INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

PROJECT ON WORKING OF PRODUCT MANAGER IN

DVALVE INC

SUBMITTED TO:
DR. JAYANT SONWALKAR

SUBMITTED BY:
SONAM PARASWANI MBA FT 3RD SEM

PREFACE
Software product management is the process of managing software that is built and implemented as a product, taking into account life-cycle considerations and generally with a wide audience. It is the discipline and business process which governs a product from its inception to the market or customer delivery and service in order to generate biggest possible value to the business

I contacted Mr. James C. Haggen the product manager at Dvalve Inc through Mr. Ram Kkshan Dhakad a System Administrator at the same firm. My telephonic conversation with him was based on answering the following questions:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

His roles and responsibilities in the company Company profile Products launched under him The companys client base and competitiors New product development process

INDEX

S. NO
1 2 3 4 5

PARTICULARS
COMPANY INTRODUCTION ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE PRODUCT MANAGER CLIENT BASE COMPETITION

PAGE NO.
4 6 7 8 9

PROMOTION

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7 8

PRODUCT LAUNCHED NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

11 12

CONCLUSION

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COMPANY INTRODUCTION

Dvalve is a company that provides an Internet marketplace for php Programmers wordpres Programmers and joomla Programmers and Mobile app freelancers and SMEs agencies to negotiate work contracts with businesses that hire independent professionals and agencies. It also provides online Search tools to help companies manage remote teams and results online. Dvalve Inc.is an online business entrepreneurs formed in 2007. Incorporated in the province of UK, and operating out of UK, INDIA, with offices in New Delhi (india and uk),and employees around the world. Dvalve allows businesses to post a project and access providers bidding on the project by reviewing qualifications, ratings, portfolios scores. Once a provider is selected, the employer can then manage people and projects. The company earns revenues by charging businesses a $10 fee for certified members, and by assessing a fee on payments from businesses to providers The company also allows freelancers to search the site for potential jobs and read through the requests for proposals and make bids. The largest categories of work on Dvalve plateforms are Information technology and Programming. Other categories of work include Web development, programming, creative design, multimedia production, writing, search engine optimization, content translations and research.

Dvalve " company for outsourcing value " Provides outsourcing marketplace having thousands of professional service providers from various business sectors. Professionals include skills of graphic design, programming, content writing, general administration, marketing, and more. The marketplace is open to place your requirements free of cost and get bids from professional providers. Dvalve Founded in 2010. Dvalve Running 3 Outsourcing Platforms, all sites managed and controlled By Dvalve

phpcodelance.com

hifreelancer.com

Mobileappfreelance.com

Dvalve offers the worlds largest, most comprehensive and fastest-growing online workplace. Businesses are no longer limited to local talent or traditional hiring cycles. With a thriving online workforce available on-demand, you can post a job for free, field applications in hours and rapidly hire the best person for the job, regardless of where in the world they happen to be.

Organization structure

P. S. Chauhan Chief Executive Officer B.E.(Computer Science & Engineering) D.E.B.M.(Enterprenurship & Business Management)-EDI

Ashley R Nathan Managing Director M.B.A

James C. Hagen Product Manager B.Sc.(Compter science & engineering) M.B.A

Product manager
Mr. James C. Hagen is the Product Manager at Dvalve, where he is responsible for overall product strategy and definition. He is originally from a small town in Kerela and done his B.Sc (computer science and engineering) and later his M.B.A from Delhi University. He started started working in Persistant India before taking up the position of Product Manager in Devalve Inc in the year 2009. To develop, sell and support a successful software product a business needs to understand its market, identify the opportunity, develop and market an appropriate piece of software. Hence the need for product management as a core business function in software companies. The product manager leads and manages one or several products from the inception to the phase-out in order to maximize business value. He/She works with marketing, sales, engineering, finance, quality, manufacturing and installation to make his/her products a business success. He/She has the business responsibility beyond a single project. He/She determines what to make and how to make it, and is accountable for the business success within an entire portfolio. He/She approves the roadmap and content and determines what to and how to innovate. He/She is responsible for the entire value chain of a product following the life cycle and asks: What do we keep, what do we involve, what do we stop?

Client BASE
For Enterprise Businesses A company searching to jump-start a project, augment their ability or just artlessly get things done, Dvalve's Plateforms is faster and added cost-effective than job boards, staffing firms and acceptable outsourcing. You name it and Dvalver's will bear results, generally with a flourish: from autograph code, crafting a business plan, designing your website, managing your circadian agenda and a thousand added projects.

For Freelancers or Small Companies If you accept abilities and aptitude and are gluttonous absolute plan online, Dvalve's plateforms offers admission to able clients, a basic abode and affirmed pay for abundant work. To advice accomplish carrying abundant after-effects easier for you,Dvalve Plateform's offers a apartment of accoutrement to advice accomplish your plan activity as able as possible.

Business Solutions Dvalve Provide Online Project Collaboration Tool's for manage and pay and hire online, Dvalve ProvideAdvisory Services on request to choose best Company for outsourcing your work.

Dvalves major client base is in USA and UK. Small enterprises who do not have the capabilities to do the work generally outsource their work to them.

COMPETITION

Devalve is a company which brings the demand and suppy on the same platform. It is a unique concept and does not have very strong competition. It is ranked 4th in its category even though it works on a small scale and is a relatively new company. Its biggest competitors are: 1. Freelancer.com 2. Freelanceronthego.com

Promotion
Devalve is a small scale company and still in its growth phase. They spend very little on their promotional activities. The following activities are done for their promotion: 1. Own Websites (Plateforms) 2. Social Media like Facebook and Twitter
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3. Ads on other business websites 4. Cold calling new and old customers

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Product launched
Mr. James Hagen joined Devalve Inc just 1 year after its inception. He has been part of almost all major work done in the organization. Some of the major work done in the company in the recent years under his guidance are listed below:

SISTECH ECOM APPLICATION Sistech a UK based company is one of the major clients of Devalve. They created an E- Commerce Application for them under the guidance of Mr. Hagen and his team of developers.

DIGITAL DOWN USER EXPERIENCE WEBSITE Mr. Hagen and his team recently created a user experience website for Digital Down a USA based new launched company.

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New product development process

Software product management covers all steps from inception of a product to its end of life. It consists of five major phases in the product life-cycle, namely: Strategy Concept Market Entry Development Evolution

Within these five phases it deals with the following aspects of a software product within a software and/or hardware company: Idea generation (e.g. on whiteboards) for a new software product, or for the next version of an existing product. Collection and prioritization of business and/or market requirements from prospects, customers of earlier versions of the product, domain experts, technology visionaries, market experts, products / solutions from competing vendors, etc. Crafting of Marketing Requirements Documents, or MRDs, which synthesize the requirements / needs of various stakeholders as outlined above. Using the MRD as a basis, come up with a product requirements document or PRD, as an input to the engineering team to build out the product. A PRD is generally not the same as a functional specification since it specifies what a product should do, but not how the product should do it. Frequently, a PRD can be a collection of UML Use Cases, UML Activity Diagrams, HTML mockups, etc. It can have other details such as the software development environment, and the software deployment environment (client-server, web, etc.). Deliver the PRD to the software engineering team, and manage conflicts between the business units, the sales teams, and the engineering teams, as it applies to the software products to be built out. Once the software development gets into build / release cycle, conduct acceptance tests. Deal with the delivery of the product. This can vary from demonstrating the product to customers using web-based conferencing tools, to building product demonstrations, to other placement and promotion tactics.

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Once the product is deployed at a customer site, solicit customer feedback, report software bugs, and pass these on back to engineering for subsequent build / release cycles, as the product stabilizes, and then matures. Perform competitive analysis as to how this product is behaving in the market, vis-a-vis other products catering to the same / similar customer segments. In the software space, this might require the product manager to take the opinion of analysts, who can come from name brand market research firms like IDC, Forrester Research, and Gartner Group. Solicit more features and benefits from the users of the software product, users of competitive products, and from analysts and craft / synthesize these requirements for subsequent product build / release cycles, and pass them on to the software engineering team.

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Conclusion

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The above diagram shows the work of Mr. James Hagen in a nutshell. The above tasks are not sequential, but can co-exist. For Product Managers to be efficient in the above tasks, they have to have both engineering and marketing skills. Hence, frequently, Silicon Valley firms prefer engineers who are also MBAs to do software product management.!

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