On Product Management » Collaboration

Guest Post: Sticky Notes and Fish Bones – Finding and Understanding Core Problems

Saeed — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:36:59 +0000

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NOTE: The following is a guest post by Kellie Jones. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.

In the early days of my product management career there was a lot of focus on business requirements and how to correctly write them: ”The system shall do xyz”. Today it’s all about user stories, “As Sally the book shopper; I want to do XYZ so I can ABC”.

Writing clear and actionable requirements in any format is important, but what is most critical is capturing the right requirements. I can write clear actionable requirements all day long, development will build it, testing will test it – but if doesn’t solve the business or customer needs…so what?

I wanted to share some techniques that allow me to get to the right requirements.

Ishikawa Diagrams
No need to bless me, this is also known as a fishbone diagram. I learned about these diagrams from a greenbelt training class, and have leveraged them to determine root causes of problems, which in turn helped me in developing clear and focused product requirements.

Have you ever tried to use call data from customer support to figure out what to build to reduce calls? It’s difficult – for this data to be actionable there would need to be large numbers of call categories. I find it easier to talk to Tier I support to find what’s going on and have used fishbone diagrams to do it.

At the head of the diagram is the effect, it’s what you’re trying to determine the root cause for. The diagram starts with 4-5 major categories that are the major causes of the effect. Participants then identify causes within these major categories (the bones). By starting with these top level categories, the participants view the problems from a broader perspective than just the product. It’s looking at the big “P”: the Product and not simply the product. What I mean by that is it’s not just about the software but all parts of the customer experience that may be causing the problems you’re trying to solve for.

Partially Completed Diagram:

(click to enlarge)

As part of this brainstorming process we continue to drill down – Why? Why? Why? You‘re trying to get to the root cause of each item. As you do that you continue to get more bones on the fish. When using this type of diagram to drive a brainstorming session, you will have a comprehensive list of actionable items and an understanding of each. This is much more fun than combing through spreadsheets for days trying to understand root cause!

Art Class
As Product Managers, we’re always offered solutions and have to drill in to find the true problems. I’ve found it can be easier to do this by having customers sketch out the solution of what they want. It allows you to have discussions with customers about why they added a particular button or made the functionality available from an unexpected area of the product. These discussions allow you to get to the true business need and better articulate requirements. Its also useful to share the pictures with the development team – so they can hear from your customers too.

The customer isn’t designing the user experience, but you’re giving them a tool to communicate to you what they might not be able to in words.

Customer Interviews
Customer interviews and on site visits are key to identify higher level unmet market needs. But to do this, you need to be able to ask the right questions. Even during on site visits, watching the customer utilize the product, I use every opportunity to ask additional questions (while we’re walking to get a coffee or waiting for that report to run). Some of my favorites include:

● What is the worst day you’ve had in recent memory?
● What is the best day?

These questions are not limited to while they were using your product, and may have nothing to do with a product at all. It can give you insight into what success or failure what look likes to them.

● What other software/tools do you use in your job?

This will help identify what they’re doing as part of their job that is outside of your solution. A big a-ha moment can come from this type of question. Their answers may surprise you. One time I found a customer using an HTML editor. They were using this to understand HTML so that they could format correctly in my product.

You also might actually see unexpected tools during an onsite visit, e.g. a ruler or an adding machine. If you see tools like these in use, don’t forget to ask them what they are used for.

Other favorite questions include:
● What is your busiest time of week, month, year? Why?
● What are the top 3 things you spend your time on?
● What do you (or your boss) think should be the top 3 things you spend your time on?

What Else?
As with any meeting, the keys to a successful brainstorming session or customer interview is being prepared and having the right attendees. Have an agenda and walk the participants though the process so that they know what to expect and it will be more successful. Remember to share the results with your development team so that they’re vested in the success of the product. And of course, have fun with it!

There are many different techniques to get input. One good book is Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann and I’ve use some of these games to gather customer requirements. A book on my wish list is Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. Please share any techniques you’ve used to gather input.

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Kellie Jones lives in Atlanta where she is a Product Manager at Ultimate Software. She’s managed a variety of solutions ranging from client side small business software, the georgia.gov website and now a SaaS solution for mid – enterprise sized businesses. You can follow her on Twitter (@kelliej) or connect her on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/kelliejones)

Tweet this: Guest Post by @kelliej – Sticky Notes and Fish Bones – Finding and Understanding Core Problems http://wp.me/pXBON-2Zi #prodmgmt #innovation

That Product Owner (er…Backlog Manager) debate again….

Saeed — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:59:39 +0000

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Tweet this: It’s that Product Owner (er…Backlog Manager) debate again http://wp.me/pXBON-2U3 #prodmgmt #agile

By Saeed Khan

There was a vibrant discussion on the Twitter Product Management Talk yesterday. The topic, a common one for Product Management types – the roles of Product Manager and Product Owner.

The discussion was lead by John Peltier who writes on Agile Product Management. Geoff Anderson who also participated, wrote a post on his blog – Tralfaz - about an exchange he and I had.

Geoff wrote about some of the issues he’s seen when companies add the Product Owner role.

These issues can be summarized as:

Putting very junior people in as Product Owners. How junior? They “almost need to ask permission to use the bathroom”.
Organizational problems with Product Owners being part of Engineering. i.e. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
The required frequency of communication needed between a Product Owner and Product Manager.

Here’s my take on these topics.

What is the right level of experience for Product Owners (or as I’ve advocated – Backlog Managers)

This one is easy. Put an inexperienced person in any role, and prepare to be underwhelmed. There is a trend to create junior “transition” titles — e.g. Associate Product Manager, Technical Product Manager — for people who are entering Product Management. Now there is nothing wrong with these types of titles, but the problems occur when there is a mismatch between the skills and the responsibilities for those roles.

Given the responsibilities of a Backlog Manager, such as ensuring the Eng teams stay focused on the right functionality, facilitating information flow, helping resolve problems as they are encountered, providing technical guidance when needed etc. a junior person is the last person you’d want in this role.

The role needs a strong technical background, good judgement and decision making abilities, a persuasive attitude , and good communication skills. Doesn’t sound like a junior person to me. IMHO, the best person for this role, particularly in a company with a strong technical team, is an experienced ex-Engineer who wants to move into Product Management.

Where should the Backlog Manager reside

Without question, this role DOES NOT belong in Engineering. Plain and simple, it should be part of the Product Management organization, seated along with the corresponding Product Managers and Product Marketers who work on the same product.

Being part of the same team and sitting with them leads to the next point.

What is the right communication frequency

I’m always amazed at how much of a sticking point this can become in online discussions. What is the right frequency of communication between a Product Manager and a Backlog Manager? Well it’s quite simply the right frequency of communication. i.e. whatever is required.

Sometimes it could be several times in a day. Other times it could be a few times a week. Other times, it could be once per week or even less. The reality is that there is always ebb and flow with information demand. But the question is how mature is the Engineering team and what kinds of day-to-day decisions are they making? Immature teams need constant care and feeding. Mature teams with experienced development management can work without daily guidance.

I personally have worked with remote teams (e.g. team is in India with me in North America) and aside from a weekly synchup call, other communications were primarily handled via email or if needed, a mid week phone call. And guess what, those teams delivered great products and didn’t lose their way because of any lack of communication.

So in short, what can companies do to succeed when implementing a Backlog Manager (or Product Owner)?

Get the right people, with the right level of experience, in the right organizational model and communicating the right amount and everything will work out fine. Easy!

Saeed

Tweet this: It’s that Product Owner (er…Backlog Manager) debate again http://wp.me/pXBON-2U3 #prodmgmt #agile

Guest Post: What can Tacos Teach Product Managers about Social Product Development?

Saeed — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:30:37 +0000

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NOTE: The following is a guest post by Catherine Constantinides. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.

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Tweet this: What can Tacos Teach Product Managers about Social Product Development http://wp.me/pXBON-2Tk #prodmgmt #socmedia

Warning: The following article contains many puns.

Product management and the social web
The social web is quickly becoming a popular method for customers to express product and service related ideas, issues, questions and problems. Social conversations within customer communities are happening much more frequently and in real-time and are starting to receive a lot of attention in the product management world.

The question is: How can product managers use social media monitoring to build the right product requirements and make more informed product-related decisions?

Lessons from the taco industry
Let’s take a recent product innovation – the flat-bottom taco - to illustrate how the social web can provide product managers with valuable insights that can be integrated into the product development process.

What a concept. A taco designed with a flat bottom that sits firmly upright when placed on a flat surface. Finally, taco lovers can easily stuff in all their favourite toppings without worrying about them falling out. Truly a revolutionary product innovation that changes the taco eating experience forever! Any good product manager knows that products are never flawless. And the flat bottom taco is no exception. Using social media monitoring I got to the er- “bottom” of things and discovered some very interesting information…

When products fall “flat” in the marketplace
Despite all the hype surrounding this innovation, social media search revealed that customers who had tried the flat bottom taco had a lot of feedback regarding its design. Although the new taco structure was sturdy and allowed for easy stuffing, its flattened, wider design made it awkward and difficult to bite. Other individuals complained that the new flat tortilla base cracked easily when bitten. Many customers even expressed that the flattened sides caused the stuffing to fall out easily (defeating the whole purpose of why it was invented in the first place). Seems like maybe the flat bottom taco wasn’t all that is was “cracked up” to be (I warned you about the puns).

Joking aside, tuning in to these conversations and collecting this feedback provides valuable insight that product managers can leverage to improve product features or product functionality.

Here are a few ways product managers can use social media monitoring:

1. Monitor social media for customer feedback on a continuous basis

With customer needs and preferences constantly changing and evolving, one of the biggest challenges in product management is to create profitable products that exceed customer expectations. Traditional methods of collecting feedback, such as surveys and focus groups, are often too time-consuming and expensive. Worse, once the results have been collected, they need to be integrated into the development flow. By tuning in to the social web, product managers can obtain feedback about products in real-time, and directly incorporate it into the product lifecycle.

2. Actually respond to customer feedback
Customers need to know that product managers are listening and taking action on their feedback. Innovative tools like social media monitoring allow you to respond to conversations directly on the same social media channels they came through. For instance, if someone expressed on Twitter that the flat bottom taco should come in different flavours, product development teams can engage in a conversation that further elaborates on the details. Responding to your customers is a win-win strategy for both you and your company, as customers see that you care and you get valuable information to help build better products.

3. Don’t let your competitors get a piece of the taco-uh, I mean pie

The social web also provides many opportunities to know what customers are saying about your competitor’s products and services. Naturally a revolutionary innovation like the flat bottom taco is sure to spark the attention of other players in the taco industry. A sharp product manager chasing that big promotion won’t hesitate to listen to customers’ conversations and try to get a piece of the action by introducing a new product that is an improvement from the competitor’s offering. Social media monitoring tools can be used to find out what customers are saying about competitors’ products.

4. The use of social media tools must be strategic.
Social media efforts cannot be used as a stand-alone strategy. Insight gained from these efforts must be integrated with other business processes such as customer service and help desk, idea management, requirements management, and project management. They must also be visible, and traceable across the development process. Finally, in the true nature of social collaboration, this information should be shared with both internal and external stakeholders such as business partners, employees and especially customers. It should also be accessible across departments like sales, customer support, marketing, product development and engineering.

One final note before I leave you to go make some tacos. I used the example of the flat-bottom taco to illustrate the critical role that the social web plays in the product innovation process. However, social media monitoring can be a useful tool that can be used by many different verticals such as IT, finance, manufacturing, retail, hospitals, transportation, and government.

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Catherine Constantinides works at OneDesk, a developer of social business applications that connect the customer to the product development process. She is also a regular contributor on OneDesk’s blog. Oh…and she loves tacos.

On PowerPoint

Prabhakar Gopalan — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 04:45:38 +0000

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I just got back from vmworld 2011 in Vegas. Sustaining interest in speaker sessions at technology conferences is a challenge for most people. As soon as the slides start rolling, you see people walk out, start checking emails/surfing on their iPads and generally get disengaged. Some try to hop to other sessions and repeat the same actions.

Part of the reason why these presentations fail is, the speaker pays little attention to the preparation needed before flying in to the conference – for example on the logistics of how big the room is, how the seating arrangement is going to be and what kind of visuals and presentation aids they need to bring and engage the audience, how big/small the fonts on the slides need to be, will a slide accomplish the job of conveying the message to the person sitting in the last row of the room. This is why I prefer panel discussions over presentations because panels typically don’t have slides and you can actually learn more when the smart people on the panel start having a conversation. All you have to do is just listen.

So what was attending PowerPoint driven speaker sessions at vmworld like? It was something like the story line in the first two videos below. Back in summer 2010 I presented a session “My PowerPoint Sucks! Now what?”, that was well received in the Austin ProductCamp community. I made a few short videos using xtranormal to tell the story of bad powerpointing then. Here they are: Situation – Complication – Resolution.

How much freedom do you have to say no to PowerPoints, like in video#3 above?

If you work where PowerPoint is the lingua franca of your organization there is not much to say. I believe most of PowerPoint usage is driven by organizational culture. It is a crutch that executives, managers, and employees alike use to support other people’s stories, if they can tell one at all. When you don’t know the subject it is always easy to throw up a slide and divert the attention. And once the executives in an organization push that practice down, the idea get institutionalized across the entire organization. So we have meeting agenda in PowerPoint, meeting minutes in PowerPoint, discussion items in PowerPoint, meeting outcomes/action items in PowerPoint. Practically every message becomes PowerPoint – a low resolution, cognitively dissonant method to convey useful information. Like the famous futurist Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. PowerPoint usage describes that aptly.

How can we make this experience better? There are a number of options. One easy, cheap option is to use a whiteboard. Check this one out:

The way of the whiteboard – Persuading with pictures – by Dan Roam on Mix09

- Prabhakar

This post is cross posted at http://prabhakar.me

Guest Post: Google Pluses and Minuses – What Works, What’s Missing & What’s to Come with Google+

Saeed — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 03:57:57 +0000

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NOTE: The following is a guest post by Amrita Mathur. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.

Tweet this: Google Pluses and Minuses – new post by @amritamathur http://wp.me/pXBON-2OW #prodmgmt #gplus

Google’s latest offering in the social networking arena – Google Plus (or Google+ or G+) has now been out for over a month. Google Plus has already surpassed 25 million registered users! To put this in perspective, know that Facebook took 3 years to reach this goal.

Google’s failure to effectively launch Google Buzz and Google Wave a few years ago, made this new foray into social networking seem like a monumental task, but it looks like this is one of their best efforts yet. The company may have finally figured out how to do social well, their key mantra being: you don’t have to share your content with everyone. Instead they expect content to be targeted to specific contacts and groups of people.

I especially love when companies invent something new in social networking… For example I love that Google Plus has things called Circles, Hangouts and Sparks. They have not only introduced new terminology but also new functionality along with a new way to perceive or use similar features.

I think Google has made a serious come back. Their design and UI suggests they have put much thought into being truly social and away from the typical algorithmic products that they previously put out.

Below are my thoughts on some of the less obvious features that are awesome and some comments on what might be missing:

The notify feature is pretty awesome. It allows you to send an email through the system to people in selected circles. It preserves the email address but it can get annoying when other people constantly send you emails about their posts. Good way to bring attention to important stuff but could easily turn into spam.

Also love that when you block somebody on G+, it really gets rid of the bugger. Blocked user wont be able to creep you at all… comes in very handy I tell you.

The picture-tagging feature is also cool. Its no different than Facebook, sort of nostalgic almost, although I fear that photos people tag you in publicly may start cropping up in places you didn’t want them to. Such as Google Search results, or one of your other circle’s feed. This can be scary because at the very least you want to be able to control if not block that to some extent. I think this is something Google needs to think about. They need to put control back in the users’ hands before it becomes an issue.

Just like any other social network, you will often see content shared and re-shared by multiple people in your circles, but for some reason it is a bit more in-your-face on Google Plus. In Twitter’s case, they limit your chars, so you can easily skim over tweets in your stream. In Facebook’s case, you naturally gravitate towards things posted by “friends” or people you know well. With Google Plus, there is no such luxury. You can’t skim over content easily enough and there is no filter feature (yet) to bubble up content from the most important people in your circle to the top.

I think there are many ways to solve this problem of too much duplicate content. One solution is to allow the system to detect what content you as the user may have already consumed. So if you have clicked on a link from Friend A and Friend B has shared the same content, it might make sense to filter out the duplicate content from Friend B in your viewing stream. And you know what? They could easily leave it up to the user to turn on or off. Now that would be pretty intelligent.

Another thing that confuses me is the sharing with circles. If I share a post “publicly”, then what does the option of sharing it with other circles do for me? How is that different? Doesn’t sharing publicly = sharing with everyone in your circles and also those that are not in your circle? I don’t understand. Google should clarify this.

Next is my pet peeve of not having vanity URLs or some other kind of identifier. It is very difficult for people to find you on any platform, especially mass-market social sites simply based on your name. I am fortunate that there aren’t too many ‘Amrita Mathurs’ in the world. But what if your name was John Smith – how it one supposed to find you? Google needs to correct this ASAP.I know their current model is to drive interactions through friends and friends of friends, and hence the function of having a unique identifier isn’t as prominent; but already people that want to be ahead of the curve are having a hard time dealing with this.

My Big Idea

In their next major iteration, if they could incorporate some Google Wave like features (perhaps housed within Google hangouts), wherein people can share and group-edit stuff like a document for example – might be pretty swell. For example, you could share the document either publicly or with specific circles or contacts – then proceed to collaborate to edit/update this document. This would allow Google Plus to hugely differentiate themselves while taking ‘social networking’ to a whole new level.

The easy way to do it would be to couple hangouts with the existing Google docs, and not reinvent the wheel. Some straight-forward tight integration will do the trick. Move over Facebook?!

My other big suggestion for Google is that they release Google Plus for iPad. They’re losing a huge market by not jumping on it ASAP. I bet their active usage numbers and time-on-site will go up dramatically if they release one. An already interactive Google Plus will become more interactive and intuitive by leveraging the iPad’s touch technology and beautiful backlit screen. Just imagine the possibilities!

And Android…

The Android integration is a little scary but it will help set it apart. I love Apple… but there is no social network to go with the platform (I don’t quite count Ping as a serious social network). So with full integration, Google Plus might catapult Android into the lead as well as continue to work as a differentiator from other social networks.

I’d like to end this post by trying to describe why I became an early fan of Google Plus.

It was really simple for me actually. Google Plus allowed me to speak my mind, just like on Twitter, but better because there is no character limit. As well, I am able to share any type of content – text, photo, video etc without using some third party service like twitpic or bit.ly.

Next, it has a huge one-up from Facebook because they have tackled the privacy and friend segmentation challenge right off the bat. Google goes the distance by saying “For us, privacy isn’t buried six panels deep,”. In fact I’ve got to say, I was never thrilled by Facebook’s model at all. I just got on it recently, only because I was missing out on event invites from friends and birthday reminders. With Google Plus, managing my contact list and content-permissions doesn’t seem like a chore anymore!

Not to mention Google Plus seems to be more intuitive and flows a bit more like our brains naturally do. I appreciate structure, but Facebook seems to have too much of it. Fluidity of functionality is key to any network’s existence and growth, and I feel like Google Plus has built that in to their core.

In any case, I am not the only one excited by Google Plus. 25 million other users from around the world have adopted it. Of course Gmail penetration has been key in this process, but they are already nearing the tipping point of 15% market penetration, which means very soon, it is going to snow ball.

In a recent survey conducted by ComScore, about 23% of respondents said that they are going to completely abandon Facebook in lieu of Google Plus. That’s huge!

Furthermore, I can’t wait for the Google API to come out. It would be nice to hook Google Plus up to my website and other services. It is all about being a two-way street after all. Google’s Joseph Smarr said that they are looking forward to working with good agile partners to build cool social experiences.

Sounds like that is exactly what we need. A big +1 for them, as I am sure that in the coming months, Google is going to become a force to reckon within the realm of social networking. It is finally their time.

Amrita

Tweet this: Google Pluses and Minuses – new post by @amritamathur http://wp.me/pXBON-2OW #prodmgmt #gplus

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Amrita is a strategic marketer, tech blogger and visual thinker. She currently works full-time as the Director of Marketing at a SaaS software company in downtown Toronto. Amrita writes a popular tech blog called techkik that focuses on internet technologies, new media and startups. You can also find her on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austin

Prabhakar Gopalan — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 03:38:21 +0000

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by Prabhakar Gopalan

Tweet this: @PGopalan: Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austin http://wp.me/pXBON-2OM #pcatx #pcamp #prodmgmt

This past Saturday, I was at ProductCamp Austin – a biannual un-conference for product leaders. What a treat it was! Apart from the privilege of presenting a session myself, I had the opportunity to learn quite a bit attending sessions as much as I could, have fun in an interestingly themed Game room track and chat with a number of like minded community members.

Earlier this year I wrote about why ProductCamps are the future of how conferences will turn into. This time I’m going to focus on the people that attend and how they are different from everyone else in the product management community.

ProductCamp goers are curious people. People get up bright and early on a Saturday morning, come to vote for their fellow peers’ sessions and stay all day learning and networking. If you thought what’s the big deal in that – after all it is just a bunch of sessions by normal people (no celeb status) and you could get all that information in books and slideshare presentations anyway, you are mistaken. It is about identifying yourself with a community of forward thinking people who want to test their hypothesis, listen to fresh ideas and are actually, curious. Yes, curious.

Curiosity comes to all of us when we are born. We are curious about how the food we eat tastes, the air we breath smells and much more. But over time, as we ‘grow’ up, some nurture it, others suppress it or throw it outright. Those that are not curious get into routines because routines are comfortable ways. Until something disruptive happens. And it is then, they do not have any ability whatsoever to absorb or adapt. They scramble for the product roadmap, the plan and swot analysis and other routine strategies. Alas, nothing works. Not so with curious people. Because they are curious, they’ll always be ready for changes. They’ll embrace it, live it and try new things, continuously.

Curious people don’t need marketing, don’t need gimmicks, don’t need a sales pitch. They are self organizing. If you go and ask a ‘consultant’ on how to build a community, he’d give you a best practices document with 100 tricks and charge you an arm and a leg. He’d also tell you to ‘price’ the ‘product’ and ‘promote’ it in multiple ways and make sure it’s ‘placement’ is appropriate channels. All that fails when you have something like ProductCamp. Because it is unconventional. It is not the norm to see 300+ product leaders show up for a conference entirely on their own account to stretch their imagination. But curious people make it happen at ProductCamp. The not so curious people may have excuses – the dog ate their calendar or they were too busy with something else. That will not stop where the world is headed. For the curious people will carry the ideas forward.

Hats off to the founders, organizers, volunteers, attendees and sponsors at ProductCamp Austin!

- Prabhakar

Tweet this: @PGopalan: Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austinhttp://wp.me/pXBON-2OM #pcatx #pcamp #prodmgmt

You’ve Created It…You’ve Measured It…Now Share It

jidoctor — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:00:05 +0000

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Congratulations on creating the product marketing roadmap. Congratulations on discovering and creating metrics that show how you are progressing on that roadmap. But, now you have to communicate this information. The roadmap has no value if it is not shared.

The delivery of the roadmap is a critical element to illustrating the value that product marketing brings to the table. But, if you deliver this “document” by email, hoping that the various readers will a) take the time to read it thoroughly and b) understand the content without expectation, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

Communicating your roadmap requires collaboration. Your roadmap first needs to be shared with the product management and marketing teams. If the product marketing roadmap is the bridge between the directions developed by these groups, start by sharing your guide here. Look to these teams to validate your information and challenge your metrics. If one team has made changes on their plans, this is when it may first surface to you and you should make the adjustments. These two teams are your friends, their approval and support will go far.

Once you have the support of product management and marketing, take it to your leaders. But, don’t send it over email. Email is not a good communication method for sharing and discussing strategy. Since the concept of a product marketing roadmap is new and may require some background information presented, email is definitely not the right tool.

The best way to introduce this new item is to do so through a regularly scheduled leadership meeting, whatever it may be called. Ask to get on the agenda for 30 minutes. Request the time on the agenda so that you may “share the value of product marketing” with the leadership. Since this is not a typical item on the agenda you will most likely get the time requested – if not for any other reason than curiosity. Whatever the reason, when it is accepted, take the time!

During the meeting, start your leadership presentation by explaining what the product marketing roadmap is and how it was created (briefly and not in detail) through using the product roadmap and the marketing plans. Then proceed to show the dashboard you have created which illustrates the movement of the items on the roadmap. Finally, close with the commitment that you will update your dashboard on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly) and would like to come back to the meeting to share the updated information. Ask for feedback on the dashboard. Are these meaningful metrics? Any additional metrics that they would like tracked? By including them and asking for input, they are accepting your roadmap.

If product marketing doesn’t stand at the table and show strategic value, no one else will do it for us. Strategy is difficult enough for organizations to see and touch. Through developing a product marketing roadmap, you have delivered a strategic tool. If you don’t share this tool properly, disappointment will set in when you don’t have a successful adoption of what you shared. If that happens, your commitment to making this a strategic asset will fail.

Jennifer

(Please share this on Twitter, LinkedIn and even Google+: “@jidoctor: Share your Product Marketing Roadmap, but Share Smartly http://wp.me/pXBON-2MU #prodmktg #prodmgmt #marketing #roadmap #leadership”)

Why the “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs

Saeed — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:05:40 +0000

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by Saeed Khan

I’ve written a lot lately about the dissonance in the way Scrum defines the “Product Owner” role and responsibilities and the reality of what occurs in many companies, particularly Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

These posts included:

John Peltier, at the Product Owner Vision blog, took note of these posts, and wrote one on topic as well. His post is entitled:

Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best

It’s a good post which you should read in it’s entirety. John discusses some differences between Scrum used custom software projects vs. ISVs.

The focus of all my writing on Scrum/Agile has always been on Scrum in ISVs and the organizational structures into which Scrum (a software development methodology) must play. Yes, Scrum is not an island unto itself. It must fit into an existing organization that DOESN’T view the Scrum team as the center of all activities.

John presents the following diagram showing where he sees the “Backlog Manager” as fitting best.

i.e. for custom projects – the use of “Product Owner” fits best, but in ISVs, the Backlog Manager fits best AFTER the first release (i.e. after release 1.0) of a product.

John’s reasons for this split in the ISV column are summarized (and paraphrased) below. Read his post for the full details:

For and ISV, if a PM also acts as a PO, the PO role can occupy him/her to the point that it takes away from outward, more forward looking market sensing and requirement gathering activities
Thus the role can be offloaded to someone else (e.g. a Technical PM), but only after the product’s initial release to market
This is because, for that initial release, the PM will need to spend significant time up front understanding the market, market problems, defining a vision, requirements etc. and then spending many months working with development team to bring that initial release to fruition
Part of those months with development are spent performing backlog management, but the key for the PM is to have a clear vision of the product and ensure that first release is built correctly. i.e. the Scrum team needs first hand information from the PM vs. second hand information from an intermediary “backlog manager”.
After version 1.0 of a new product is released, with the vision, business case etc. established, the PM, “looking for additional market segments and business opportunities” etc. and thus a separation of “responsibility between a Product Manager and Product Owner makes sense.”

Why I disagree with John

Not to pick on John as I think he did a great job in his post in trying to reason through the roles and scenarios, but I do have to disagree with John’s conclusion that the best fit for the Backlog Manager ROLE in ISVs excludes the v1.0 release of products.

1. Research is not a solitary process

First let me say that John’s description of the basic process of researching, defining and building a new product is fundamentally correct.

It doesn’t matter whether the company uses Agile/Scrum/Waterfall or other methodology. A fair bit of up front research and market/customer/prospect validation is needed to identify a new product opportunity. But, in my experience over many new products, and I’d say as a best practice, this work is not, and should not, be done in isolation by a lone PM or even a small PM team. It must include key members of the Development (and ideally Product Marketing) organization.

A major goal of the initial research is developing a common understanding of the market opportunity, and this cannot be done by excluding key team members. Conveying the findings and getting full buy-in on the results of weeks (or months) of external research is very difficult.

By including members of the development team (even 1 or 2 people if your company is small), in a number of customer/prospect/partner meetings and discussions, not only can a joint vision of the problem space be developed early on, but that first hand exposure helps ensure Development buy-in when solutions are being proposed and defined.

2. The first release is not that different from other releases

John’s view of the first (v1.0) release, that it is significantly different from successive releases (e.g. 1.1, 2.0 etc.) and thus requires different focus from the PM (team) does not change the need or scope of “backlog management”.

If a clear vision of the product-to-be is understood by the team, the sprint planning, story definition and backlog prioritization are not different than in any other release. Perhaps there is more oversight needed to get early development efforts right, but that’s true regardless of whether the methodology is Agile or not.

i.e. The “Backlog Manager” is simply a formal definition of the interface role that is needed in a Scrum environment. The vision, business context etc. are still there — provided by Product Management — but the tactical activities specific to Scrum processes are defined in the Backlog Manager role.

3. The tactical vs. strategic balance is always an issue for (understaffed) Product Management teams

This problem that John describes is very real, but is not specific to Agile or Scrum. Understaffed PM teams are rampant across high-technology companies. Far too many companies view “the Product Manager” as the lone individual at the center of the storm. No other team — whether marketing, sales, engineering, finance etc. — is viewed this way. If Product Management is so strategic, staff it for success.

If you believe that Scrum requires a dedicated role to work with the Scrum team to give them business context, then add that headcount to your plan. Don’t over burden a single individual with that responsibility. It’s a recipe for failure — or perhaps mediocrity at best.

In Summary

I agree with John that for custom software development, a “Product Owner” can be the right term to use given the 1:1 relationship between the (solitary) customer (in most cases) and the Scrum team. But for ISVs, even in small startups, the reality is that a very different organizational model exists. They key need that the Scrum processes impose and that must be filled is that of backlog grooming, sprint/backlog management and the communication/facilitation required during the development cycle.

This new, tactical ROLE is not about “Product Ownership” but about facilitating product development over successive releases and ensuring appropriate business context is inserted into that process. It may be part of a larger job description or a dedicated role. But, in short, whether as a v1.0 release, or any subsequent release, that ROLE is “Backlog Manager”.

Saeed

Tweet this: Why the “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs http://wp.me/pXBON-2KZ #prodmgmt #agile #scrum

Managing Product Management Distractions…

Jim Holland — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:15:52 +0000

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Last week while reading email, answering IM, viewing Twitter stream, looking at a text message from my son, reviewing a clients LinkedIn profile, answering a call and trying to focus on product management tasks, Bob Corrigan, sent a response to an earlier tweet I had posted. “Does technology distract (#prodmgmt & #prodmktg) from being effective? via @BrightInnovate http://bit.ly/npMUNJ #business #success,”

Bob responded with the following: “There’s not enough characters in a tweet to document the distractions that plague product management. Twitter is one.”

In thinking about his response, How can product management and product marketing manage distractions?

Information Overload – in their recent post The Age of Distraction, by Bright Innovations, Cathy Davidson, a professor at Duke University was highlighted. Watch the video in the post, then link to her interview in Fast Company. Dr. Davidson shares, “Going all the way back to Socrates, attention is the problem people most become aware of when a new technology arises. There’s no such thing as lack of distraction — we’ve always been filtering. But new technology puts stress on our old, automatic ways of paying attention.”

Placing your smart device aside for a minute, product professionals must find new ways to learn or re-learn how to pay attention, cope and deflect the onslaught of new technologies and information that distract us. As “product” oriented creatures, we grasp and often drool over the newest innovations and usually jump on-board and test drive new solutions. By a show of hands or a +1, how many of you are using Google+ ? Add one to your count for me.

Like a moth lured to a bug zapper, product professionals are often consumed with the latest and greatest gadgets. Why? I believe it’s a combination of our technology heritage, our desire to associate with innovation, our need to understand and validate markets, our willingness to test positioning and find new ways to sift through the daily noise to truly collaborate. Or perhaps we just want to hang out with the cool kids. Either way, how do we manage the onslaught and use this to our advantage?

(Re)Learning and Adapting – Every time a new technology emerges, I evaluate how it will impact me personally and what benefits I see. While I don’t perform a personal SWOT, I do consider my current and future needs, habits, desired changes, interest, working environment and how it could influence and improve collaboration.

Dr. Davidson argues “that we’re at the perfect moment to begin re-imagining our institutions and developing practices to deal with the onslaught of information, the reality of constant connectedness, and the challenges of global collaboration.”

While some of you might question technologies role as we adapt and change, the business world we live in continues to move from it’s industrialized heritage to one that is formed on collaboration, openness and information. These three elements can guide and influence better decisions, but only if we manage the distractions they present. Product management and product marketing have to transition with it or lose credibility and value because of it.

Grasp Collaboration, not Technology – While technology can be a vehicle for collaboration, there’s a larger processor in the world (our collective knowledge) that will guide this change. To make and support the transitions to a collaborative state, the following questions should be considered:

Does my business style and personality lend to or take away from a collaborative culture?
How do I currently collaborate?
What styles and methods of collaboration does my organization use and does it complement or hinder mine?
Do I value technology over conversation and collaboration?

By honestly asking and contemplating these questions, we can relearn and adapt to manage day-to-day distractions and improve as product professionals through collaboration.

Dealing with Distractions – I’ll be the first to admit that I overuse and often abuse collaborative technologies. Whether they’re in my hand, sitting on my desk, in my home, the solutions I use should have a dual purpose. One is to support me internally. This is the work and business side. The other is the external. The connection that allow me to share ideas, express my thoughts, collaborate with professional peers, ask questions and learn. If used correctly, one will benefit the other. So, what can we do to better manage the distractions? Here’s some things I do:

Limit the amount of time spent on non-work collaboration. I schedule blocks of time.
Be “out of the office” or “offline” when you really need to limit distractions.
Practice the Art of Saying No.
Forward my office phone to my mobile phone and silence the ringer of turn it off.
Skip a meeting and see if anyone notices. If they don’t, unofficially un-invite yourself.

Some other ways to limit distractions from Dr. Davidson’s book, “Now You See It” include:

Plan offline interruptions into your day, whether a walk at lunch or a face-to-face meeting.
Within your workplace, colleagues should have the ability to “hole up” solo or together on a project, free from constant connection to the rest of the world.
A tip from designer Aza Raskin: Try reserving separate screens, or even separate devices, for Facebook, Twitter, and other distractors. If they’re in separate rooms, even better.
Get into the habit of tagging complex matters to be discussed later, in real time. Davidson sends her colleagues emails with the subject line “Agenda”; at their weekly conference call, she’ll search her email for the term and — presto! — a list of items to discuss pops up.
If chronically distracted, look below the surface. “We complain about email interference,” she says, “but the two most distracting things in any human life are emotional upset and physical discomfort — heartache and heartburn.”

At the end of the day, we have to decide if the distractions will manage us or if we will manage them. Feel free to provide some insights and experiences on how you manage distraction. If you enjoyed the post, please share it: Managing Product Management Distractions – a new post by @jim_holland http://wp.me/pXBON-2Jz #prodmgmt #prodmktg #leadership #in

You Need Direction – Try a Product Marketing Roadmap

jidoctor — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 04:45:35 +0000

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The couple is planning their vacation, and decided to take a car on this trip. They were looking forward to the adventures they could encounter along the way and the side diversions that would present as opportunities for exploration. Then it happened. They got lost. She was looking at the GPS but it offered no help for getting them back on track, there were missing roads and turns that they were passing were not present on the screen. Soon enough they saw a sign for the gas station up ahead. And, as you would expect, he didn’t want to stop. “Real men don’t ask for directions,” was his reply.

True, this a notorious stereotype; but, it is based in many stories (and some real research) of the same situation happening over and over. Yet, somehow we keep expecting a different result.

That night, when they were safely in their hotel room (and the anger subdued,) the couple pulled their resources together and re-evaluated where they were and where they wanted to go. What was their goal? How were they going to get there?

What does this have to do with product marketing? EVERYTHING!

If others follow a map, why not Product Marketing?

When our product management peers are planning our product lifecycle, they follow a plan, a roadmap. When our marketing service peers are planning their programs, they follow a plan, a roadmap. So, why don’t we follow a roadmap when we look at our product marketing activities?

The most common reason I hear for why a product marketing roadmap is not being used or followed is that most teams have never heard of one. This is a travesty. It is truly a disservice to yourself, your peers and your product. Worse yet, the lack of a roadmap for the product marketing activities will hurt your business.

A product marketing roadmap is the bridge between the product roadmap and the marketing plan. It gathers information from the product roadmap, and translates these attributes, features and abilities into actions that support the marketing activities needed to enable sales.

Getting Started

Getting started in building a roadmap for product marketing can seem overwhelming. (Taking the first step is often viewed that way.) Try this exercise:

Obtain a copy of your product roadmap for the next 4-8 quarters. (You do have one, right?)
Obtain your marketing team plans – demand generation, web, social media, events, papers, etc. (Hopefully your marketing group has this organized in one place, in a common format and somewhere that is stored in an location that is easy to share.)
Arrange an off-site meeting day – It doesn’t have to be at an extravagant location but you need room for walls, whiteboards, etc. It is best to avoid a home (unless everyone on the team is comfortable there, and it would be totally free of distractions.)
Arrange for an outside facilitator. This is someone who does not have a vested interest in the outcome, only that the process flows and all persons involved are listened to, engaged and valued. Companies that run agile product management processes often have coaches and/or trainers you can tap for this resource.
Put the product marketing team in the room. Bring in post-it notes, paper, white boards and copies of the roadmaps and plans you collected, copies of your marketing artifacts (sales sheets, etc.) but LEAVE THE COMPUTER OUTSIDE! and TURN OFF PHONES! When we are in brainstorming sessions, technology can inhibit or distract one – or more – person. And, that distracted person is all it takes to lose rhythm and collaboration.
Plot out the product roadmap against the marketing plans. Now, look at the gap between the two plans you have plotted. How are you going to bridge the conversation? How do you bring the product, brought to life from the product roadmap, to returning sales, from the leads generated through the marketing plans? This is the content for the product marketing roadmap.
Once you have the content of the product marketing roadmap identified, you need to look at your resources and priorities. Then, start plotting out where these content/task areas fit in the new besieged area to accomplish the business, unit and team goals. Fill all this in and you are building your own product marketing roadmap.

It’s not that easy

This exercise is not meant to be viewed as simplistic. While it sounds easy enough to accomplish, it requires a strong cohesive team who have the skills and abilities to think strategically yet understand the practicality of the tactics involved. It is not about simply writing a post-it note for an idea; it is about HAVING the idea to write it.

Like a product roadmap, a product marketing roadmap is one that should be revisited, re-evaluated, and re-engineered as plans, products and priorities shift. It’s like a persona in that regard: never think it is done since it has to have a real life that is based on real and evolving dependencies to be useful.

Creating a product marketing roadmap requires commitment, cooperation and patience. It is like a brainstorming session on steroids, and with more at stake since it will affect actions that impact the business’ bottom line. It will leave you exhausted when you do it right. But, it will leave you exhilarated and excited more importantly. You will clearly be able to see a vision of how to make your vision real. You will have a guide to discuss and share. You will have a focal point for when your GPS steers you off track.

Add one for a bonus

In the end, not only will you have the roadmap to help, but you will enhance the value of product marketing in your organization.

Jennifer

(If you or your organization need help to implement this concept, let me know.)

Please share this on Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Google+: “@jidoctor: Get Some Directions – Creating a Product Marketing Roadmap: http://wp.me/pXBON-2IQ #prodmktg #prodmgmt #marketing #roadmap #leadership”