Professional Documents
Culture Documents
problems. We provide both solo consulting and teams for interim VP Product Management, agile
product strategy and business models. See http://www.mironov.com/. Product Bytes is our longrunning blog on software, start-ups, product strategies, Silicon Valley, and the inner life of product
managers.
This MRD template is a work of fiction, but may provide good ideas or a few chuckles to product
folks. All rights reserved, especially if you get teleportation working.
Abstract:
This product release, code-named "Babylon-6," addresses three top requirements. In order, they are [1]
meeting the emerging market need for teleportation, [2] boosting internal quality and supportability through
telepathic diagnostics, and [3] increasing networking price-performance. All three are required for successful
release and launch, which is planned for next Wednesday.
In addition, a wide variety of other improvements and extensions have been identified. None of these are
defined as gating items for the release, so may be postponed if they threaten timeliness or functionality of
the release.
Revision History (example)
V1.0
First draft for comment, 01-Jan-2011
V1.5
Incorporating feature order, 18-Sept-2011
V2.0
Coordinated with feature sizing from Development, 22-Mar-2012
V2.1
Revised based on initial alpha tests (liability concerns from Corporate Legal), 15-Apr-2013
V3.0
Redefined for use only on inanimate objects and cargo due to slight side effects, 20-Jun-2013
V3.1
Updated links and website information, 15-March-2014
1996-2014, Rich Mironov.
MRD Template
Table of Contents
Hi-Tech Mergers & Acquisitions users, who will be most interested in reducing
latency of financial updates and pricing. Moving price data through teleportation
gives program traders and hedge funds a way to "lead the market" by as much as 5
seconds. For this group, raw transmission speed is the only criterion.
Figure A shows a schematic how our system will fit with pricing data from major
exchanges, (NYSE, NASDAQ as delivered through Reuters/TIBCO) and buy-side
interfaces with portfolio trading apps.
MRD Template
1.3.3
1.6 Microsoft
This is in potential competition with several long-term Microsoft initiatives, such as "PenfieldJackson" and "R2D2". Our plan must be either to [a] make this an attractive partnering opportunity
for Microsoft, with hopes for free bundling or acquisition, or [b] position it as complementary to
Microsofts incomplete lower-level offering, which we assume will be bundled at no charge in all of
the following products and suites: Office2006, MoonExplorer, and "USBeam".
Any discussion with press or analysts will include a designated PR / Product Marketing
representative to cover Microsoft questions.
MRD Template
Example: database stored procedures (a.k.a. triggers) allow program trading of securities driven by
real-time market price data. Pre-existing solutions required manual intervention or batch price
scans, which were too slow to catch real-time market moves. This technology created a new class
of traders able to arbitrage tiny market inefficiencies, and made millions for early Wall Street
adopters.
MRD Template
3.3 Support
This product addresses the following known weaknesses in our current offering, as identified by
Support We will designate a "tiger team" to handle beta and early production calls from
customers from our Support group in Sign-off on customer and internal training materials will be
done by In addition, Support will recruit untrained customers and prospects to do user testing of
the beta product. Users will attempt to install and use the product without manuals or install guides,
and will score their experience. If 70% of these testers are unable to perform a minimal set of
product functions {list}, Product Management and Support will do a full review of UI and functional
designs.
3.4 Operations
Operations must
Quality of service metrics for this product are
Test installations and Operations acceptance testing will be done by
3.5 Sales
Starting in Jan-2007, we will begin looking for beta customers among the existing installed base.
This will be led by Sales, specifically Meredith Greenfield (Omaha) and Patty OFurn (Dublin)
Presales SEs will get two rounds of product training: initial concepts and selling strategies. Sales
Training will be responsible for coordinating these events and turning standard marketing
deliverables into Sales formats
Marketing will launch a contest and campaign during the first three months of availability, with prizes
for all Reps who close more than one account
3.6 Legal
For some products (e.g. this teleportation product), developers will need to worry about liability and
failure issues and include a legal review of the product or claims. Consider the consequences of a
network outage on hospital systems, or a security breach of law enforcement databases. For
MRD Template
teleportation, are there disclosures and warnings that would minimize lawsuits when an occasional
user arrives as a puddle of quivering protoplasm?
Special "SWAT team" created for professional services opportunities with customer migrations
No additional patches or fixes to be made 6 months after announcement date
No ongoing support or technical assistance 12 months after announcement date
MRD Template
6.5 Benchmarks
We will run the following performance tests internally, with a plan to release benchmarks beating the
competition Third party test labs that will re-run or verify our results are Publications that
promote these benchmarks include
MRD Template
10
8.1 Undo/Redo
This has been requested by many customers, but is not included in this release. Some architectural
work has been slipped into the main code line for completion in later releases. For now, customers
who send something do not have the option to "change their minds" or later destination coordinates.
MRD Template
11