Business-Driven Product Management

Overview
Business-Driven Product Management is about managing products to meet long-term business and revenue objectives.
The challenge, as companies grow, is to balance …
Market Expansion,
Customer Satisfaction, and
Technology Innovation
… while meeting business objectives, with fixed resources.
© Ateala Management Inc. 2009. All rights reserved.

The Balancing Act
The need to balance Market Expansion, Customer Satisfaction and Technology Innovation is vital …
Scales tipped too far along one axis will cause problems in any of the other axes
Many companies are wed to their technology and focus on making it better
They listen too much to their customers and end up missing where the market is going
Each puts stress on the product - potentially resulting in the implementation of features that do not necessarily help in meeting overall corporate goals …
Lower than expected new account acquisition
Dropping customer satisfaction levels
Technology deficit / inability to innovate

Market Expansion
Expanding further in current markets and/or moving into new markets is vital for
Gaining additional revenue
Adding new-name accounts
Increasing market-share
Momentum; securing more customers has a positive domino effect
Potential product gaps may be exposed that need to be filled to meet market objectives
Table-stakes requirements (i.e. those that must be their to enter)
Competitive pressures
Define/reinforce unique value proposition

Customer Satisfaction
Vibrant, enthusiastic customers want to see the product improve and have many requests … to support their immediate needs
Passionate, vocal, enthusiastic of the product – participate in every forum, user group … great reference!
Demanding – consistently voicing their opinion over what they need and/or want
Meeting these requests requires caution ...
Product can become highly customized for a single, very vocal customer; leading to future upgrade issues
Customer can direct you into a market or solve problems that may not necessarily be a good fit; leading to future support issues

Technology Innovation
Infrastructure products and technology matures and changes over time
Keeping current with third party infrastructure and tools reduces the support costs and maintains maintainability
Leveraging newer technologies needs to align with customers infrastructure and meets their needs and is not a collection of buzzwords
Innovating the product to maintain / enhance differentiation may require leveraging of new technology, e.g. …
Client/Server -> Web technology
On-Premise offering -> Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering
Partnering with a platform/infrastructure

Opinion vs. Fact
Many opinionated discussions take place instead of fact-based discussions to make product investment decisions
Sales vs. Marketing vs. Customer Support vs. Development
Without a proper methodology at an operational level it is a challenge to decide what requests need to be satisfied
Predictability of meeting corporate goals will not be consistent
Scarce development, test and documentation resources may not be consistently allocated to requests that support the corporate goals and objectives
Opinionated discussions usually result in the most vocal as the “winner” – which may not be best for the business

Business Objectives
Central to Business-Driven Product Management is the methodical evaluation of requests against business objectives
Business objectives need to be …
Aligned with the corporate goals and objectives
Well-defined traceability from corporate level to operational level is vital to ensure corporate-level objectives are met
Defined at an operational level
Review process must be able to answer the question “how well does this request satisfy/meet this objective?”
Few in number and well-articulated
More than 5 objectives and/or fuzzily stated objectives will not yield meaningful results

Methodology
Define business objectives
Derived from corporate goals and objectives
No more than 5 well articulated objectives
Must each be at the operational level
Weight each objective to reflect their relative importance in meeting corporate goals and objectives
Assess each request against each objective
Assign a numerical value to how well the request meets the objective
Use a scale where 0 means that the request does not meet the objective and an upper value (e.g. 5) that fully meets the objective
Use resulting list to drive product development plans
Top-most request meets the business objectives the best

Benefits
Companies become focused on doing what the business needs to do to succeed
Most customers cannot articulate this and therefore do not express their wishes in these terms
Products and product releases will contain features and capabilities that are aligned with corporate goals and objectives, as well as company initiatives
Sales barriers will be reduced
Marketing / lead generation activities will be supported
Critical development resources will be focused on building what matters to the company
Extra-curricular development activates will be significantly reduced
No project ending surprises
Teams will be more harmoniously aligned
Collaboration amongst stakeholders will improve
Teams will be more productive

Ateala Management Inc.
Ateala Management is a provider of product management and product marketing consulting, training and coaching services to start-up, small, medium and large hi-technology companies.
Our focus is on helping companies implement a business-driven product management methodology to improve their top-line revenue, improve productivity, increase customer satisfaction and increase their market-share
For more information on Ateala Management …
Web: www.ateala.com
Tel: 613.836.6750
Cell: 613.797.8579
Email: [email_address]

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Business-Driven Product Management

by phanschke on Sep 28, 2009

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