BOSSES, DEALS AND CODE - MANAGING UP OUT AND INJay Bourland jay.bourland@gmail.com http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jay-bourland/4/4/499

THREE ROLES OF A PRODUCT MANAGER

Executive

Sales

Technical

EXECUTIVE

Defining a Market - “Is it real?”

Product lifecycle

Operational readiness

IT ALL STARTS WITH A PROBLEM…

What problem are you solving?

Who has this problem?

Who are you selling to?

How many are there?

How much will they pay?

Why will they buy from you?

ACT YOUR AGE…

You have to know where you are in the product’s lifecycle. The decisions we make in the beginning are very different from those of a mature product.

http://www.chasminstitute.com

ALL OF THE RESPONSIBILITY, NONE OF THE AUTHORITY

You need to own (or act like you own) your P&L

Can your organization build, deliver, sell and service the solution?

Do you understand the abilities of engineering, devops/delivery, marketing, sales and pre-sales, finance, support, services, …?

Can you change them if you need to do so?

SALES

Understanding your customers’ needs - “Can we win?"

Turning needs into releases

Turning needs into marketing messages

RELIEVING PAIN

Your product is solving a pain point for your user

The critical question - “If there are two solutions to the problem, how will the buyer decide which one is better?”

FEATURE QUADRANT

Plot each feature based on importance to customer and differentiation in market

The upper right quadrant needs to align with the core of your product team

The lower right needs to be good enough - any more is effort that could be spent on stuff that matters

Find ways not to spend your precious resources on the left side

Importance

Diff

eren

tiatio

n Core

Parity

Partner

Why Bother?

Interview several users/buyers of your product (not just your customers)

Develop a set of features that strike a common chord in the solution description

Survey on the importance of the feature and how satisfied the user is currently

Look for high importance + high gap

Watch out for high importance with small or over-met satisfaction

A MORE RIGOROUS APPROACH

FEATURE IMPORTANCE SATISFACTION PRIORITY

A 9 8.5 9.5

B 8 5 11

DON’T BE THESE GUYS

PLANNING A RELEASE

Lifecycle is critical

Market matters - understand the uncompromisable parts

You won’t really understand what the customers’ need until they get it

Whatever you’re planning - it’s too much

A release starts the work - it doesn’t end it

TECHNICAL

Roadmaps matter - “Is it worth it?”

Bugs and features

Working with the product team

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”

IT’S NOT SHELF WARE (I HOPE)

One customer does not make a market

Markets are made of single customers

Turn your customers into advocates

Be skeptical of buying-cycle bugs, focus on your customers

EMPOWER YOUR TEAM

Engineering practice will tell you to be available about 80% of the time

Market practice will tell you to spend 50% of your time in the field with customers and prospects

Managing all of the reporting will probably eat another 20%

And then there’s sales, marketing, support,…

PARTING ADVICE…

–Charlie O’Donnell http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2012/7/12/fall-in-love-with-the-problem-not-the-product.html

“Fall in love with the problem, not the product”

REFERENCES

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

Dealing with Darwin - Geoffrey Moore

Setting the Table - Danny Meyer

What Customers Want - Anthony Ulwick

Stand Back and Deliver - Pixton, Nickolaisen, Little, McDonald

Is It Real? Can We Win? Is It Worth Doing?: Managing Risk and Reward in an Innovation Portfolio - Harvard Business Review December, 2007 - George S Day