Product vs Program/Project Management

Product Management Essentials for Project and Program Managers
Rich MironovOctober 6, 2011

About Rich Mironov
Veteran product manager/exec/strategist
Business models, pricing, agile
Organizing product organizations
“What do customers want?”
5 startups, including as CEO/founder
Author of “The Art of Product Management” and Product Bytes blog
Founded Product Camp, chaired first product stage at annual Agile conferences

Agenda
3
Sharing: your good and bad experiences with product management
What does a product manager do, anyway?
Product vs. Project/Program Management
7 ways to help your product manager

Sharing Your Good And Bad Product Management Experiences

Agenda
5
Sharing: your good and bad experiences with product management

What Does a Product Manager Do?
For commercial / revenue software…
Drives delivery and market acceptance of whole products
Targets market segments, not individual customers
Sets priorities
For strategic internal development…
Resolves competing priorities
Drives acceptance and adoption

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

Product Mgmt Planning Horizons
many years
Exec
Strategy
years
Portfolio
many mons
Prod
Mgr
Product
2-9 mon
Release
Dev
Team
Sprint
2 wk
Daily

Pragmatic Marketing® Framework
Dir, Prod Strategy
Prod Mktg Mgr
Tech Prod Mgr
BusinessPlan
MarketingPlan
Positioning
Pricing
Market Problems
Customer Acquisition
BuyingProcess
Market Definition
Buy, Build or Partner
Win/Loss Analysis
Customer Retention
Buyer Personas
Distribution Strategy
Product Profitability
Distinctive Competence
Program Effectiveness
UserPersonas
Product Portfolio
Business
Market
Programs
Planning
Strategy
Support
Readiness
Business
Market
Programs
Planning
Strategy
Support
Readiness
Innovation
Competitive Landscape
LaunchPlan
Require- ments
Product Roadmap
Presentations & Demos
SalesProcess
Technology Assessment
Thought Leadership
UseScenarios
“Special”Calls
Collateral
Lead Generation
Status Dashboard
EventSupport
SalesTools
Referrals & References
ChannelSupport
Channel Training
© 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved

Nature of Product Role
No natural sequence for Product Mgmt
Must work all aspects in parallel
Entire planning onion
Intensely interrupt-driven
Bottoms-up shapes top-down, top-down shapes bottoms-up
Product Management must provide strategy, judgment and integration as well as execution

Good product managers drive customer-relevant decisions (choices) despite uncertainty and contradictory goals

Market Failure Modes for Product Mgrs
Inward-looking failure modes
Weak onreal-world value: pricing, packaging, upgrades, servicemodels,discounting, competitive dynamics
Disconnected from cross-functional teams (Marketing, Sales, Support…)
Trading off company-wide product strategy for product-level features
Generalizing from too few customers
Belief in rational users and accurate ROI

“How Hard Could It Be?”
Imagine that I create a two-day seminar for “Senior Enterprise Software Architects”
Anyone can enroll
We talk about enterprise architecture
All attendees get a “Senior Enterprise Software Architect” certificate
Are they senior architects?

Agenda
14
Participants: your good and bad experiences with product management

Product, Project, Program?
Disclaimer
No role/title consistency
Execs create organizations
Unclear division of labor
Each tech company uniquely dysfunctional
Good teams make things work regardless of titles or roles

In My Opinion…
Product Management: more outward-facing market-visible decisions
What FEATURES are market segments demanding?
WHICH must-ship feature will we drop first?
SALES impact of slipped dates? Commitments?
How are we POSITIONED and PRICED versus competitors?
Project/Program Management: more inward-facing resource allocation decisions
HOW should we get this done? WHO works on what?
WHEN will it actually ship?
Have we defined and met QUALITY goals?
What outside RESOURCES could speed things up?

It’s About Customer Realities
Product managers stay in touch by…
Helping close deals
Trading off conflictingcommitments
Intervening with complex customer problems
Sweating price/volume forecasts
Anchoring opinions with lots of first person customer/field input
Source:
Pragmatic Marketing

One Problem, Two Viewpoints
Two sides of the problem:
Product Managers tasked with what to build (and when)
Not-so-secretly worries about delivery, quality, completeness
Project/Program Managers tasked with how to deliver
Not-so-secretly worries about market success

Agenda
19
Participants: your good and bad experiences with product management
7 ways to help product managers

7 Good Ways to Help Product Mgrs
Push for explicit decisions and trade-offs
Ask about use cases and customer problems
Don’t demand uber-technical product managers
Not every sub-feature gets its own ROI
Expect product managers to translate features into customer-relevant benefits
Ask about forecasts, shipments and revenue
Channel your inner Product Manager

Contact Information
+1-650-315-7394
rich@mironov.com
www.mironov.com
@RichMironov
www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov

Product Management Essentials for Project and Program Managers
Rich MironovOctober 6, 2011

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Product vs Program/Project Management

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Product vs Program/Project Management — Presentation Transcript