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

The words “strategy” and “strategic” are draped all over most B2B product management job descriptions like a cheap suit.  But many organizations don’t realize the consequences of hiring product managers with skills, talents and experience to be strategic, setting expectations accordingly, and then placing them in situations that require nearly 100% focus on execution.  It’s a reality for many product managers and it’s as counterproductive for organizations as it is for the individuals.

On the bright side, the fix is relatively simple.  The key is to recognize the difference between hiring a team of “strategic product managers” and structuring a product management team that’s strategic to the organization.

The Strategy Dilemma

Every organization needs its product management function to be strategic for obvious reasons. Ironically, the manner in which most product managers are directed, evaluated and compensated has little if anything to do with strategy.  Worse yet, too many people believe “the lack of strategy” is a systemic problem within the product management discipline when it’s really an organizational problem that’s amplified in product management.  Unfortunately, it goes largely unnoticed because no one thing seems to be horribly wrong.

Most organizations build a team of product managers with individual goals instead of creating a unified product management team that’s a strategic asset with a single organizational mission, and therein lies the problem. To that end, companies over-treat the symptoms – people, processes, skills, tools, etc. instead of the root cause – the fundamental structure of the product management function.  With a proper structure in place, the right people, processes, skills and tools accelerate and improve desired outcomes exponentially.

A Unified Team Structured for Outcomes

A product management team that’s strategic to an organization consistently meets two criteria that go hand-in-hand. They deliver solutions that help your target buyers/customers advance their strategic agenda in measurable ways, which in turn helps your company advance its market position in measurable ways.

For example, financial services organizations and U.S. healthcare providers have been inundated with regulatory requirements that drive up the cost of doing business and eat into profit margins that are already on the decline.  Strategic value arrives in the form of products and services that help organizations in these markets meet compliance requirements at a significantly lower cost.  Alternatively, solutions that offset those costs in a measurable fashion have equal value.  A strategic product management team attacks the compliance challenge from one or both angles and leverages multiple products and services for maximum impact!

If you consider how incredibly difficult it is for industry issues of this magnitude to be addressed by any one organization, imagine trying to do it with a product or two.  But this is what organizations expect product managers to do when they’re hired to be “strategic” without realizing it’s difficult if not impossible within the confines of an individual product manager.

The Complexion of a Strategic Product Management Function

A B2B product management team that’s a true strategic asset to an organization consists of two complementary areas of focus, markets and products, integrated within a single product organization.  Both elements make significant contributions to a single overarching market & portfolio strategy and both elements own execution of that strategy at a market or product level.  The results of those efforts deliver strategic value to the organization.

The Strategic Part

The market function, 10-20% of the team, uses comprehensive quantitative, qualitative and competitive industry data to “set the table” for the organization’s market strategy by painting a single consensus picture of target markets at a level that transcends all products. Team members in these roles have a full-time focus on markets with no product responsibilities.

The product function, 80-90% of the team, combines horizontal business-practice expertise (e.g. new methods for driving add-on sales via customer service) and product knowledge to “set the table” for the organization’s product investment strategy in each target market.  Individuals in these roles have a full-time focus on aligning new/emerging business practices to product solutions in markets that are strategic to the organization.

It’s a unified team that combines both elements to form the ideal market and portfolio strategy most suited to helping the organization meet its short and long term goals on an ongoing basis.  Senior executives ultimately make the decisions, but they’re doing so with a holistic integrated view of target markets and high-value opportunities mapped to proposed product investments across the entire portfolio instead of many competing versions for each product.

The Execution Part

The market function repurposes the same quantitative, qualitative and competitive information to ensure the organization’s differentiating value is communicated relative to each target market via marketing and sales.

The product function, now armed with comprehensive market data and guided by a single overarching portfolio strategy, no longer has to stress over “finding time to be strategic for my products.” They can more easily budget their time between product initiatives related to high-value market solutions (from the portfolio strategy) and the daily care and feeding of products that keep the squeaky wheels at bay.

As product management goes, so goes the rest of the organization.  When product management is structured with many individuals, each expected to be “strategic”, it results in an organization going in many different directions with competing influences, spreading its resources too thin to achieve a leadership position in any one area of strength.

The burden is on the organization to rethink the manner in which it structures product management if it wants an asset that has real strategic value to the organization. Most anyone who’s talented enough to be hired into a product management role is capable of being strategic.  They just need an environment that recognizes the key difference between a team of “strategic product managers” and a product management team that’s strategic to the organization.  Setting appropriate expectations during the hiring process can only help the cause.

Tweet this: What happened to all those strategic Product Managers we hired?  http://wp.me/pXBON-3g2 #prodmgmt #strategy #innovation

John Mansour is the founder and president of Proficientz, a company that specializes in B2B product  portfolio management. This article was originally published on the Proficientz blog in January 2012.

Related posts:

1. The 3 Biggest Hurdles to Greater Strategic Influence
2. Guest Post: If Product Marketing is so Strategic, why do I always get stuck in the weeds?
3. Questions for Product Managers
4. The Essential Pieces of Strategic Product Leaders

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

Is it just me or does the chorus of the Zeppelin song “Communication Breakdown” pop into your head every time you think of issues related to feedback management and communication in the workplace?

[Chorus]

Communication Breakdown, It’s always the same,

I’m having a nervous breakdown, Drive me insane!

It’s probably just me. I digress.

One of the key components of successful collaboration is sharing feedback. Naturally, we know the importance of directly collecting feedback from customers, but what about collecting insight from internal stakeholders like Sales, Customer Service and Marketing? These units also have many suggestions and ideas on how to improve products/services.

On the front lines, they interact with customers on many levels and at different touch points. They listen and respond to customer feedback and are strategically positioned to collect and communicate valuable insights on products and services. It is therefore essential to the development and delivery of more customer-centric products that a product manager actively collaborates with these key players.

Looking at the challenges of collaboration through the lens of the product manager we can attest to the complexity of teamwork. It’s widely understood that product managers, often wear many different hats and the conflicting demands on their time are high. They are constantly fielding requests and questions from practically everyone. Sales pressures the design of new product components that meet customer demands and help them make their sales targets. Marketing needs detailed documentation to properly position the brand and products in the marketplace. Customer service sends a constant flow of questions and customer complaints that require immediate attention, and so on and so forth.

The reality is that all of this crucial information exchanged during this time often fails to get communicated or does not get to the people that need it most, in a timely way. This process breaks down even further when geographically dispersed teams are added to the mix. When information falls through the cracks or is received in an unusable format, opportunities are lost. Designing a feedback system based on the fundamental principles of collaboration between departments or diverse teams can greatly improve the flow of information within the product development process.

4 ways to harness collaboration in your product development process

Here are four things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your organization’s feedback system. The corresponding suggestions for tools help you improve collaboration in your organization:                       

Encourage sharing of product-related feedback across your organization

How often does Sales share critical feedback from customers? Does your Marketing team offer suggestions for product improvements? If your customer service team is receiving numerous complaints about a specific feature of your product, are you notified?

You owe it to yourself and the success of your next product launch, to take a minute and examine the entire process of sharing feedback throughout your organization. By doing so, you may uncover that the ‘silo effect’ is limiting your ability to respond quickly to important internal and external feedback. An antithesis to the principles of open collaboration across departmental boundaries, the silo effect stifles creativity and growth.

Use tools to gather and manage effective feedback

Are you buried in survey responses and complicated data from customer questionnaires? Do the tools you currently use really help you address every aspect of the feedback process? Web-based idea management tools are effective tools for capturing, organizing and elaborating on feedback. Requirements management tools help you translate large volumes of customer insight into actionable product requirements.

Tools must also be designed to facilitate bringing together internal and external stakeholders, such as business partners, employees and especially customers. This ensures everyone has a voice in the process and that feedback is accessible across departments such as Sales, Customer Support, Marketing, Product Development, Engineering and Production.

Centralize and organize  product feedback

Busy defining product requirements for an upcoming product release? Having a centralized and well organized product feedback system will help ensure nothing falls to the wayside. Virtual workspaces are a great way to maintain requisite resources focused on particular topics and share their resources through collaboration.

Evaluating the effectiveness of how your product feedback is organized must be made from the perspective of the various departments and teams. Be sure to include them in establishing evaluation criteria and in performing the assessment. Everyone’s needs must be considered and everyone must participate in the design of a well organized product feedback system.

Tie feedback to the entire product development process

One of the most important elements of the feedback process is taking the collected feedback and actually incorporating it into your product or service strategy. When you explore how the feedback you collect is used at different stages of the product development process, you can uncover bottlenecks that stifle the flow of information.

Product-related data must be seamlessly integrating into the product and service development and delivery processes. This means that information captured in one stage of the product workflow is moved downstream to affect change to development. After all, feedback is useless unless someone uses it to make improvements at every step of the development process.

While it may seem impossible at times, encouraging the sharing of ideas can help transform your products into great ones. By exploring these four questions, I am confident that you can find effective and perhaps innovative ways to harness the infinite power of collaboration and avoid major “collaboration breakdowns”.

Catherine Constantinides works at OneDesk, a developer of social business applications that connect employees, business partners and customers to the product development process. She is also a regular presenter during OneDesk’s weekly webinars.

Oh…and she loves Led Zeppelin.

Tweet this: How to deal with Collaboration Breakdown http://wp.me/pXBON-3cO #innovation #prodmgmt

Related posts:

1. What’s the deal with Software Product Management?
2. Guest Post: What can Tacos Teach Product Managers about Social Product Development?
3. Guest Post: 3 Steps to a More Effective Voice of the Customer Program
4. Usability is all in the details

By Saeed Khan

One question that came up at ProductCamp Austin, and that comes up often in discussions about Product Management responsibilities, is how to manage (and deliver) on all the demands made on product managers and product marketers.

I have a simple rule that I follow, and have followed for a long time.

If I’m not adding value to a situation or process, then I have no business being a part of that situation or process.

I can observe of course, but I should not be an active participant.

As an example, during my first month at a new job, someone from Engineering came up to me and asked me to get the latest version of HP-UX as Engineering had some work that needed that latest version.

I looked at the person, and said, “Why are you asking me?”

He said, matter of factly, “Oh. The product manager before you used to deal with all this and get us 3rd party software.”

I responded, “OK. That may have been what the previous product manager did, but that’s not my responsibility. You should be able to get that directly from HP without my help.”

The conversation ended and I don’t recall ever being asked for new OS versions again.

While a minor incident, this example is repeated far too often by people who, just wanting to help, or not knowing how to say “No”, acquiesce to tasks where they simply add no value. It’s time wasted that could be spent on more productive work.

Don’t confuse process with progress

On the flip side, there are people who think they are adding value, but in fact more than often than not, are actually impeding progress. These are people who confuse following a process with making progress, or are simply acting as a checklist monkey.

I’ve seen people like this. They send lots of emails, schedule lots of meetings, keep elaborate spreadsheets of activities, and yet, when you look back at the results of all those activities, it’s shocking how little value they’ve added overall.

• What positive change have they made to the product or sales/marketing process?
• Does their net contribution (i.e. minus the emails, meetings, spreadsheets etc.) “move the needle” in any significant way?
• Or are they simply a middle-man (or woman) handing off tasks to others and making excuses when the spotlight shines on them?

Are we adding value yet?

It’s a simple question we should all ask ourselves. Are we adding value? And if so, how much? How could we improve ourselves so that we can add more value in the future.

And we need to be honest, because even the best of us has room for improvement.

• How many customers do you speak with every month? How can you raise that number?
• How many prospects are you in contact with (while working with Sales) every month? Is that sufficient?
• Is your market knowledge, understanding of the buyer and competition better this quarter than it was last quarter? If not, why not?
• How well do you enable other teams to do their jobs better every quarter? Can you do better?
• Are you easy to work with or do you force others to bend to your way of doing things?
• What gripes do your coworkers have about your performance? How could you improve yourself in those areas?

These are all fundamental questions we should ask ourselves. We need to be in a process of continuous improvement, and only by doing that can we continue to add value in our roles.

Saeed

Tweet this: Add value or get out of the way! http://wp.me/pXBON-3bl #prodmgmt #prodmktg #innovation #pcatx

Related posts:

1. Should I deliver bad news?
2. How to achieve, lose, regain and maintain Product/Channel fit
3. Why and How to Hold a Mid-Year Product Review
4. Reorg time: Put PMs and PMMs in the same department!

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.

—

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

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: 3 Steps to a More Effective Voice of the Customer Program
2. Guest Post: The need for Empathy in Product Management
3. Guest Post: What can Tacos Teach Product Managers about Social Product Development?
4. Guest Post: Awareness, Persuasion and Shelf Life

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

Related posts:

1. Good Bye “Product Owner”, Hello “Backlog Manager”
2. A new (and better) definition for Product Owner
3. The Scrum Title “Product Owner” must die!
4. Why the “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs

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

—

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.

——-

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.

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2. Guest Post: Web Product Management 101 for “Offline” Managers
3. Guest Post: Why Social Media is not working for you: A Wake-up call
4. What Origami can teach us about Product Requirements

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

Related posts:

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2. Please delete your first three slides (or move them)
3. Curious people can change the world: +1 for ProductCamp Austin

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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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

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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”)

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