RED

RED provides strategic product management, product design and human factors to a start-up organization within McKesson to support the agile development of a new product.

Problem

After a successful product ideation and prototyping exercise led to funding of the DBM project, the team was faced with the challenge of establishing processes and initiating the development of the product. The team chose to proceed with an Agile Development process using the Scrum methodology, and to implement the product using the Adobe Flex rich user interface framework. Of critical importance to the team was maintaining a focus on the user experience and having a deep understanding of the user needs. There was also a need to establish a baseline product vision beyond the work done during the prototyping phase. Given that this was a small entrepreneurial team, there was also a need to accomplish a great deal with limited resources.

Solution

RED was enlisted to provide a number of services ranging from user research, strategic product design, production design, and marketing production. The first objective was to build up on the prototype work to refine the understanding of the user needs with a particular focus on provider adoption. RED produced a detailed assessment of the adoption challenges and opportunities based on industry analogues and extensive primary research with providers and their staff around the country. Based on this work, RED produced a series of reference designs that incorporated most of the core functionality desired for the product. This baseline provided a runway of forward-looking design and product vision to guide the first release of the product through 14 2-week Scrum development cycles. To support those cycles, RED worked directly with product management to gather and document requirements and to produce specific design assets (including wireframes, visual comps, workflows, and other supporting materials) to augment the sprint backlog of requirements. RED also worked directly with the development team, providing clarity on design requirements, production design assets (graphics, styling, icons, etc.), and guidance on opportunities within the Flex environment. Finally, RED provided initial marketing production support in product naming, logo design, color palette creation, and development of marketing and sales collateral, combining the entrepreneurial spirit of the DBM team with the corporate presence and brand equity of McKesson and associated brands.

Conclusion

The DBM team has constantly surprised critics and supporters alike with the success of the product creation effort. The team and its processes have become a case study within McKesson of collaborative product creation, corporate entrepreneurialism, and implementation of Agile Development. RED is proud to be an integral part of this team, and continues to serve in both strategic product management and product design roles. Through this partnership RED has developed extensive expertise in the incorporation of user-centric design practices into an Agile Development process, a significant challenge for many product organizations.