By Tej Ravindra

In February’s SVPMA monthly meeting, Mike Tschudy shared his experience and insights on developing SAAS solutions from a scratch. Three key takeaways were: a design thinking based approach to new product development, quick prototyping and team development for customer focused solutions. 

DESIGN THINKING APPROACH TO PRODUCT MANAGEMENT:

The focus of this talk was the new product development process that was used to develop the SAAS solutions at SAP.  Mike emphasized 4 principles of this process:

1. Empathy for people

2. Interdisciplinary teams

3. Shared Vision

4. Iterative build cycles

This methodology is people and team centric. Team building is the most important thing.  An example: At the start of the project, invest time in getting everyone on the team to share some background on their interests and experiences.  You learn all sorts of things. There are a lot of people hiding behind their roles and have passion and excitement.  Often teams are in a hurry to execute. Different teams are measured on competing priorities and the end result can often be a product that may only be marginally successful although each specialized team met their specific goals.

Customer centricity and constantly gathering feedback on your prototypes helps the product evolve fast and in the relevant direction.  Connect with the people you build products for. Engineers have to be part of the conversation right from the beginning. Get engineers and designers engaged on the customer problem you are trying to solve from day 1.

Example: The team members built out scenarios and went through real data. Engineers, product managers & designers story boarded out their product requirement documents. Customer stories, backlog definitions and storyboarding were used to define what was being solved. Having visual cues on what’s being solved help people get on the same page really fast. Turned out that this scenario was not right for SAAS and the team was able to move in a different direction.

Prototyping and building up front without too many months of time investment. Organizational design is a key factor in facilitating this. Service organizations with specialized departments for each functional area are not best set up to do this. The product team needs to own the resources and the function to stay agile. Every person on the team needs an understanding of the customer’s context and pain points.

For SAP, a company that was focused on enterprise solutions,  building a SAAS solution was a fundamental change in the product context, the customer they were building for and the speed at which they could execute. This paradigm shift for new product development demands an agile and design based product management approach.

Lessons Learned:

• No employees, only true believers: Clearly state what the product values are and how they will influence decisions. People with full buy-in need to be handpicked.
• Start small… Keep the team size minimal. Work on specific products or cross-topics with dedicated teams of ten (max. 2)
• Team is everything… Break the role SLA and get people to share their talents and competencies openly, then decide on role responsibilities
• Buy in… Clearly line out our approach at the beginning of a project and get buy in from the stakeholders. No shortcuts!
• Common MBOs… Everyone needs to know what they are working for. Its bureaucratic but it makes a difference
• Get out of the building and validate… This builds confidence and reduces ambiguity

Tej Ravindra is a Sr. Product Manager at eBay. In her previous roles, she has led product management for SAAS and B2B software. Her interest areas include technology & business strategy, mobile applications & data analysis to drive better business decisions.

Choosing the right product management leader might mean success or failure for your startup. How to find great ones?

by Tien Anh Nguyen, Senior Associate at OpenView Venture Partners, an expansion-stage venture capital fund in Boston

In our portfolio companies of expansion stage software companies, the product management process is a critical function because it affects how successfully a company can evolve in its rapid trajectory from a startup to an established player in the market. Along this evolution, the company has to be constantly evolving its whole product experience to adapt to changing customer needs and to the changing market segments. The ability of the product management organization to guide and execute this process both strategically and operationally plays a large role in the company’s success or failure in the market.

For example, many startups fall into the classic trap (or chasm) after they have saturated the early adopter market with their cool new products. The company has benefited from its understanding of these early adopters. However, in order to break into the mainstream segments, the “cool” new product has to be reinvented, repurposed, or repackaged in a very different way from how it was done before. This responsibility falls mostly on the product managers or product marketers, who will have to perform additional market research and numerous product tests to guide the product’s evolution.

To be sure, in order to build a great product management function, one needs great product managers. In some cases, the product managers are needed to fill the gap in an organization; in other cases, the product managers are hired when it becomes clear that the chief technical leader (VP of Engineering or CTO) can no longer manage both Product Management and Product Development.

So who would make a great product manager? What essential skills or personal traits would a great product manager possess? Is there a special requirement for product managers in companies with agile product development?

I did some online research to see what others have written on these topics and found a number of great articles. They are, just to list a few:

1. Assessing one’s product management skill http://productmanagementtips.com/2010/05/23/product-management-career/

2. Judgment – #1 skill that a Product Manager Needs http://blog.openviewpartners.com/keyword/product-management-process/

3. What to look for in a product manager http://productmanagementtips.com/2007/07/26/what-to-look-for-in-a-product-manager/

4. Eleven skills for product managers to win over any situation http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/quality-assurance/eleven-skills-for-product-manager-to-win-over-any-situation/

5. Seven traits of a successful product manager http://michael.hightechproductmanagement.com/2006/12/seven_traits_of_successful_pro.html

These are great resources, and they form a really comprehensive set of skills and traits that will help a product manager succeed. However, if I were to really narrow down 3 things that matter the most from my own personal experience, I would list the following:

- Flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing situations and inputs: As we have noted, product management is so important because it drives the company’s evolution. Product managers have to espouse constant improvement with remarkable flexibility. They also need to be ready to accept new circumstances and embrace them, turning adversities into opportunities.

- Passion to build something great: because “product” is in their title. Without the passion to create something new that is valuable, product managers will not find satisfaction in their work, and will not be successful.

- People skills to facilitate, negotiate and persuade stakeholders: Product managers sit in the unique nexus of sales, marketing, development and corporate strategy. They have to be effective at building consensus, bringing divergent ideas together, and be persuasive enough to convince disparate groups of stakeholders to agree to their product vision.

While technical skills and methodologies can be learned over time, these are three characteristics that are non-technical, non-domain specific, and yet are the most important in the success of a product manager. Do you agree?

Tien Anh Nguyen is a Senior Associate at OpenView Venture Partners and leads the Research and Analytics team at OpenView Labs. He focuses on market and product strategy engagements in areas such as target segmentation, marketing operations management and Go to Market strategy development with portfolio companies and investment prospects.

By Cindy F. Solomon

Glen Lipka is the Vice President of User Experience at Marketo where he was the first non-founder employee that ran product management and UX for several years of the company’s development. Prior to Marketo, Glen was a Senior UI Designer at Intuit, Director of User Experience at Adchemy and started his career running a thirty-person web development company in NYC during the Internet bubble. Glen has been a pioneer in websites and web applications for over 15 years, pushing the envelope in interactivity on public facing websites to Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for businesses.  He speaks frequently on all aspects of building great products on the web, including NYU Stern School of Business and Stanford University.

Lipka kicked-off his talk acknowledging that most companies do not have a strong UX department and most products do not have a pleasant user experience.  His definition of user experience, which he repeated several times during the presentation is; “User experience, specifically “design” is just a decision.”  He suggested that who makes the decisions is not necessarily a specific designer, but rather an accumulation of all the decisions that got made by everyone in the company.

There is decision in any design process and who is making these decisions really matters, it might be engineering people, an end-user, a manager or a researcher, etc. but at the end of the day, according to Lipka, the designer is the one who writes the PRD (Product Document Requirements). The UX designer and the Product Manager roles might overlap. At Marketo, UX sits in the middle of engineering in order to iterate with a lot of people.  Design doesn’t stop when the product is handed off to engineering, rather it continues until the product ships.  PMs should be a dedicated position that works actively with marketing to provide comprehensive MRDs (Marketing Requirement Documents) that include the competitive landscape, packaging, go to market strategy and research. Lipka suggested that an ideal structure of the team is flat so that everyone is working as peers together to collaborate with specific responsibilities. The Product Manager must determine “What is the real problem we are trying to solve.”

Key Takeaways from Lipka’s visual presentation:

Get a direct interaction with users, learn from them, (e.g. make up-front calls), understand their problems, what they are trying to achieve, why they didn’t choose your product, etc. but don’t let them define the actual requirements, people are terrible about their own perception… If you ask customers, they will tell you answers to your questions – but they don’t know why they operate in certain ways.  It’s better to observe customers in their natural habitats to see what they do. Let users teach you their job and show you how they use the product in their own world.

Accept the fact that people don’t read – they skim at best. The fewer words in your instructions, the better.  Enable people to use the product and learn directly from hands on experience. Pay attention to important distinctions to remove frictions in the product that frustrate the user from using the product with ease.  Respect the “Halloween principle” where there is an irregular, but repeatable interruption by doorbell. Build in reinforcement of where users left off within the product so they can easily return without requiring additional effort.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” visual PRDs not only explain complex ideas or UI concepts, but also help to convey ergonomic features which are difficult to describe with words yet critical for the user experience (e.g. moving / manipulating objects on a page)

Remove blockers. Address the overall user experience, from product design to support and observe what happens in worse case scenarios when things go wrong and take that information in to the total experience. – i.e. The way to handle things that go wrong is more important than the way to handle things when they go right.Over-invest in support. The reality is that in order to make things better, they might have to get worse first.  Product Managers must be the leaders to enable this process, to have the vision for how much better it will be if the deconstruction process can proceed. 

Don’t bend users. Don’t make users bend to our ways of doing things.  There are only so many ways to do something, so give users the options to do it their own way and they will think it is customized to their specific work process.  He used the example of how Marketo changed a flowchart by analyzing a kinetic gesture to make using the product fun – instead of clicking and pointing, they changed it to grabbing and dropping, which was unique amongst competitive products within a business application.

Consistency is better. Don’t always optimize for what’s perfect.  Stay consistent so there is less to learn. He cited examples of scenarios where details were left out in order to ship in time and those details were the ones people loved. Because users don’t have the same perspective as the designers, small improvements are often perceived as better than one big one in their direct experience – they have no idea how much work is required to produce either improvement and they don’t care.

Everyone responds to fun – build fun stuff into your B2B product, user experience and content messaging. Corporate people are desperate to be treated like human beings and if it’s an authentic voice, they will respond to it.  How much more will they use a product that enables their required work to be accomplished in a more enjoyable way?

Cindy F. Solomon is Founder of the Global Product Management Talk on Twitter, host of Tools of the Trade and Product Camp Radio, and creator of the ProdMgmtTalk mobile application. You are welcomed to join the weekly #prodmgmttalk http://www.prodmgmttalk.com

by Greg Geracie

Ask virtually any person inside your organization what the value of product management is and you’re likely to get a series of different answers or even quizzical looks. This is ironic, because product management is critical to company success. Although no one inside theorganization wants to eliminate product management, few people can succinctly describe its value to the organization.

This begs the question, why is it so difficult for people to understand and communicate product management’s value?

The main contributor to this confusion can be traced to the lack of a body of knowledge to lay the cornerstone of the profession. Without industry-wide clarity on the profession’s core language, process groups, and knowledge areas, it’s easy to understand why product managers and extended team members struggle to describe product management’score value proposition.

Another part of the problem is the way the product management profession chooses to illustrate the value of the function. The traditional — and commonly accepted — view of product management typically places the product management function at the center of a daisy wheel, the hub. Radiating from the hub is a series of circles. Each circle represents a different function — sales, marketing, and operations to name few. The product management hub is connected to the spokes by a series of double-sided arrows. These arrows represent two-way communication between product management and the other company functions.

The hub and spoke model highlights two distinct but interconnected aspects of product management. The first is product management’s primary function to ensure appropriate levels of communication between the various functional spokes, illustrated by the arrows in the diagram. The second aspect highlighted by this model is product management’s active work coordinating all of a company’s various functions in pursuit of their product objectives. This is illustrated by the neat arrangement of the surrounding circles.

The implied value proposition of this model is its emphasis on product management’s role in ensuring functional alignment and effective communication in pursuit of a company’s product goals. No one would argue that functional alignment and coordinated communication is important to the success of a product management organization, but this model only marginally touches on product management’s true value to the organization.

The true value of product management — and what makes it so critical to company success — is the function’s unique focus on creating and sustaining value throughout the entire product life cycle. This role in the organization clearly differentiates product management from all other functions. For instance, project managers focus on successfully managing projects to completion across one or more stages of a product’s evolution throughout the life cycle. Business analysts are actively engaged in the upfront analysis of business problems, requirements gathering, and documentation. Only the product management organization is responsible for optimizing product performance throughout the entire life cycle of a product — from conception to retirement.

Perhaps a better way to think about product management and its critical role in ensuring organizational success is to envision three pillars. These three pillars make up the entirety of the organization. The first pillar is Operations. The operational pillar encompasses the executive leadership team, shared services such as finance and human resources, and the remaining staff who spend most their time ensuring that the organization runs smoothly. This operational group generally makes up the smallest percentage of the organization’s total head count.

The second pillar is the Value Creation Team. This pillar includes all the individuals in the organization who contribute to creating and sustaining value. This is achieved by producing new products, enhancing existing ones, or simply supporting the value that has already been created.

Depending on the size of the organization, a value creation team will be led by one or more product managers that are held accountable for achieving the company’s product objectives. Although product managers are responsible for achievingresults, no product manager can do it alone. Effective product managers work closely with cross-functional product team members from across theorganization. These include project managers, business analysts, engineers, quality assurance staff, research and development personnel, and customer support workers. The Value Creation Team pillar usually makes up the largest percentage of employees on a head-count basis.

The third pillar is the Revenue Capture Team. This team includes most of the marketing organization that supports the activities of the sales organization. These activities include lead generation, collateral development, and outbound marketing programs. The Revenue Capture Team also includes the entire the sales organization, whose mission is to contractually capture the revenue that results from the value of the products.

When viewed from the perspective of the three pillars, product management’s value becomes clear. The product management organization acts as the focal point for value creating and sustaining activities.

Communication and alignment are important to product management’s success, but they’re secondary to product management’s real mission — creating and sustaining value throughout the entire product life
cycle. This role fully differentiates product management from all the other business functions and demonstrates why product management is so critical to company success.

Greg is the President of Actuation Consulting, a world-class provider of product management training courses and advisory services to some of the nation’s most well-known organizations. He is also the author of the global best seller Take Charge Product Management and the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge.

by Nate Zou

Mike Harding is an entrepreneur; mixing business and technology to solve hard problems. Over his 25-year career, Harding has founded seven startups and has had four successful exits. Two of these were dismal failures, for which Mike bears complete responsibility. He indicates that these failures represent at their worst “the most expensive business school in the world” and at their best “the most valuable learning experience about business, technology, and self.” The remaining startup is still active, re.vu (pronounced review) – it is the cure for the common resume.

In between startups, Mike held executive leadership positions with Sun Microsystems, SAP, Charles Schwab & Co, and the US Department of Defense. His day job is leading the team that designs the products and programs to create a thriving software developer community for Juniper Networks.

Mike is an autodidact. His education consists of varied work experience, supplemented by reading (over 7,000 books), professional training (in his various roles), and a short (unsatisfactory) stint at a public university.

Mike’s presentation gave examples of past failed products with the common technics used to build them. And when almost everyone in the room felt the desperation, he showed us the new ways and examples of building successful products. He ended the presentation by sharing his multiple “night job” product build experiences. His rich content so totally engaged attendees that the meeting time just flew by.

With couple of failed products, Mike started his presentation by looking back with us of those horrible products people made before (including the famous color.com). To answer why these products failed, Mike discussed about the traditional tools, processes and assumptions we use when we build a product. For process, we always follow the collecting marketing requirement->product definition->product development->ship process. Then we talked to customers to collect customer feedback, did market research to make market size assumptions, and ran benchmark testing. And at the end, no matter how hard people try, we still build lots of products that failed.

So what should we do or what can we do to build a successful product? Mike shows us new ways to build a successful product, again, with examples of the best products on the market.

The methods are simple: 1. Image the best product in your mind, 2. Design as a product 3. Consider Self as a customer

Above methods are not that complicated, but few people can do it right. Mike tells us the key point is if you can think in a different perspective. A good example is: when most companies (like JetBlue) are focusing on developing a product/service to improve people’s travel experience, some companies are fixing the problem in a different perspective. They build conference software to help customers have business meeting online and avoid their travel. So instead of investing countless time and efforts into make the existing product/service a little bit better, people are trying to solve things in a different way. They do not try to improve current flying experience of customers but avoid traveling by achieving their goals within their office.

To show us how to design as a product, Mike also offered a good example, a hotel called Ace. The hotel owner designs their hotel rooms in all different styles. The Ace hotel’s customers are people who love traveling and want to experience different life style. So the hotel owner put lots of effort into designing their hotel. Every room has its unique design to offer their customers the best experience. Owners also keep updating the decor to make their hotel rooms to be fresh.  Ace hotel got huge success by their amazing room design and is beloved by their customers

And at the very end, Mike shared his own story of his “side project” to demonstrate the “self as a customer project”. Self as a customer means sometimes you have some problem need to be solved in your own life and you may not be able to find a good product or service to help you solve it. Therefore, in order to fix it, you have no choice but to build something by yourself. Then triggered by this idea, the service/product is promoted to millions of people who face the same problem in their daily life and had a great success. Mike’s side project is exactly a “self as a customer project” example. When Mike tried to update his resume, he found all existing resume templates are plain. So he asked his friend to make his resume with some visual effects. By doing this together, his friends and he found it might be a good idea to turn this project into a product/online service for everyone. Therefore, people who have the same requirement can solve the problem with the service. And now we have this http://re.vu/and we all love it.

Chen Zou is a product manager at Foxit Corporation. In his previous roles, he has led product management for SaaS and Mobile Software Products. His interest areas include mobile applications & SaaS products and services.

by Dan Galatin

Anthony Yung, Group Manager of Product Management at Intel, presented at the November 2^nd meeting of the SVPMA.  Mr. Yung discussed the history of mobile computing, major milestones over the years, and some of the lessons learned from notable product successes and failures.  Although he focused his analysis on mobile computing, many of the themes he introduced naturally apply to other quickly-evolving sectors as well.

Mr. Yung demonstrated the usefulness of taking a “big history” approach in understanding the development of mobile computing over the decades.  In this approach, one identifies major thresholds that represent discrete, crucial advances in the field.  Over the long term, these include advances such as the first HP pocket calculator, the first portable computer from Osborne, and the first PDA from Palm, as well as more recent products such as the iPhone and iPad.

When television was first introduced, experiencing it as a family in the living room was similar in many ways to listening to the radio, albeit with a visual component.  Likewise, not all new classes of mobile computing devices delivered a radically different experience from what had come before.  For example, using the Osborne was fundamentally the same experience as using a desktop PC.  Talking on the first Motorola cell phone in the early 1980s was the much the same as using a land line.  These are examples of mobile devices that delivered the same basic experience as their non-mobile analogues; with additional compromises to boot (e.g. small screen size and limited talk time, respectively).

There are several approaches that Mr. Yung argued could be used to deliver a better experience for customers.  These include mitigating or eliminating compromises; borrowing functionality from other classes of devices (such as video from TV or GPS from portal navigation devices); adding brand-new functionality (e.g. wireless connectivity in portal computers); and evolving or revolutionizing existing classes of devices in order to take them in a new direction.

Mr. Yung then presented a couple of case studies of mobile computing devices: the Apple Newton and the original iPhone.  He led a discussion in which the devices were analyzed across the dimensions of baseline experience; compromises that are mitigated or eliminated; functionality added from other types of devices; new functionality; and platform evolution.  It was interesting to observe that the original iPhone ad featured an incoming phone call at the end of the spot, almost as an afterthought; the baseline functionality was a given, and more emphasis was placed on the evolution from the iPod.  Finally, Mr. Yung demonstrated how to use this framework to consider possibilities for future mobile computing devices by presenting videos of types of devices that are not yet on the market.

In summary, Mr. Yung reiterated that mobile devices are based on a previous baseline experience, with necessary compromises.  Ultimately, the success of mobile devices depends on delivering a better, broader experience than what came before, as well as timing the market correctly.

Dan Galatin has 19 years combined experience in product management and software engineering.  He is currently a Senior Product Manager at Keynote Systems and can be contacted at dgalatin@yahoo.com.

by Tej Ravindra

Etay Gafni, an experienced mobile app consultant and owner of Bright Act LLC, addressed the whys and hows of Mobile Product planning and product management for mobile devices.

In addition to the best practices of product management, If you are planning product for a mobile device, take into account the speed of change in mobile technology, the large number of variations of the hardware: Screen sizes, inputs, CPU, memory and the different OS.

While most companies consider going into the mobile space as a no brainer, it is important to stop and ask 2 important questions:

1. Why are we going mobile? The answer to this will be different depending on the domain you are in and some areas lend themselves better to mobile than others. For example: A complex ERP software with hundreds of workflows may not be the best fit to start your move to mobile.
2. How are we going to go mobile?

When you have decided to go ahead with your mobile product, make sure you are extremely clear on:

1. Who is going to buy the product?
2. How are you going to configure the product?
3. What does your customer use now?
4. Customer personas and user stories

To further your idea, you will need to create buy in within your organization. Know your internal audience and your promoters & detractors. To do your homework, find out :

1. Who initiated the product? ( marketing, dev , sales)
2. Who is supporting the product
3. What are the internal alternatives?
4. What are the internal metric to define success .Find out what it is.
5. Network  within your organization to find out if there are similar efforts already 

Take a lesson from the hardware industry….Product managers in mobile should take the role of integrators who should create an experience.

Once you have the buy in for your product, make sure you prototype and get feedback early. In other words, Fail small, fail often, fail cheap. The cost of changing requirements earlier in the product development cycle is significantly cheaper and you greatly increase your product’s chances of success.  Sharing your prototype with your target audience will help you prioritize and validate your planned feature set.  This will enable you to iterate rapidly and improve your product’s chances of being very successful.

Tej Ravindra is a Sr.Product Manager at eBay. In her previous roles, she has led product management for SAAS and B2B software. Her interest areas include technology & business strategy, mobile applications & data analysis to drive better business decisions.

Companies often struggle to maintain a good balance between their market activities and their product development efforts. The fact is – most new products are not ready for prime time. This circumstance leads to products that deliver less value than anticipated or fail altogether. This inability of organizations to effectively bring products to market often creates a significant drag on companies’ ability to innovate and compete in today’s rapidly changing marketplaces.

There are a significant number of reasons why it’s so challenging to effectively bring products to market. Some are external, such as changing market conditions or shifting customer needs. However, many problems result from internal challenges such as overstretched contributors, the wrong mix of skills, poorly understood processes, and misalignment between the core team members in the value creation process.

Professions such as business analysis and project management have boundaries and roles that are well understood. Both have their bodies of knowledge, process groups, and foundational knowledge areas. In contrast and ironically, the product management profession spans 70 years but has yet to fully codify its body of knowledge. The resulting lack of clarity on the responsibilities and boundaries of a product manager often contributes to many of the internal inefficiencies and missed opportunities we see within today’s organizations.
There is often tremendous internal confusion regarding the role, span, and scope of a product manager. Ambiguity in the responsibilities of this role leads to dissonance and tension as the key stakeholders in the value creation process – project managers, business analysts, and lead engineers – struggle to understand what to expect from product management. Given the profession’s historical fragmentation and lack of a solidified standard, where does one look? What are the boundaries of the role and how can we work together more effectively?

Perhaps the best way to start is by defining the role of a product manager and illustrating the product management life cycle. Product managers are responsible for creating and sustaining value throughout the entire life cycle of a product. The focus on creating and sustaining value is what makes product management unique.

This product management life cycle model is the property of The Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM)©.

The product management life cycle is composed of both stages and phases that chart the course of a product from its conception, the Conceive phase, to its ultimate withdrawal in the Retire phase. The stages and phases are concurrent activities. This framework is universal; it applies equally well to products or services.

 Now that we’ve defined the role of a product manager and illustrated the life cycle, we can drill down a bit further and examine why business analysts and product managers are perfect partners.
Effective product managers spend a significant amount of time in the market gathering requirements, monitoring trends, examining competitive activity, and evangelizing their product. Product managers are also expected to distill market information into actionable requirements and channel these requirements to the team developing the product. A product manager’s job increases in complexity as the organization grows. Product managers get stretched thinner and thinner by the ever-increasing volume of internal and external demands.

When this happens, product managers naturally turn their efforts toward either market-facing or product development activities. Although product managers are skilled at both, they typically prefer one over the other and allocate their time accordingly. Many pick market-facing activities. This bias toward one or the other, and the demands that company growth place on a product manager, ultimately causes the organization to feel the need to add a business analyst, or someone with similar skills, to the team. The new team member is tasked with helping facilitate, communicate, analyze, and recommend business solutions as well as translating high-level requirements created by the product manager into implementable requirements. This need for translation necessitates a collaborative partnership between a product manager and business analyst.

The pairing of a strong business analyst with a market-facing product manager can result in a perfect partnership. The product manager assumes responsibility for guiding the product successfully through its life cycle and interfacing with the market. In concert with the product manager, the business analyst drives the effort to turn high-level market requirements into requirements that are implementable within the constraints and capabilities of the organization. Factors such as people, processes, and technology are all key considerations for success.

This division of labor leads to improved harmony with the principles on the core team of product managers, project managers, business analysts, and lead engineers. Most importantly, it places the right people in the right roles to create value for the organization, customers, and stakeholders.

The reality is that product managers are often faced with the nearly impossible challenge of spanning the market and the multitude of development activities. And like project managers who steer complex and interdependent initiatives, product managers who want to succeed must rely heavily on influence and shared organizational objectives while interfacing with customers and coordinating the activities of a myriad of internal stakeholders. Many product managers get stretched to the breaking point trying to be jacks of all trades and end up struggling against unrealistic expectations.
By pairing business analysts with product managers at key points throughout the life cycle of a product’s development, organizations can optimize bandwidth, expertise, and interest-related challenges that allow both roles to do what they do best – create value.

Greg Geracie is the President of Actuation Consulting, a world-class provider of product management training courses and advisory services to some of the nation’s most well known organizations. Greg is also the author of the global best seller Take Charge Product Management and the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge.

David Heidt is a Managing Partner at Enterprise Agility, a worldwide leader in the areas of business architecture, process, rules, requirements, and legacy modernization. David is also Vice President of Communications for the IIBA Chicagoland Chapter and a contributor to The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge.

with Ron Brown CEO of United Keys

Ron Brown, patent holder, corporate spokesperson and author of the book, Anticipate, The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success, on promoting creativity and innovation at the team level, presented at the September 7^th meeting of SVPMA.

Ron’s career spans three industries. One third of his career was in the packaged goods advertising industry where he learned principles of professional creative problem solving. The second third he spent in high-tech hardware and software companies, where he learned about supply chains and distribution channels. One third has been within Silicon Valley internet startups. His career includes experience at Nestle, international ad agencies J. Walter Thompson and BBDO. At JWT, Brown managed the HP computers and printers businesses. As VP Corporate Marketing at Wyse Technology, he gained global channels, distribution, and corporate marketing experience. As president at eFax.com, he built one of the fastest growing consumer internet sites.  

Brown said that the failure rate for new product entries has been increasing. Whereas 50 years ago, most new products were successful, twenty years ago the failure rate was 50%, while it is 70% in today’s business environment. He set out to discover what knowledge leading companies have about new product innovation that distinguishes them from their industry peers. He started by digging through 60 years of industry research about product success, then he interviewed developers and managers from a wide range of companies.  

Brown defines “leading companies” as those that generate more than twice the revenue from new products compared to their industry peers. Specifically, the successful companies generate 49% of sales from new products compared to 22% of sales from new products in other companies. They must always have a fresh flow of “new” products in new categories at any given time. In contrast, most companies lose a tremendous amount of time and money on internal costs that result in poor moral and failed products while their competitors get stronger.  

The successful companies spend much more time figuring out how to be more innovative than the unsuccessful ones, because they recognize that innovation is key to winning in the market. Small development teams must have freedom and resources to be effective. Brown discovered that engineers operating from the Agile manifesto talk to customers regularly, although they may not recognize that customers are fickle and that product management skills are necessary to determine how to convert customer input into features, explicit product descriptions and strategic positioning.  

Brown isolated 10 core strategies of leading companies that are not readily apparent, including the ability to anticipate what customers want and deliver new products by thinking like customers and understanding human behavior and motivation.

1. Leading companies make entrepreneurial teams the focal point of their strategy.  
A major obstacle to innovation is the entrenchment of linear development processes such as Waterfall that result in late stage rework with associated risks. The benefits of Agile are reduced risk, increased product/market fit, and decreased time to market.

Brown defines Agile teams as
– small cross-functional teams
– that are self-regulating and
– self-governing, and are
– empowered to make strategic decisions

2. Leading companies push decision making to the edges of the organization close to customers.  
The higher up in the organizational chart of the manager charged with decision making power, the less awareness they have of the day to day issues, patterns of problems, and understanding of the end users’ needs, wants and pains.

3. Leading companies employ development techniques tailored for the “fuzzy” front end.
Early stages of a development cycle are referred to as the “fuzzy” front end. This is the phase when the company is first conceiving and considering an opportunity before determining if it is worth developing. The creative development process takes an idea and works it into a tangible product. However, manufacturing control processes don’t apply to creative thinking. Total Quality Management (TQM) or statistically based manufacturing techniques developed by W. Edwards Deming are not conducive to pre-revenue activities. Even Six Sigma, although flexible, doesn’t translate well when attempting to formulate an idea properly. Development and manufacturing don’t occur on the same continuum, although they are often depicted visually as if they have the same characteristics and implementation strategy. Development formulates an idea and implements, while manufacturing replicates and scales – each requires unique skill sets, orientations and management technique.

4. Leading companies commit to customer immersion and problem detection techniques.
Seven out of ten product failures result from poor customer input procedures. Customers are not rational and buyers may not know why they buy. Brown cited a 2008 Microsoft commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld going to live with “average” people in their homes. When Gates asked Jerry why they were doing it, Seinfeld suggested that they needed to understand what it was like to be a regular person, since they were too removed. This is a literal example of customer immersion, which came from social anthropology and ethnography. Living with customers provides insights into the customer moment to moment experience in their own environment. Direct observation provides insights into customer motivation, pain and behavior.  Once you start thinking like a customer, you can anticipate what they want which provides a strong competitive advantage. VCs ask whether startups are an aspirin or a vitamin. An aspirin kills pain while a vitamin prevents pain. Leading companies solve important problems exclusively by finding the screaming baby and urgently solving the problem.

5. Leading companies develop creative problem solving skills at all levels.
Brown cited a study that showed that projects were nine times more productive and quicker to market if managers had proven high levels of creativity as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator creativity index. Everyone, regardless of inherent tendencies, can be trained in creative thinking skills which improve with practice.

6. Leading companies generate meaningful ideas from the entire value chain.
A supply chain includes the network of vendors required to bring the product to market. Each component in the supply chain has an associated cost which must be kept as low as possible for financial accountability. In order to differentiate, marketing recognizes that each component can be positioned as a source of value to the customer. Porter defined this perspective as the value chain. Leading companies reinforce brand trust at every opportunity in the value chain even bringing suppliers into the action as early as possible to identify potential for innovation.  Proctor and Gamble has a program called “Connect and Develop” which looks outside the company to discover at least 50% of new product concepts. McDonalds added menu items such as the BigMac and Egg McMuffin from franchisee suggestions.

7. Leading companies emphasize superior implementation throughout the organization.
Taking a concept from an idea into a finished project requires an ability to implement well in an elegant way. Innovation is a process, not a chance endeavor, which requires structure. The structure of innovation is comprised of identifying the idea, developing the strategic direction that the idea should be taken in, and executing on that strategy.  Strategy turns an idea into an invention, providing it with form and function.  Execution turns the invention into a product that customers can purchase and utilize. Implementation equals strategy plus execution.

8. Leading companies utilize business models for strategic planning.
Brown referenced management writer Joan Magretta, as the guru of business models. She defined a business model as “the story that explains how an enterprise works.” Peter Drucker described the business model as the answer to the questions: Who is your customer, what do customers value, and how do you deliver value at an appropriate cost?

Making money happens one transaction at a time. A business model for a new product is a strategic document focused on transaction level value creation. A transaction is an exchange of value between the company and the customer. A product is a vehicle for a transaction. The dynamics of the business transaction between the company and the customer must be understood and analyzed in order to be enhanced and refined. This focus on transactions is referred to as “unit economics” since it is concerned with value creation rather than production costs. Business models are also designed to generate stories, since stories are what customers buy and fuel word of mouth communications. Business models fail when the narrative isn’t believable and when the numbers don’t add up.

9. Leading companies recognize the importance of precise messaging.
Differentiation is the tip of the arrow and the value proposition seals the deal. The positioning presentation has to be razor sharp and repeated often.  The USP is the unique selling proposition which describes the qualities unique to the product in a tangible way that differentiates it from the competition and motivates a large audience to take action. It must be tangible so the audience can experience the benefit through their senses to measure its performance. Products that demonstrate their value are easier to communicate and sell. The USP = Benefit + Differentiation + Motivation.

The strategic positioning statement defines the target audience, describes character or personality of the brand, and provides the reason why.  The reason why is important because it establishes the credibility and the believability for the benefit claim. Brand character projects an attitude and reinforces the main claim with a feeling. Drama, storytelling and emotional component are effective aspects of the statement. Strategic Positioning Statement = Target + USP + Brand + Why

10. Leading companies measure and track key decisions.

Brown described a simple Audit on a slide with 4 boxes within a square, each box pointing to the next box in counter-clockwise direction. Starting with the Idea in the top left box, pointing down to Critical Success Factors, which points to Audit in bottom right, pointing up to Track in top right, which continues to point to the Idea. Critical Success Factors focus on the most important areas to get to the very heart of both what is to be achieved and how it will be achieved. Feedback mechanisms measure and track progress, provide insights for continual improvement and correction, simplify and speed up decision making, enhance communication and collaboration, consistently include team members disparately located. Identifying rules, best practices, critical success factors, appropriate metrics and feedback mechanisms contribute to design thinking for constantly iterating business models in leading companies.

In short order, Brown identified the keys to successful leading companies as those that show their teams how to collect and process customer input more effectively, develop creative problem solving skills, use business models to stay on course, and measure and track progress.  

Cindy F. Solomon hosts the Global Product Management Talk, the weekly mini-product camp Socratic discussion of Product Management thought leaders and international product professionals conducted via Twitter with podcast. http://www.prodmgmttalk.com @cindyfsolomon

by Greg Geracie

One of the chief indicators of a truly successful product management organization, other than market success, is its ability to move from being reactive to proactive. This is accomplished by putting the appropriate level of process in place and ensuring that everyone understands their roles and what to expect.

Oddly enough, many product organizations never reach this proactive state. There is nothing worse, as a product manager, than being continually buffeted around without the ability to seize the reins and bring order to your product. If you think about it, predictability is highly valued in just about every aspect of the organization. The leadership team wants to deliver predictable results to the investment community. Sales wants to deliver the predicted amounts of revenue. The leadership team and sales are both rewarded handsomely when this occurs.
Introduce a Product Management Calendar
Once the baseline processes have been established, cross the threshold from being reactive to being proactive by putting into place a product management calendar of events. By proactively communicating the internal timetable for key events essential for your team’s success, you’re letting everyone know what to expect in advance. Most importantly, you’re taking control. Putting out a product management calendar of events allows you to manage your workflow and your schedule.

Sean’s calendar lists the following events:

·    Roadmap publishing dates
·    Roadmap iteration meeting dates
·    Advisory group meetings
·    Cross-functional team meetings
·    Client conference dates
·    Sales conference dates
·    Product pricing submission dates to finance
·    Product training dates for the customer-facing teams
·    Budget and forecasting due dates
·    Annual board meeting date

Publishing a calendar requires more thought than it might appear at first glance. Many of the events that need to occur have to happen in a particular order, and your business may have a certain sales cycle that you’re attempting to synchronize your releases around. Carefully think through the various dimensions of your activities before publishing your calendar.

Objective Data is Essential for Your Success

As a product manager, you’ll need to rely heavily on objective data. Everyone has opinions; few have facts. Facts are concrete and often immutable. Objective facts neutralize opinions and provide the fuel that enables you to establish yourself as the market expert that everyone relies on.

Facts are not only useful in establishing your credibility, they are essential for communicating what you’ve accomplished. You’ll need to develop a framework for quantifying your success.

As we will see, one of the most effective means of doing so is to develop a product scorecard. While quantitative data is central to your success, you cannot afford to overlook the qualitative dimension of product management. Product managers are in highly visible positions that rely heavily on influence and interpersonal skills. Given the high visibility, a lot is expected of you. As you move up the leadership curve, you’re judged not only on what you’ve accomplished (the facts) but how you’ve achieved your objective (subjective perceptions). Both dimensions need to be effectively managed for you to be successful.
External Metrics of Success
The internal measures of success, both quantitative and perception-orientated, are important ways for you to understand how effective you are as a product manager. The external metrics of success illustrate what customers think about your company’s effectiveness.

Quantitatively, customers will measure your organization’s success against what you promised to deliver on your customer-facing roadmap. There are two dimensions to this commitment. The first relates to the decisions you made regarding which capabilities made it onto your customer-facing roadmap. The second element is whether you released the promised capability or product when you said you would. Roadmaps are viewed by clients as commitments, and they will judge your efforts accordingly.

If you succeed in selecting the “right” products or capabilities and successfully deliver against your commitments, most customers will view your results positively. However, if you release products or capabilities that miss the mark, miss the promised release window, or deliver reduced capabilities or inferior quality, you’ll create high levels of customer dissatisfaction. Compounding these errors over time rapidly undermines customers’ trust in your organization.

It is not always apparent, on the surface of your metrics, that customers feel this way; the greatest proportion of your customers are likely a silent majority. They may be looking for other options and biding their time. Therefore, it is important to conduct satisfaction surveys to learn their perceptions.

Customer satisfaction surveys are useful tools that can help you understand the health of your customer base and measure how customers perceive the effectiveness of your organization. If your organization has continued to miss product release windows and reduce the amount of capability you deliver to clients, you’ll likely learn that your customers perceive your organization as ineffective. Perpetuated over time, these execution errors will encourage your clients to seek other alternatives.

Customer satisfaction can also shine light on other dimensions of your customers’ perceptions, such as the quality of your sales interactions, the effectiveness of your customer support, and product quality.

Knowing what customers think about your organization and your product efforts provides you with an opportunity to make needed adjustments.

© Greg Geracie, President and Founder of Actuation Consulting.  All rights reserved.
The excerpt was taken from his global best-seller Take Charge Product Management and is available at Amazon.com and better bookstores world-wide.