Thanks to all of you who voted, the FIRST ROUND of the Canadian Blog Awards.  We’re 1 of 5 finalists.

OK…actually, thanks to the 16 of you who voted and helped us barely squeak into the final round of the Best Professional Blog category in the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards!

Click the image to expand.

Come on folks, we need your support! We can’t let a basketball blog win this can we? No. So here’s all you have to do to give us a great little present for the holiday season. And it won’t cost you a penny!

But do it right away. Don’t delay. The Voting closes on Dec. 19th!

1. Click on the voting link ==>> here.  <<==

2. Select On Product Management as your #1 choice!

3. Click the Vote button.

4. Enjoy the good karma for the rest of the holiday season.

Thanks

Given the Copenhagen Summit this week (I have low expectations of that BTW), I thought I’d present my own ecologically themed piece.

Computer hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. It’s almost unbelievable how much computing power and utility we can purchase today, compared to just 3 or 5 years ago. This is true for servers, storage, printers, monitors, networking equipment etc.

But, as our needs grow, or hardware fails, and new equipment arrives, what do we do with the old equipment? One area of personal frustration with computer hardware is with low end home/office printers. Printers can be bought new (or refurbished) for less than the cost of the replace ink/toner for those very same printers.

I wrote about the crazy pricing model of computer printers here. It’s been a couple of years since I wrote that and unfortunately the time has come to replace one of my printers (again)!

Canon, can you spare a print head

This time, it’s a Canon MP 610 printer. It’s actually a nice printer. It does all the usual stuff — scanning, printing, copying etc. It has independent ink cartridges for every colour so you only need to refill what you use. In fact, it has 2 black ink cartridges. One is used for text and is large capacity. The other is used for images and is “normal” size.

So what happened? To make a long story short. The printer won’t print black text through the large capacity black text cartridge. Apparently, we don’t use the printer “enough” and the print head got clogged. And apparently, this clogging is a common problem when ink-jet printers are not used regularly.  Given the price I pay for ink-jet ink, why would I use it for printing text. I use my laser printer for that!

I tried to remedy the problem, but no amount of self cleaning via the printer’s maintenance program would fix the problem. So I took it to a printer repair store. The guy there said the print head was blocked and he’d try to clean it. After cleaning, he put it back in the printer and the printer refused to accept it. A message was displayed on the screen indicating the print head was not installed.

What if a spark plug cost $1000?

The remedy? Get a new print head. I called Canon Canada. They passed me to a parts supplier. The parts supplier quoted me a price of $119 for the print head!

The entire printer (with ink!) is available online for about $150 and they’re charging me $119 for a print head. Oh yeah, and all sales are final, so if the new print head doesn’t remedy the problem, I’m out $120. Would people stand for this price gouging if it were applied to car parts?

So now I have a useless printer. And this is not the first time this happened. I had the exact same problem occur with an all-in-one Epson printer (shown at right).

Can I send my junk into the Sun?

The Epson printer is in a box in my basement. I didn’t want to take it and dump it at the landfill. Now I have 2 printers that are useless to me.

And in case you are wondering, whether I’m getting another printer. The answer is yes.  My kids do use the colour printer for school projects. So what’s my solution?

I was tempted to buy a Canon MP 640. It’s a really nice printer. It’s like my 610 but has wireless and Ethernet networking support and a few other bonuses. Price would be about $200. But I decided against that.

For $39 — less than the cost of ink cartridges – I bought a Canon MP150. Actually I bought 2 of them! Why? Free shipping for orders over $50. Not quite as “nice” as the 640, but at 20% of the price of a replacement printer, and 33% of the price of the print head, it’s more than going to meet my kids’ needs. It also won’t dent my wallet too much either. And when the first one goes belly up, which it definitely will,  I’ll have a full second printer to replace it.

Am I proud of this conspicuous consumption? No.

Do I like all this technojunk I’m accumulating? Absolutely not.

But this is the result of ridiculous pricing policies and poor product design from printer manufacturers. Whether Epson, Canon, HP or anyone else; they’re all guilty of driving people to this behaviour.

• If the replacement print head were $50 and there was an option to return it, I’d have bought that without question. I’m sure that price still gives Canon a healthy profit margin.
• If these printers weren’t made with built-in obsolescence — why do the print heads constantly get blocked?? — I wouldn’t have to keep buying printers.
• If these companies sold original printer ink at reasonable prices, I’d actually use more of it, continue to buy their inks and continue to give them a revenue stream.
• If there were easy to access recycling and recovery programs SPONSORED by these manufacturers, most of this technojunk wouldn’t end up in landfill. And I’d be more inclined to purchase from those manufacturers.

I’m one person, and in a span of a few years, I’ve purchased 4 ink jet printers. Now multiply that by the millions of people who, like me, have similar problems and you see the scope of the problem.  Is this an ecologically sustainable system? Absolutely not.

If there is anyone reading this who works in the printer industry and would like to respond, I really want to hear from  you.

Saeed

P.S.

As mentioned at the top of the article, this technojunk problem is rampant within technology and not just with printers.  I have a couple of wired routers, a Wireless B router, a old cable modem, computer speakers, keyboards, old desktop PC cases, several burnt out motherboards and hard drives (internal and external) all collecting dust in my basement. I’m not a pack rat, but I loathe just taking this to the landfill.

I also have a 19 inch ViewSonic LCD monitor that stopped working 18 months after I bought it. Reparing it would cost more than the monitor’s purchase price.  It’s also in my basement collecting dust as I don’t want to take that to the dump either. Any suggestions on what to do with that? I’m sure it’s simply a circuity problem and the LCD is fully intact. Anyone know how I can use it to create a digital picture frame?

This is part 3 of a series of guest posts by Don Vendetti. Don is the founder of Product Arts, a product management consulting company in Seattle.

NOTE: If you’d like to write a guest post, contact us and let us know about your idea.

——-

In part 1 and part 2 respectively, I discussed the answers I received from company executives on the following questions.

1. What is the value that product management brings to your company?
2. How would you measure success for the group and individuals? i.e. on what metrics would you reward them?

In this part, I’ll look at the following question.

Question #3:  Is Product Management Effective, in Your Experience?

The dominant answer here was a resounding SOMETIMES.    I’ll let some comments speak for themselves.

(VP Eng) “Never adequately. It’s a tall order and they are often placed in the organization where they cannot succeed or with unenlightened leadership. If they are in sales they become too deal / feature / near term focused. If they are in engineering they become too development / feature / development focused. If they are in marketing they become too abstract and disconnected. Ideally they are in line of business management reporting directly to an SBU Manager or GM. Where they have done best it was where the corporate imperatives were obvious, and they were well connected and led.”

(VP Ops) “Currently, our model defines product management in terms of marketing activities, so the value is less than optimal.”

(GM) “Yes, the good ones. As always, if their direction is good, and they have goals that make sense, and they are managed, they can usually meet or exceed their goals.”

(VP Eng) “Both successful & unsuccessful.   Needs to have an environment for success – expectations, aligned groups, business goals.  PM needs to stay outwardly focused.   Needs to bring customer into the company.”

(Program Mgmt/Former VP Mkt) “For Agile shops, the product owner role is critical and delivers great value to the business and to dev teams — the product cannot be built without one.  For more waterfall oriented shops, it can be tricky.  I find that product managers that seek to translate market requirements (from marketing/ customer facing teams) into product specs for engineering program managers will often deliver dubious value.  It is best if the product manager is closer to either the customer (e.g. product marketing manager), or to the developers (e.g. program manager) to avoid being an odd-man out. “

Summary

Let’s compare where we ended up as the primary value of Product Management with the Mandate previously posted on this site:

They are both in the same ballpark with regards to business and products, but there is definitely a divergence beyond that, with the Mandate missing the key element of MARKET NEEDS.

It is a primary expectation of company executives that product management is a bridge between the internal functions and understanding the market needs and this got lost in the Mandate.

Where we still don’t have clear guidelines are the actual measurements to use, but we do have a general direction in which we need to head.   It is imperative for product management to be able to tie their activities to measurable business results to be perceived as adding value for executives.

These do not have to be tied directly to revenue or profit, but there is ideally some way to tie to leading indicators of them – usage, penetration, retention, quality, cost, etc.

If the feature sets you’re prioritizing or the activities you’re doing do not somehow support an improvement in these indicators, it’s time to rethink what you’re doing… pronto.   It also important that you communicate where you’re impacting business level results so that the execs are aware of it.

I have also personally found that the “intangibles” carry a much higher weight than emerged from these exec comments.   Be assured that even if there is no formal process for measuring how you are perceived in the organization, you are constantly being assessed for leadership skills and ability to collaborate and facilitate internally and externally.   These will ultimately steer your career progression.

Lastly, it’s clear from the final comments that product management success is strongly correlated to a supportive organization with clearly defined roles, objectives and mission.   If you find yourself in a company without these, it’s time to exercise some leadership to help create them or to perhaps move on to greener pastures.    It’s really not that much fun to continue to struggle where personal success is unlikely.

Don

Related Posts

Measuring Product Management (part 1)
Measuring Product Management (part 2)
Measuring Product Management (part 3)

We’re happy to report that we’ve been nominated again for the Canadian blog Awards.

But we’re also tired of never winning! So help us win an award (or 2). If we win, we’ll do something really nice for you, we promise.

This year, we’re nominated in two categories:

• Best Professional Life Blog
• Best Group Blog

There will be 2 rounds of voting:

Round 1: Dec. 1 – 12 (determines finalists)
Round 2: Dec. 13 – 19 (picks the winners)

HELP US BECOME A FINALIST!!!

The first step is to make it to round 2! The voting mechanism is pretty straight forward.

1. Go to the voting page in each category. Use the following links.

• Professional Life Category
• Group Blog Category

2. Select us as your first choice

3. Vote for anyone else you want (hopefully ranking them lower than us!)

4. Click VOTE at the bottom of the form.

5. Tell all your friends to do the same via your  blog, Twitter, email etc.

Thanks.

Posted in Admin, Greed, Leadership, Marketing, Product Management Tagged: Canadian Blog Awards ]]> http://onproductmanagement.net/2009/12/02/vote-for-us-in-the-canadian-blog-awards/feed/ 2 Saeed canblogawards can-blog-awards http://onproductmanagement.net/2009/12/01/guest-post-measuring-product-management-part-2/ http://onproductmanagement.net/2009/12/01/guest-post-measuring-product-management-part-2/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:03:13 +0000 saeed http://onproductmanagement.net/?p=3629 ]]>

This is part 2 of a series of guest posts by Don Vendetti. Don is the founder of Product Arts, a product management consulting company in Seattle.

NOTE: If you’d like to write a guest post, contact us and let us know about your idea.

——

In part 1, I described my conversations with some industry executives on the question:

What is Product Management’s overall value to your company?

The answers were quite interesting. In this part, I’ll look at the following question:

Question #2:  How would you measure success for the group and individuals?

This question generated a few different discussions and in many instances I got the response “they SHOULD be measured on…”, which indicated their expectations and reality are different.

That being said, most respondents were strongly on the side of tying rewards to business results.    These included:

• (#1 by a wide margin) Meeting product business plans and forecasts for revenue and profitability
• Achieving key business objectives for the specific period, including meeting delivery milestones for releases and launches
• Achieving key market metrics – adoption and usage, penetration and market share, customer satisfaction and retention

Only a few mentioned the difficulty of looking at current business results only, such as revenue, while needing the product manager to be focused on producing future business results.

One also recognized there may be multiple product managers on a large product, with revenue difficult to associate to each.

These advocated a more blended set of measurements that included specific assigned metrics or deliverables within a specific period.

Product quality was mentioned a few times, and included measurements such as returned product, trouble tickets submitted, major bugs found and SLA performance.

There were also some who raised the need to include some “intangibles”, specifically around how well the individuals were perceived in the organization.

This included satisfaction ratings of internal stakeholders based on timely and effective support of other functional groups, how well they performed at driving product delivery and resolution of issues, how well they collaborated with others, and in providing general leadership.

To capture the intangibles, a few companies performed peer reviews or 360 degree reviews on a regular basis.

A few highlighted that the metrics used for a B2B company versus a B2C were somewhat different.

In the B2B company, responsiveness and effectiveness in supporting a direct sales team for major accounts was a key need.

In a B2C company, there may be less on-demand support of the sales channel, and a higher emphasis on marketing and usage metrics.   (As with everything else, this is probably highly variable from company to company, but may be worth a whole separate article.)

Specific comments included:

(CEO) “I am sure every company is different, but revenue, customer retention, customer satisfaction, net promoter score, and market share (are the measures of success).”

(VP Biz Dev/PM) “We measure and reward based on a combination of product performance in market and other metrics related to on-time delivery for new products, quality metrics, and other qualitative measures based on the PM’s role in providing timely and effective support to marketing, sales, and other functions.”

(CEO) “The success metric has to be on net contribution.  Given the lifecycle stage of the product, it may even be managing losses during the formative stages, but ultimately, the only goal of any product is to make money.  The market is the best indicator of success. If quality is down, sales will be off or returns high. If the product doesn’t meet needs, there will be no sales.  If the product is a poor value against the competition… you get the idea.”

Take-Away

The key take-away from this section is the expectation level of the senior executives on product management being measured against business results.  These other executives are heavily dependent on product management for making the right product choices to ensure business success, and they believe product managers should be tied to company results, just as the execs are.

With business results emerging as the top priority, I would reorder and rework my previous value list to be:

• Delivers measurable business results through product solutions that meet both market needs and company goals.
• This is accomplished through:
  • Creating a shared awareness of the customer and market needs to the internal functions
  • Shaping the product solution and delivery plan
  • Facilitating and supporting cross-functional and external activities required to achieve the planned objectives

So how well does Product Management do at meeting expectations? I’ll get to that in part 3.

Don

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Related Posts

Measuring Product Management (part 1)
Measuring Product Management (part 2)
Measuring Product Management (part 3)

This is part 1 of a series of guest posts by Don Vendetti. Don is the founder of Product Arts, a product management consulting company in Seattle.

NOTE: If you’d like to write a guest post, contact us and let us know about your idea.

——

Measuring Product Management – The Executive Viewpoint

There have been plenty of discussions about how to measure and demonstrate the value of Product Management within companies.    From posts on this site:

• VP of Engineering has a mandate. You need one too.
• Product Management Metrics (part 1)
• Proiduct Management Metrics (part 2)

and from a recent roundtable at the October Seattle ProductCamp, there’s an obvious challenge for the profession.

I decided to follow the prescribed Product Management protocol – I went out and talked to my customers.

Here’s the feedback from some senior executives running technology companies.

My list of execs is comprised of 12 individuals from my contact list, most of whom I’ve worked with at some point and are now scattered around in varying roles.   All have been on the senior executive staff of at least one company.

Most are in the Seattle area, some are CEO/COOs, some are technical heads, some are marketing heads and several have worn multiple hats – business development, engineering, marketing, general manager, program management.   Some have been product managers at some point or managed it as a function.

Company size varied from multi-billion dollar enterprises to startups still trying to get off the ground.

I contacted them through email initially with 3 questions:

1. What is the value that product management brings to your company or to your department?
2. How would you measure success for the group and individuals, i.e. on what metrics would you reward them?
3. (Bonus question) Have you found product management to be effective in meeting the goals, in your experience.

On some of the responses, I probed further through email or met with them in person to discuss.   Some responses were intriguing.

Question 1.  What is product management’s overall value to your company?

There was a strong agreement of the strategic value expected from product management, and that fell into a few categories:

• Bringing an understanding of the customer and the market into the company
• Creating a vision, direction, and focus for the product internally and externally
• Defining product/business plans to meet company strategy and objectives
• Evangelizing the market needs and product solutions internally

At a tactical level, the front-runners were:

• Managing product features, product requirements, competitive analysis, prioritization and roadmaps
• Working with and supporting other functional groups – development, sales, support, marketing

Some comments included:

(VP Eng) “Product Management needs to be the voice of the customer AND the business and they need to advocate for both.”

(VP Biz Dev/PM) “Product management provides a key linkage between our end customers, the field sales and support organizations that support them, our engineering and QA teams responsible for product innovation and delivery, and our executive team from an overall company and product strategy perspective.”

(COO) “Overall product direction and roadmap, clearinghouse for requirements, driver of product delivery.”

(VP Eng) “Right brain, big picture, strategy, positioning, how to win in the market.  Bring customer view into company.  Outline the product needed.   Evangelize the product internally.”

(VP Corp Dev) “Ability to distill corporate goals and objectives and customer / market needs into products (services / solutions) that are built and sold at positive margins!  That includes not just having the bright ideas, but the organizational savvy to make them real.”

Some interesting comments came from multiple respondents involved in Agile. They indicated the value of product management is even higher in that environment.  Working as the Product Owners with Development seems to raise their visibility as an integral piece of the machine.

(VP Eng) “In the modern world of Agile the product management role is even more critical. They are often embedded in a SCRUM team as a product owner or business owner. These highly cross-functional teams can move quickly and demand that the role is in touch with the business and on-demand available to the team – in early iterations for prototyping and market validation, in mid iterations for feature build-out and in late iterations for sustaining and ongoing investments.”

Take-Away

If I rephrase some of the key expectations from above, here is what I come up for the primary value product management brings to a company:

• Creates a shared awareness of the customer and market needs to the internal functions
• Drives product solutions that meet both market  needs and company goals
• Facilitates and supports cross-functional and external activities required to achieve the planned objectives

So if this is what is valued, then what is actually measured?    I’ll get to that in part 2.

Don

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Related Posts

Measuring Product Management (part 1)
Measuring Product Management (part 2)
Measuring Product Management (part 3)

Last week I participated in the 1st Annual PMEC Battle of the Bloggers. Out of a field of about 10 contestants, I placed second in the competition. Curse you April Dunford! I can honestly say you phoned it in, but somehow you won.

And while I’d love to find video of the actual event [hint hint to anyone who was there with a video camera!], here’s the next best thing. It’s a recording of my presentation for your viewing and listening pleasure. It’s not quite as good as being there, but then whose fault is that?

NOTE: Make sure you have the sound on otherwise it won’t make a lot of sense.

NOTE: Make sure you have the sound on otherwise it won’t make a lot of sense.

Ethan

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Brand extension occurs when a company intentionally takes a well known brand and applies it to another product category. Companies extend their brands quite regularly.The objective is to take advantage of the awareness of the brand, reach new audiences, and ultimately make more money.

For example, Arm and Hammer moved from Baking Soda into Dental Hygiene products.  They utilized their association with cleanliness and fighting germs and odor and found a space in a new market (though their competitors are aggressively fighting back).

And the Virgin brand has been successfully extended from records to airlines to mobile phones and even to space travel (Virgin Galactic).

Of course, brand extension doesn’t always work. McDonald’s had a significant failure with their McPizza offering. And does anyone remember LifeSavers soda? Coors Spring Water? Or Colgate Kitchen Entrees? (I kid you not!)

Another form of Brand Extension is when two well known brands, are brought together. One very successful example of this is the Lego Star Wars toys and games.

I believe the reason for this success is that there is overlap in the market segments of people who like Lego and those who like Star Wars.  i.e. mostly male, but with an age range skewed much higher than the typical target audience for Lego.

Those of us who grew up playing with Lego and saw the original Star Wars movies in the theaters can now spend some more money on the combination of those two passions, or introduce our children to them.

But this kind of combination doesn’t always work. Lego recently announced a new game for the Wii, entitled Lego Rock Band.

There is whole family of Rock Band games including:

• Rock Band (2007)
• Rock Band 2 (2008)
• Rock Band Unplugged (2009)
• The Beatles: Rock Band (2009)
• Lego Rock Band (2009)

Who is the target audience for Lego Rock Band? And will this game appeal to them?

The songs provided with the game are a curious mix of hits from various decades, with music from:

• Jimi Hendrix, The Jackson 5
• The Police, David Bowie
• Carl Douglas (gotta love “Kung Fu Fighting”)
• Foo Fighters, Bon Jovi
• Spinal Tap (set the volume to 11)
• Queen, Pink
• Iggy Pop (yeah, this guy ===>)
• Elton John, Korn
• Counting Crows
• and KT Tunstall (Who???)

to name just a few.

Forget about the video game for a second. Who would be the target for  that group of musicians????

Now combine the Rock Band portion, and maybe you’ll get some eclectic rocker/video game enthusiasts.

Now combine in the Lego theme, and who’s left? Young videogame playing, Lego fanboys who like 1970s punk rock?

Perhaps I’m not the target audience for this? I do own a Wii, and I actually do like some of the musicians listed above, and I did like Lego as a kid. But combining them all into a Rock Band game? I don’t think so.

Am I wrong here? Let me know.

Saeed

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It must be that time of year. We have been nominated (for the second year running) for the ComputerWeekly IT Blog awards. And just like last year, you can vote for us in 3 easy steps.

1. Click the “VOTE FOR ME” image on the right (or click here).
2. Scroll down to the IT Project Management category (#7) and select our blog ( On Product Management ) from the list.

3. Scroll down a bit further and press Done.

That’s it.

One more thing. Don’t let the fact that this is a ProJECT Management category fool you. There are other ProDUCT management blogs listed, and one of the criteria is that nominated blogs have covered Project Management topics such as Agile. And we’ve definitely covered that topic on this blog.

• Agile/Scrum and Product Management (parts 1, 2, 3, 3a, and 4)
• Agile/Scrum Reality Check
• The Value of Scrum
• Agile/Scrum and Product Roadmaps
• A 5th Element for the Agile Manifesto
• Is Product Management Agile?

Thanks

Congratulations to April Dunford of RocketWatcher, and our own Ethan Henry for coming in first and second respectively at the PMEC Battle of the Bloggers in San Jose, CA today. There was stiff competition from a number of prominent bloggers including Michael Ray Hopkin, Tom Grant, Ivan Chalif, and the team from Brainmates in Australia.

Here are a few tweets about April’s and Ethan’s performances.

And here are the official results.

Congrats also to Tom Grant, Ivan Chalif and Ivan Lybbert.

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