One of the challenges facing product managers is how to manage the product development and release process so that other teams in the organizations are involved and informed. I have found that having scheduled "information" milestones coupled with a multi-discipline product release team usually simplify this process.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Embracing User Innovation
The Fall edition of MIT's Sloan Review - titled "The Age of the Consumer-Innovator" - contains a number of articles on how consumers innovate to extend and enhance products they use to better suit their individual needs. A prominent researcher and author in the area of consumer (or user) innovation is MIT's Professor Eric von Hippel. A lot of Professor von Hippel's research is summarized in his e-book Democratizing Innovation, which is definitely worth reading. The book highlights research conducted with 3M that showed that innovations generated by users of 3M products were forecast to generate eight times more revenues than those innovations generated internally within 3M. Furthermore, these user innovations were more strategically important to 3M, had a higher probability of success, and provided a greater competitive differential than the internally generated innovations. All in all, a very compelling argument for embracing innovations that are generated by users. The real question is how can you do this? How can you tap into the inventiveness of your customer base and leverage their ideas and innovations to the betterment of your products?
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Win/Loss Surveys - What to Ask
OK...so you've decide to perform some win/loss analysis...you've either lined up some customers for interviews or you've decide to run an online survey (see my earlier post about this). Now you must decide what questions you are going to ask. This will determine whether your win/loss analysis provides a unique insight into the buyer's selection criteria and how your product's features and positioning match up to these criteria...or whether the responses you get from the customers will be the usual 'politically correct' platitudes.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
The Challenges of Win/Loss Analysis
Every company should perform win/loss analysis. It is an effective tool for determining how well your products and sales/marketing pitch are targeted to the buyer's needs. It can also highlight areas of weakness when compared to your competitors products and pitch. However, one of the greatest challenges facing a product manager when performing win/loss analysis is how to get meaningful feedback that is not biased.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Using Social Software to Gather Requirements
One of the challenges facing product managers is how to gather feedback and new requirements from customers so that they are representative of the customer base and not just one-off features for a given customer. This problem has exacerbated with the current economic downturn as travel and conference budgets have been slashed, making it even harder for the product managers to get in front of customers and hear their opinions. However, within the past couple of years, new 'social software' products have emerged onto the market which allow product managers to gather feedback and requirements from all of their customers. The first popular use of this 'crowd sourcing' software was Dell's Idea Storm.
Product Strategy Tools - Ansoff's Product-Market Matrix
Overview
Igor Ansoff created a simple 2x2 matrix to illustrate the different potential strategies that a business can utilize in order to grow. The grid consists of products - existing and new - and markets - also existing and new i.e.
Ansoff Matrix
Igor Ansoff created a simple 2x2 matrix to illustrate the different potential strategies that a business can utilize in order to grow. The grid consists of products - existing and new - and markets - also existing and new i.e.
Existing Markets |
||
New Markets |
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Extended RACI Charts - Update
I have uploaded the extended RACI chart spreadsheet to Google Docs and you can now view an example RACI chart. The CTP/Beta Program sheet is filled out as an example of what a RACI chart looks like. I have added conditional formatting to color code the cells according to the role assigned to them. The link for the spreadsheet is here. You can also download the RACI chart as an Excel spreadsheet, so that you can customize the tasks and stakeholders to suit your own organization.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Housewives with Flair
An interesting title for a post about User Interface (UI) design!
Recently there was a discussion on the Pragmatic Marketing Alumni group on LinkedIn regarding who should have the final say on the design of the user interface for a product - the UI Designer or the product manager? There were various opinions expressed in the discussion ranging from "it should the product manager as he or she is responsible for the overall product" to "the UI designer" to "no-one...the market will decide".
The discussion reminded me of an anecdote told to me by a VC executive a couple of years ago. Martin, the VC executive, was hosting a dinner party for some friends and his sister was one of the guests. He overheard his wife introducing his sister to some other guests and describing her as an interior decorator. His sister took offense at this description and said "No Sweetie. I am an interior designer. I went to college for four years to become an interior designer. Interior decorators are merely housewives with flair."
Who Does What? Using Extended RACI Charts
One of the challenges for any product manager is making sure that things that are supposed to be done actually get done. This is why I sometimes describe product managers as 'Chief Cat-herders'. Before you can start tracking that tasks are completed on time, you need to agree who is responsible for performing these task in the first place. Without this, the tasks will not be completed as everyone will be thinking that someone else is doing the work. This is where RACI charts are useful...
Friday, September 23, 2011
Product Strategy Tools - GE/McKinsey Portfolio Matrix
Overview
The GE/McKinsey Mulitfactor Portfolio matrix was developed as a more sophisticated version of the BCG Growth-Share matrix. In a similar manner to the BCG matrix, the GE/McKinsey matrix plots "Market Attractiveness" against "Business Strength" (i.e. the competitiveness of the business unit or product in the market). Whereas the BCG matrix uses growth as a measure of market attractiveness and market share as a measure of business strength or competitiveness, the GE/McKinsey matrix uses multiple criteria to determine these values. This provides a more realistic measure than the simplistic measures used by the BCG matrix. The GE/McKinsey matrix is also divided into a 3x3 grid (see below) to provide a more fine grained view of the strategic position of a business unit or product than the simple 2x2 BCG matrix.
The GE/McKinsey Mulitfactor Portfolio matrix was developed as a more sophisticated version of the BCG Growth-Share matrix. In a similar manner to the BCG matrix, the GE/McKinsey matrix plots "Market Attractiveness" against "Business Strength" (i.e. the competitiveness of the business unit or product in the market). Whereas the BCG matrix uses growth as a measure of market attractiveness and market share as a measure of business strength or competitiveness, the GE/McKinsey matrix uses multiple criteria to determine these values. This provides a more realistic measure than the simplistic measures used by the BCG matrix. The GE/McKinsey matrix is also divided into a 3x3 grid (see below) to provide a more fine grained view of the strategic position of a business unit or product than the simple 2x2 BCG matrix.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Product Strategy Tools - BCG Growth-Share Matrix
Overview
In the early 1970's the Boston Consulting Group developed a model for managing a portfolio of different business units (or major product lines). The BCG growth-share matrix displays the various business units on a graph of the market growth rate vs. market share relative to competitors. The graph is a simple 2x2 grid that creates four quadrants. Each of the firm’s products is plotted into one of the cells of the matrix identified as stars (high share/high growth), question marks (low share/high growth), cash cows (high share/low growth), and dogs (low share/low growth).
Monday, September 12, 2011
Product Strategy Tools - Porter's Five Forces
Overview
Michael Porter is a professor at the Harvard Business School and, in his book "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors", defined a framework that models an industry as being influenced by five key structural features (forces) that determine the strength of the competitive forces within the industry and hence industry profitability. The five forces are: Buyer Power, Supplier Power, Threat of Entrants, Threat of Substitutes, and Competitive Rivalry. Together these factors influence market attractiveness. Depending on their combination, intensity can be cut-throat and thus result in poor profits or it may be moderate and result in higher profits. Firms can monitor the alignment of the five forces to match their strengths and weaknesses to the market’s structure, to anticipate market changes, to identify diversification opportunities, to reconfigure the rules of competition, and to ensure that their dominant position remains undiminished.
Michael Porter is a professor at the Harvard Business School and, in his book "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors", defined a framework that models an industry as being influenced by five key structural features (forces) that determine the strength of the competitive forces within the industry and hence industry profitability. The five forces are: Buyer Power, Supplier Power, Threat of Entrants, Threat of Substitutes, and Competitive Rivalry. Together these factors influence market attractiveness. Depending on their combination, intensity can be cut-throat and thus result in poor profits or it may be moderate and result in higher profits. Firms can monitor the alignment of the five forces to match their strengths and weaknesses to the market’s structure, to anticipate market changes, to identify diversification opportunities, to reconfigure the rules of competition, and to ensure that their dominant position remains undiminished.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Product Strategy Tools - Overview
In the next series of posts to my blog, I'm going to discuss some product strategy tools that I have used during my career. Each tool will get its own post. The tools are:
When most people look at the output for the various tools, they see something that is visual and easily digestible e.g. the BCG Matrix with its quadrants labeled as Stars, Cash Cows, Dogs, and "?" (i.e. uncertain). What they don't always see is all of the research and analysis that went into synthesizing the data to create the visual output. I have often found that the process of gathering and analyzing the data is as useful, if not more useful, for the product management team. I have often used tools like the GE/McKinsey matrix to make the product managers think about their products and the market that they operate in. This is an opportunity for me, as their manager, to challenge their assumptions and make them justify their figures. I have had product managers claim that their target market is worth hundreds of millions of dollars (target market size is one of the data points gathered for the GE/McKinsey matrix), yet when challenged to explain the figure, they can't. Once you get past the never-before-challenged assumptions, you can then get the product manager to build a more realistic picture of the market and their product within the market, and then - and only then - can you get them to realize their true challenges and opportunities.
- Porter's Five Forces
- Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Growth-Share Matrix
- GE/McKinsey Multifactor Portfolio Matrix
- Ansoff's Product-Market Matrix
When most people look at the output for the various tools, they see something that is visual and easily digestible e.g. the BCG Matrix with its quadrants labeled as Stars, Cash Cows, Dogs, and "?" (i.e. uncertain). What they don't always see is all of the research and analysis that went into synthesizing the data to create the visual output. I have often found that the process of gathering and analyzing the data is as useful, if not more useful, for the product management team. I have often used tools like the GE/McKinsey matrix to make the product managers think about their products and the market that they operate in. This is an opportunity for me, as their manager, to challenge their assumptions and make them justify their figures. I have had product managers claim that their target market is worth hundreds of millions of dollars (target market size is one of the data points gathered for the GE/McKinsey matrix), yet when challenged to explain the figure, they can't. Once you get past the never-before-challenged assumptions, you can then get the product manager to build a more realistic picture of the market and their product within the market, and then - and only then - can you get them to realize their true challenges and opportunities.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Bringing Innovative Products to Market - Science or Art?
Recently, a post on 280 Group LinkedIn discussion board asked whether innovation was a science or and art. My response to the question was that innovation is an art, but the productization and exploitation of the idea is more of a science. If you have a truly innovative product, you usually can't ask the consumer about it until you have a working protoype (whether storyboards or an actual product). Truly innovative products are the ones that the customers don't even realize that they want (yet). A great example of this is the iPhone. Just before Apple released the iPhone, the overall trend for cell phones was to make them smaller and slimmer - think of the Motorola Razr for a prime example of this trend. If Apple had gone to the consumers and asked them what they wanted, I doubt whether we would have ever seen the iPhone. Apple had an innovative product that went counter to the market trends...they went on their intuition. (Obviously, Apple would have market tested the idea and some prototypes - but they didn't just rely on market research to tell them what to build).
Truly innovative product do not have a precedent that you can follow - there are no predecessor products for marketing or pricing and packaging. They change the shape and form of the market place and create a new demand that catches competitors unawares. Look at the iPhone again as an example of a market changing product. The old cell phone manufacturers (e.g. Nokia, RIM) are struggling to maintain relevance in the new market - Apple turned the market upside down and now the major manufacturers are getting left behind in their dust.
So...to get back to the original point, innovation is an art. You cannot 'focus group' an innovative product - someone in the organization has to have the spark of genius to see the opportunity and how to address it in a way that no-one else has imagined. You then need to 'productize' the idea so that you can market test it on selected customers. In this context, productize does not mean build it to completeness. You need to have enough 'product' to show it to customers - so it might be a storyboard, or a v0.1 application, or a working protoype. This requires some investment, but at this stage you haven't built a manufacturing plant, or assigned 10 software engineers to build the application. The market testing will also provide feedback to allow you to refine the product. You can incorporate the feedback in subsequent releases if you have a product that can operate with rapid iterations (e.g. cloud-based or web-based applications).
So the 'art' is the original idea and growing that into the first iteration of the product. The 'science' is the subsequent market testing and feedback, iteration and feedback, and so on.
P.S. If anyone is interested in the concept of "prototype (or v0.1), market test, get feedback, and repeat", Steven Gary Blank coined the term "Customer Development" to explain this. He writes about this in his book "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and recorded a series of lectures at Stanford University that are worth watching (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/steve_blank).
In fact, anyone interested in innovation and entrepreneurship (Stanford use this word, so it must be OK!), should visit the Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner web site (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/index.html) and watch videos of some of the leading innovators delivering lectures at Stanford University. I promise that it will be worth your time.
Truly innovative product do not have a precedent that you can follow - there are no predecessor products for marketing or pricing and packaging. They change the shape and form of the market place and create a new demand that catches competitors unawares. Look at the iPhone again as an example of a market changing product. The old cell phone manufacturers (e.g. Nokia, RIM) are struggling to maintain relevance in the new market - Apple turned the market upside down and now the major manufacturers are getting left behind in their dust.
So...to get back to the original point, innovation is an art. You cannot 'focus group' an innovative product - someone in the organization has to have the spark of genius to see the opportunity and how to address it in a way that no-one else has imagined. You then need to 'productize' the idea so that you can market test it on selected customers. In this context, productize does not mean build it to completeness. You need to have enough 'product' to show it to customers - so it might be a storyboard, or a v0.1 application, or a working protoype. This requires some investment, but at this stage you haven't built a manufacturing plant, or assigned 10 software engineers to build the application. The market testing will also provide feedback to allow you to refine the product. You can incorporate the feedback in subsequent releases if you have a product that can operate with rapid iterations (e.g. cloud-based or web-based applications).
So the 'art' is the original idea and growing that into the first iteration of the product. The 'science' is the subsequent market testing and feedback, iteration and feedback, and so on.
P.S. If anyone is interested in the concept of "prototype (or v0.1), market test, get feedback, and repeat", Steven Gary Blank coined the term "Customer Development" to explain this. He writes about this in his book "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and recorded a series of lectures at Stanford University that are worth watching (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/steve_blank).
In fact, anyone interested in innovation and entrepreneurship (Stanford use this word, so it must be OK!), should visit the Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner web site (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/index.html) and watch videos of some of the leading innovators delivering lectures at Stanford University. I promise that it will be worth your time.
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