Product Development the knk Way

In a fast-paced, technology-focused industry like publishing, it is important for software providers such as knk to stay ahead of the new product requirements curve. So, we thought our customers would be interested in a brief overview of how knk incorporates one source of requirements for new features in the software.

We call our process “3P”, which stands for The Project-Product Process.

With many projects running concurrently all over the world, we sometimes find that what had hitherto been a custom development project for an individual customer, appears to everybody involved to have value for the entire user base, and so may present good reasons for adding those features to the existing knk Road Map. The Road Map, of course, is the document that describes the current plan for future development of fully supported knk software. When that happens, several decisions are needed. After getting agreement with the customer on if and how to proceed, a focus group of SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) is formed within knk to review and confirm whether this new requirement is “product-relevant,” meaning that it is a feature that knk will offer as a core supported product to all customers.

At this point, the knk Product Development Team in Kiel Germany gets engaged supporting the project in refining the concept for development and testing of the new product, while at the same time, the Customer Project Team retains control of the timeline so that the customer’s implementation schedule is not adversely affected. The new product will become a feature in an existing module and will be rolled out to all customers in a future release. An example of software produced by this 3P Process is the Milestone Planning features in the Book Production module within knkPublishing, which was a significant addition to the product. There are other sources of new product features of course, that include technology shifts, and specific needs of the publishing industry.

  

 

Product Development the knk Way

In a fast-paced, technology-focused industry like publishing, it is important for software providers such as knk to stay ahead of the new product requirements curve. So, we thought our customers would be interested in a brief overview of how knk incorporates one source of requirements for new features in the software.

We call our process “3P”, which stands for The Project-Product Process.

With many projects running concurrently all over the world, we sometimes find that what had hitherto been a custom development project for an individual customer, appears to everybody involved to have value for the entire user base, and so may present good reasons for adding those features to the existing knk Road Map. The Road Map, of course, is the document that describes the current plan for future development of fully supported knk software. When that happens, several decisions are needed. After getting agreement with the customer on if and how to proceed, a focus group of SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) is formed within knk to review and confirm whether this new requirement is “product-relevant,” meaning that it is a feature that knk will offer as a core supported product to all customers.

At this point, the knk Product Development Team in Kiel Germany gets engaged supporting the project in refining the concept for development and testing of the new product, while at the same time, the Customer Project Team retains control of the timeline so that the customer’s implementation schedule is not adversely affected. The new product will become a feature in an existing module and will be rolled out to all customers in a future release. An example of software produced by this 3P Process is the Milestone Planning features in the Book Production module within knkPublishing, which was a significant addition to the product. There are other sources of new product features of course, that include technology shifts, and specific needs of the publishing industry.

  

 

Product Development the knk Way

In a fast-paced, technology-focused industry like publishing, it is important for software providers such as knk to stay ahead of the new product requirements curve. So, we thought our customers would be interested in a brief overview of how knk incorporates one source of requirements for new features in the software.

We call our process “3P”, which stands for The Project-Product Process.

With many projects running concurrently all over the world, we sometimes find that what had hitherto been a custom development project for an individual customer, appears to everybody involved to have value for the entire user base, and so may present good reasons for adding those features to the existing knk Road Map. The Road Map, of course, is the document that describes the current plan for future development of fully supported knk software. When that happens, several decisions are needed. After getting agreement with the customer on if and how to proceed, a focus group of SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) is formed within knk to review and confirm whether this new requirement is “product-relevant,” meaning that it is a feature that knk will offer as a core supported product to all customers.

At this point, the knk Product Development Team in Kiel Germany gets engaged supporting the project in refining the concept for development and testing of the new product, while at the same time, the Customer Project Team retains control of the timeline so that the customer’s implementation schedule is not adversely affected. The new product will become a feature in an existing module and will be rolled out to all customers in a future release. An example of software produced by this 3P Process is the Milestone Planning features in the Book Production module within knkPublishing, which was a significant addition to the product. There are other sources of new product features of course, that include technology shifts, and specific needs of the publish