Product releases vs. management reporting

Product release and management reporting are two opposite and confronted sides. Product managers push hardly to release products on markets as soon as possible. They will have strong support from marketing to with different set of demands to support product release in form of campaigns.

source: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/doc_

To support product and campaign releases information systems need to be prepared with processes, functionalities, upgrades, whatever… It is legitimate claim for product development and marketing to force new releases since company lives from products.

Catch is in following, with product and campaign rushes information systems most probably will not be fully prepared for processes and definitely not for reporting purposes. With very often product launches and versatile campaigns IT suffers from great pressure to support processes. Products are getting more and more complex with different marketing innovations for customers.

Today customers are much more product aware then before and products in order to offer something new contain features like product bundles, packages, subscription packages and discounts, roll overs in future periods and many others.  With each new marketing product it is getting very interesting to see how IT implements patches on core production systems in order to support processes. Patches means reporting flow will also most likely need patches. There is cool Chinese curse toward enemies: “I wish you live in interesting times”.

Second catch is with product managers. Those are persons that forced immediate product launches, remember? Same persons are going to force you for best quality report of their “baby”. They will be main prosecutors toward management that controlling or who ever reports is guilty of poor quality report. They will not for sure mention that they have caused reporting chaos with rush.

Speed of product releases and speed of reporting are not reciprocal. Information product complexity and reporting implementation is reciprocal. More complex product, longer time for implementation.

To conclude, current complex product releases can not be quickly implemented in company information system. This is something worth enough to be communicated and internally promoted in company.