Implementing new technology in the product is a task that often stymies software companies. Because the change frequently goes to the very core of how the software works, and developers are on unfamiliar ground, there is lots of potential for your company to get stuck delaying the use of new technology year after year.

The key difficulty is that software is made out of technology, so changing the technology it uses - such as migrating to a new platform, transforming to object oriented code, or cracking open a product to work with many standard databases - is the equivalent of making a manufactured item out of new materials, say, going from wood to composite plastic.

If you decided to switch to building a product out of a new material, the engineers would be hesitant to launch into the initiative. The uncertainty of the outcome would make them unwilling to make a leap of faith, hoping they’d land safely on the other side.

This makes sense. Leaps of faith aren’t good engineering.

Yet there is a way to approach technology changes so that engineers can get started, keep moving, and break through to the other side. A Product Manager can serve a pivotal role in successfully implementing this approach, through requirements, so that the product takes the technical lead over the competition, and continues to widen the gap.

Read on for an explanation of this approach.