are quite a few forums / groups focused on the other aspects of software marketing, software sales (www.softwareceo.com), software business management (www.cio.com) and business strategy (www.sandhill.com) but not many that focus on product engineering.

However, product engineering – the way software products are engineered from the inside has tremendous impact on the future of software vendors.

Today, enterprises and consumers have huge choices – open-source, ad-supported freeware, online applications and so on. Newer paradigms of development including RAD and advances in Application servers are making software development a breeze. Hence, enterprises can choose to make their own internal applications as opposed to getting tied-in with a software vendor.

All this makes the position of software vendors vulnerable. What does this mean for software providers? Product Engineering – making products robust, configurable, scalable and maintainable is the best way to make software products compete in this market.