An education services product roadmap helps us plan out what courses we are going to create and when we are going to create them. A product development lifecycle helps us take each of the courses in our roadmap from concept to maintenance. Philip Bourne, in his CEdMA Europe book, Technical Training Management, describes a product development lifecycle as a process used to manage the lifecycle of a training offering involving seven stages:
Concept
Feasibility
Design and planning
Development
Verification
Release
Maintenance
There is only one problem with this lifecycle.
There is no mention of contact with the customer until step six. How do we know we are building the right course before we show it to customers?
We don’t.
Not really.
This lifecycle could lead a team to spend three months building a course, only to discover in phase five or six that customers don’t want it. We don’t have time for that.
Tags: agile • Education Services