PRODUCT MANAGEMENT - C3 SOFTWORKS
Taking a SaaS Product from 1.0 to 2.0
C3's training games, written in Flash, were in the process of being rebuilt. When Adobe announced Flash's end-of-life, customers and stakeholders were worried. C3 responded with a clear plan to calm fears and introduced tools to ease the transition.
Stakeholder Relations | User Research | Task Analysis | Roadmap Prioritization
Background
C3 Softworks' products, introduced in 2008, transformed bland training material into live, interactive games that increase learner engagement and retention. C3 attracted clients like 3M, Boston Scientific, AT&T, and Medtronic. The games were originally written in Flash, which allowed for game-show like visual graphics.
C3's Flash-based "Quiz Show" game, coded in 2008.
Over the years C3 added multiple games and products to the lineup, but most clients preferred the original Flash-based games.
In 2018, after managing technical support for 18 months, I met with the president to express the liability of relying on Flash, and to explain the benefits of redesigning our products to reduce the technical debt of our aging tech stack. Not only did he listen, he chose me to coordinate the project.
The Problem
Our technical debt was stifling: 90% of development time was spent "keeping the lights on" maintaining the aging technology stack. Even after bringing an additional developer aboard to help recode the original games, progress was slower than I had hoped.
Then in July of 2019, Google's Chrome browser began disabling Flash content by default, and announced it would end support altogether by late 2020. Long time clients began calling, scared how this would affect their training courses. The bill for our technical debt was coming due.
Chrome's "Disable Flash" Warning from 2019.
The Users
Stakeholders - C3's Leadership
Must balance operational needs with long term goals, and stay within budget. A "bank run" of annual customers demanding money back would be a disaster.
-
Care deeply about employees
-
Determined to not borrow money
Customers - Corporate Trainers
Trainers and teachers were using our games in ongoing training. Any curriculum disruption could negatively impact their students.
-
Want to do well for learners
-
Working long days, no extra time
-
Feeling stressed
My Impact
By staying in contact with our clients and internal teams, and listening to their needs and concerns, the path forward was clear.
#1 Validated customer concern and communicated our plan
After speaking with concerned customers and internal stakeholders, I helped author a series of communications to all customers that 1) addressed the situation 2) validated their concerns 3) communicated our plans, and 4) relayed how we would follow up throughout the process.
#2 Communicated customer needs and outcomes
I met with each department to build a shared understanding of the challenges each team member faced. To keep our efforts customer-focused and impactful, I spoke with customers weekly, at times daily, triaging their bleeding edge pains and needs and communicating them with the team. This led us to build features that upconverted existing games to the new format automatically, but on the client's timeframe, even allowing clients to test out the new system before making the jump.
#3 Optimized roadmap for learning and key outcomes
With my lead engineer, we analyzed customer usage patterns and learned that 3 out of 11 games generated 80% of our customer's current usage. This informed our decision to release new games individually, and for the first time, as a beta to a limited (and excited) group of 30 clients. The learnings from this first beta helped improve the overall experience and adoption rate of all of the games.
Methods and Skills
Stakeholder and Customer Relations
I initiated a process of regular communication for all customers, both to inform and open pathways for feedback. We presented our progress regularly to stakeholders and key customers, course correcting as needed.
User Research
I interviewed engineers, customers and leadership to gather feedback and perspective. I listened to the challenges each group faced and analyzed how certain decisions or actions would impact each group.
Task Analysis
I compared task flows for the current products to the anticipated flows for the new product, which helped us understand the transition impact on customers and internal users. In collaboration with engineers, I evaluated our systems and capabilities concerning each groups’ needs, identifying areas and tasks for which we didn't yet have great solutions.
Adding a simple progress tracker helped customers complete the game-build process faster, and with a higher rate of success.
Roadmap Prioritization
I led a cross-functional team to determine deliverables and deadlines, and collaborated with engineering to create a "just-in-time" development roadmap.
Results
By the time Flash went offline in December 2020, our product team completed the end-to-end transformation of our game delivery platform, and rebuilt 4 of the 8 Flash games. The improved platform and updated suite of games achieved a near 100% adoption rate for existing clients.
We addressed 10 years of technical debt, reducing the engineering bandwidth spent on system maintenance from 90% down to 40%.
Because all game data was now stored in a single format, any questions a client had written were preserved in their "question library", to be reused as needed in any current or future games.