Keeping Your Product Management Job

Keeping Your Product Management Job – or – Understanding what your internal counterparts really want from you Norcal PDMA, 21 Oct 09 Rich Mironov [email_address]

An Unapologetic Product Guy
Entrepreneur and long-time product manager
Business models, pricing, segmentation
CMO at Enthiosys and interim PM executive
Repeat offender at software prod mgmt
“ The Art of Product Management”
Founded P-Camp/Product Camp
Chair of Agile ‘09 PM/PO track

Agenda
How do key constituents see product management?
What does a product manager do?
Highlighting strategic value for key constituents

I Contend that…
Product managers tend to lose their jobs when
They don’t understand or highlight their value
Key stakeholders don’t understand their value
Individual PMs lack organizational support
PMs focus on deliverables rather than substance

Just for fun, let’s oversimplify.

Three Key Internal Constituents
Engineering
Sales
Executives

Engineering
Assumptions
Customers are rational and will agree that our product is the best
Markets are identified, not designed
PMs must be as technical as we are
Engineering does most of the work
Hungry for…
Interesting problems to solve
Customer stories and use cases

Sales
Assumptions
Salesmanship wins deals, pricing and features lose deals
Engineering could fix this in 3 weeks if they wanted to
PM provides just-in-time info
Sales does most of the work
Hungry for…
Stories about recent wins
Competitive sound bytes

Executives
Assumptions
Strategy leads to execution
Our priorities are clear
We get lots of customer input
We need to do more with less
Leadership is the hard work
Hungry for
Market scenarios with clear P&L
Great execution

What Does Product Management Do? Mktg & Sales market information , priorities, requirements, roadmaps, MRDs, personas, user stories… software strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence budgets, staff, targets Field input, Market feedback Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing, qualification, demos… Markets & Customers Development Executives Product Management

More Than Simultaneous Translation
Thoughtfully evaluating and organizing individual customer input
… to share with engineers and executives
Focusing the market’s attention on a few dramatic stories
… when awash with features and benefits
Sensibly aligning product roadmaps with corporate strategy
… knowing that some details will never fit

More Than Stacks of Documents
Great product managers provide
Vision
Context
Consistent steering
Counter-arguments
Market realities

Product Management is a really hard job. Not for the faint of heart.

PM Form vs. PM Substance
It’s hard for outsiders to judge quality
An MRD or product vision describes some future product
An insightful MRD tells why some segment will pay a premium
A roadmap shows some sequence of releases
A strategic roadmap captures and explains hard choices
A price list shows what your product will cost
A clever pricing strategy makes economic sense for customers and accelerates the selling process
A backlog is any list of tasks
A well-prioritized backlog delivers revenue sooner
Competitive analysis lists what some competitors have
Smart competitive analysis exposes competitor weaknesses

Order Takers
Are We Order Takers?
Product plans without a vision of evolving markets
Requirements without segments, personas, problems
Roadmaps without hard choices
Positioning without competitive intelligence
Pricing without ROI, win/loss or market data
PM work can crowd out thinking and research
It’s easier to be an order taker
Less perceptive consumers can’t tell the difference

How Do We Highlight Value?
Relentless facts about segments and customers
Keep your roadmap handy
Schedule regular time to brief teams on “ what ” and “ why ”
Put dollars against projects/epics
Look for teachable moments

Helping Engineering See Value
Bring information to the team
Problems, scenarios, segments, sales results
Requirements are not magic
Explain “how” and “why” and “who this is for”
Information + analysis + insight > opinion
Good developers want to engage
“ Can’t users just grep the logfile?”
“ Why are these segments different?
“ I have another way to solve that problem!”
Big win: someone forwards your update to all-dev@

Helping Sales See Value
Ship products that work
Focus on a few good tools
Qualification checklist
Three representative case studies
Well-designed ROI calculator
Answer your phone when you can
Always know what’s on the roadmap
Find, support, love and listen to your SEs
On the big deals, help without complaining
Big win: allowed to talk directly with prospects

Helping Executives See Value
Offer market scenarios
Quote customers and competitors
Quantify recommendations
Always know what’s on the roadmap
… that execs recently asked for
Don’t dive into the details
Big win: added to portfolio planning team

Don’t Be Put Into a Box
There’s always a theory why
PM isn’t important…
Agile Product Owners (must be telepathic)
“ SaaS companies don’t need product management”
“ Successful PMs don’t need domain expertise”
“ We have a stage-gate process”

Not A Solo Effort
If you are a VP or Director of Product Management, this needs to be on your agenda
Create forums for sharing and learning
Reward substance over form
Celebrate, and invite the neighbors
It takes long-term effort investment to shape behavior

Take-Aways
Product managers want to focus on their products, not their peers
Internal constituents don’t understand PM or know how to judge quality
Sharing what we know – and what we do – builds support for good products and good PMs
You job is worth keeping

Keeping Your Product Management Job – or – Understanding what your internal counterparts really want from you Norcal PDMA, 21 Oct 09 Rich Mironov [email_address]

http://productmanagementmusings.blogspot.com	29
http://www.mironov.com	17
http://mironov.com	11
http://www.slideshare.net	10
http://www.enthiosys.com	6
http://enthiosys.squarespace.com	2

Keeping Your Product Management Job

by Rich Mironov on Oct 21, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

6 Embeds 75

Statistics

Keeping Your Product Management Job — Presentation Transcript