1. Case study – Developing a new interactive TV application
The company
The Weather Channel is Australia’s premier 24 hour weather channel offers up to the minute reports throughout
the day. A dedicated team of meteorologists, weather presenters provide weather analysis and environmental
news from around the nation and the globe.
The business challenge
In 2009 The Weather Channel embarked on a major product development, putting together a new interactive
weather service for digital subscribers providing them access to local and national weather information and
forecasts for their suburb at the touch of the red button on their remote. Weather Active offers localised weather
information including 10-day forecasts tailored to each subscriber’s local area and every other postcode of
Australia, morning, noon & night forecast for the day ahead.
Our efforts and the outcomes
brainmates provided critical Product Management and Project Management resource to assist The Weather
Channel achieve its goals of launching the new Weather Active service.
 Product requirements: brainmates reviewed the market to identify two target customer segments and
understand their specific user requirements. This information was used to produce product requirements
documentation and wireframes. brainmates worked with development teams to build the service.
 Project scope: brainmates reviewed research that had been conducted and put together high level
requirements that fed into development. Additionally, brainmates identified the costings to determine
ongoing operational costs following launch.
 Project management: brainmates provided project management support; ensuring co-ordination between
multiple stakeholders was carried out according to schedule and budgets. brainmates also supported The
Weather Channel by bringing in relevant staff at appropriate times such as designers and developers.
 Strategic advisory: brainmates provided a sounding board for The Weather Channel, giving an objective
perspective with insights for key decisions and issues as they arise.
brainmates ensured that the product was developed to customer requirements whilst simultaneously meeting the
strict criteria of the broadcast partners Foxtel and AUSTAR. The launch occurred smoothly and successfully with
no disruption or impact to existing members despite the scale of the project. The feedback from members has
been overwhelmingly positive. In particular the user-friendly site navigation and tailored content and functionality
provided to each community has been well received.
Testimonial
“brainmates have been incredible contributors to the project. I look forward to working with brainmates again on
future projects and highly recommend their work to other organisations that need Product Management resource”
Julian Delany, General Manager, The Weather Channel
www.brainmates.com.au +61 (02) 9232 8147