An awesome topic, worthy of a webinar.
Just a reminder that tomorrow we host the final webinar in our Transparency series, featuring Tom Grant [@TomGrantForr], Sr. Research Analyst at Forrester Research.

Technology-driven companies today have little tolerance for waste, mistakes, or failures in the product innovation process; the cost is simply too great in this post-recession environment. But there is opportunity at every step – from requirements through execution – to turn innovation into a strategic weapon.

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Most product executives are constantly struggling to match their product investments to their companies’ innovation goals.

Join us on Wednesday for the fourth of our five-part webinar series on Transparency, and you can learn how you can maximize your return on product investments by developing the right products for the right markets at the right time, all the time. In this webinar, Roy Wildeman, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc., will discuss Product Portfolio trends and highlight best practices for better, faster, more effective product development.
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Tom Grant at Forrester writes an excellent blog on product management, in which he recently graced us by mentioning Accept in his post on “The Unrecognized Success of the Requirements Tool Market.” To be sure, awareness for solutions like ours is growing fast. In fact in our latest earnings announcement we highlighted record financial results and aggressive expansion plans.

Tom asks his readers why there’s a sudden interest in requirements tools and the business problem they’re tied to. You’ll have to read Tom’s blog to get his own answer to the question in an upcoming post, but we also thought we’d let you know what we think here.

Innovation has been the lifeblood of high-tech companies, so why is interest on the rise just now?

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On Monday, May 17, 2010, from 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Eastern time (18:00-19:00 UK time),  Tom Grant, Ph.D. from Forrester Research will host a teleconference on Requirements Tools.

“…the adage “the right tool for the right job” definitely applies to requirements tools. We have segmented the requirements tool market by the business problems that they address.”

Teleconference Agenda:

• The ROI of requirements tools
• Different business problems, different tools
• How the needs of IT and TI differ
• Recommendations and next steps

You can find more information about this event at http://www.forrester.com/rb/teleconference/requirements_tools_address_different_business_problems/q/id/6281/t/1. A teleconference registration fee may be required.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave West, Forrester Sr. Analyst hosted a webinar with us, entitled, “How Agile Value Management (AVM) can remove risk earlier in your agile process”.  Dave spoke about the benefits of removing risk earlier in your agile process, and streamlining key life cycle friction points between your product teams, analysts, engineering, manufacturing, and customers.

As is usually the case, we received more questions than Dave was able to respond to during the duration of the webinar. Dave has very graciously responded to your unanswered questions, which I’ve included below.

You can also listen to the full webinar replay here.  You’ll also want to follow Dave if you’re not already, he’s very fascinating guy.

1)      Where does innovation in untested or unknown area fit into the value equation?

That is a really interested question. It is hard to know the true value of innovation, but there are techniques such as innovation games that provide a mechanism to at least prioritize one thing over another. The truth of the matter is when delivering new stuff (brand new, innovative product or service) the best thing to do is get something out and test the response ( measure in a controlled way) and then accept that change will happen. An example of this approach is what MS do with their extended Beta – The product is released almost a year before RTM, but to a small select group who provide LOTS of feedback and comment. During that exercise the value of the features are assessed and measured.

2)      What is the value of Documentation in regards to the Agile Methodology?

The problem of documentation is that it is often aimed at two very different audiences. Firstly it is used to drive development in terms of requirements, designs, etc. Secondly it is used to describe the system for maintenance and support. These are two very different audiences. The result is documentation that is neither and good for nothing, thus it gets out of date and becomes irrelevant. Thus on most projects we see Agile documentation driving the development of great software and testing it in terms of stories, simple designs and test materials. The maxim for this documentation is just enough to enable the team to move to done, and is supported with tacit knowledge. In parallel other documentation is created to support the process of support – this is written by professional writers aimed at ONE audience with ONE set of needs.