Product management at Projektron GmbH

We've been developing our Projektron BCS software since 2001. We even still have two customers from the first year who are using the latest version. Both customers have been with us on our journey from software for tech-savvy innovators to software that is well-known and valued by professionals in the field of project management. The first users overlooked many bugs and a lack of documentation, while customers in recent years appreciate the excellent documentation and in-depth features.

In the early years, uniqueness was an important argument for innovators and early adopters to purchase the software. Later, issues such as interfaces, performance, security, and references became important, as did winning over the early majority of those who wanted to drive their project management forward on a web-based platform. Now, cost and availability in the cloud are also playing a greater role. Unlike many other systems, however, we will continue to support an on-premises solution in the long term.

The resources required for good product management are lower for a product with 10,000 function points than for five products with 2,000 function points each. While the former saves resources, the latter would allow individual modules to be advertised differently. With a “time tracking” product, for example, we would certainly be found in more searches that are only related to this topic.

Nevertheless, the knowledge of the current range of functions and the wishes and expectations of the market for our Produkt Projektron BCS product alone is no longer something that can be achieved by a single person.

As a result of the growth of the software and the switch to the Scrum development method, we now have two Chief Product Owners (CPO) and one Technical CPO (TCPO). In addition, there are six Domain Product Owners (DPO) who are responsible for a relatively large range of functions, as well as another twenty DPOs who are only responsible for their area of expertise, such as the integration of Jira or MS 365.

The introduction of Scrum not only had a positive impact in terms of the clear distribution of technical responsibility by DPOs. For Projektron, Scrum also led to greater satisfaction among developers—they are now explained the benefits of each user story for the client. This understanding made it possible to propose alternative solutions and significantly improved the quality of effort estimates.

We try to involve people who are familiar with the problems from their own practice as much as possible. That's why at Projektron, the head of finance is responsible for the functions in invoicing, the head of human resources is responsible for mapping working time models and employee skills, and two consultants are responsible for developing the BPMN module.

However, delegating responsibility for parts of product management to specialists is only possible because we use Projektron BCS in all areas where it is applicable. When mapping customer requirements, the DPOs then ensure that their own requirements are also met as far as possible.

The proportion of functions that were incorporated into the product as a result of user requirements is certainly higher than with other software. The reason for this is that it took ten years before Projektron GmbH was able to specify technical requirements that had not been commissioned by customers. This had both advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage was that during this time, there was a highly motivated external tester for each feature. The disadvantage was that we were unable to make any major technical advances. For example, we only implemented the critical path, a central element of project planning, in the product after seven years because there were no customers who supported this enhancement beforehand.

Over the last 15 years, we have reduced the proportion of customer-specific extensions. The extensions requested by customers now account for only a small portion of development costs. Over the last five years, revenue from customer-specific enhancements has always been around 2.5 percent of total revenue. However, this still accounted for about half of the resources in development for technical enhancements. One reason for this is that testing is more intensive than in the past and that we ensure that enhancements can always benefit as large a customer base as possible through configuration options.