Social Media Lower The Risks Of Bad Requirements

To date, technology vendors have based product decisions on meager, skewed, and unreliable information, with predictable results. Schedule slips, user rejection, and other expensive problems are directly attributable to this highly flawed customer and market intelligence. Fortunately, social media — blogs, wikis, forums, social networking, RSS feeds, and so forth — can supplement traditional sources of product requirements, filling in many of the gaps. This data will not only allow you to create a more accurate overall picture, it will also expand that picture's scope, providing better insights about customers. Taking advantage of this opportunity to improve product requirements will require some changes to the product management and product marketing teams. Some investment may be necessary to ensure that product managers have the skills and resources needed to make these strategic improvements to requirements.