Introduction

The title isn’t a euphemism. This is about when product management decisions can do damage.

In Part 1 of this writeup, I’m going to define some of the challenges for Mission and Safety Critical applications as compared to typical development. If you want to skip right to more practical considerations for what to do about such things, go right to Part 2, with a checklist followed by explanations of the line items.

Over the years I’ve moved from consumer oriented products to B2B and B2B2C, most recently several years working on healthcare solutions. On this path, I’ve learned a lot about Safety Critical application issues. It’s stuck me that people who ‘grew up’ in such environments may have a lot of this knowledge through intrinsic experience. But for those transitioning to such areas or in startup mode who haven’t been there, (as was my path), it’s possible there’s knowledge gaps. What I often do when learning new things is take note in my own Wiki, and over time develop some degree of body of knowledge in a subject area. So my goal now is to share back what I’ve learned for those who may find it useful.

What’s the difference between “Mission Critical” or more extremely, “Safety Critical” vs. “typical” product management? Rather than try to formerly define it, let’s keep it simple. Safety Critical products are those that – for certain failure modes – can hurt or kill people. (Or cause significant property or environmental damage.) Often, they’re things that move in our environment; that is, actually do things. A basic compare and contrast might be an advertising delivery system for content vs. an insulin pump; failure of the first maybe means some lost money, whereas failure of the second… clear enough, right? Mission Critical – as distinct from Safety Critical – might mean less severe human consequences, but a ‘hard’ failure or challenge nonetheless. E.g., a failure in a basic regulatory compliance issue could result in anything from minor work stoppage or fines though potential criminal negligence. Or a failure of the software on a Mars Rover results in loss of the unit, associated waste and data loss. No one gets hurt or dies, but the mission is basically lost.

In short, these are not really applications where we want to “fail fast and learn.” These are apps that have somewhat more crisp “Minimum Viable Product“ standards when it comes to the “Viable” part.

The Short Version of Issues for Mission / Safety Critical Products

• Mission and Safety Critical systems demand something beyond basic Agile Product / Project management approaches. (And this may include products in highly regulated areas as well.)
• There is often a moral component that exists beyond other types of products / services.
• More planning is required than for non-critical systems.
• Agility may be more often impacted by external dependencies.
• So called “Non-functional” requirements may become critical.
• Risk assessments must be included as a core concern.
• There’s a suggested checklist for Mission / Safety Critical Products in Part 2 of this writeup that you may find useful if you work on these types of products.

That’s it. You can stop reading now. But for fuller discussion of these points, please continue. Or skip to Part 2 for the just mentioned checklist items.

Why anyone would want to re-hash this topic is a fair question. It came out of a discussion I had with some relatively junior product managers who came to Product, as is often the case, from other specialties. So many management books and courses… So many definitions of the same things. So many years of struggle. And yet… we still have differing definitions, suggestions, and apparently confusion about what seem to be the basics for high level strategy and associated concepts. You can easily search for some of these key words and find other authors with completely opposite viewpoints of each other. But not always explanations as to why. I, perhaps foolishly, think I might understand where some of the confusion has come into play. And since I’ve got what I think might be a path through this, I’m going to give it a shot…

There’s a really long writeup coming, but here’s the short version…

Several of my past articles have dealt with “When to Work with Software Development Companies” and “How to Work with Software Development Companies.” I’ve been asked to come up with some thoughts about When NOT to work with an outsourced software development company. In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve worked for a fairly large software development company in the past. I’m a big fan of using such services for all manner of reasons ranging from cost to flexibility, and so on. In other words, I’m biased towards the value of outsourced software development; at least for some purposes. Still, after some recent conversations and friendly debate with colleagues and others, it’s clear that I haven’t given proper consideration to the other side of that coin. There may be some situations where you may be better off creating or keeping development capabilities in house. So I’m going to go over some of these considerations here. At the same time, I’ll try to inject a few ideas for how to mitigate them where or if possible.

So. What might these issues be? [Read more…]

In Part 1 of How to Work with Software Development Companies, we covered the beginning of the engagement process though the proposal and negotiation phase. In Part 2, we’ll get more into estimates, SOWs and MSAs, and dealing with change orders followed by project delivery.

Project Estimate Efforts – Time & Money

One way or another, when your only real costs are personnel, the adage time is money certainly applies. As does the Theory of Constraints. There’s a number of variations on this theme, but basically it’s along these lines: For any project, you have time, money and features. (Some add quality.) You can pick any two. In other words, you can spend more to buy less time, (though not always), or you can cut features for time, etc. etc. There are some that claim in the Age of Agile or for other reasons that this isn’t as true as it once was. They’re wrong. Common Sense doesn’t always hold up under careful scrutiny, but in this case, it does.

So what’s the point? The point is when we’re done with all the back and forth discussion, an estimate will be based on anticipated time to do something and the costs. So you will likely face potentially wide ranges of estimates depending on how easy/hard it is to estimate the tasks at hand. And software development is notoriously challenging to estimate. Discussions as to why are out of scope of this article, but suffice it to say, it’s a challenge. You will most likely get an early rough estimate. But for any project with deep complexity, chances are good some form of deep discovery will be required to get rational estimates. [Read more…]