Developing a strategic product plan involves several key steps:
1) Defining your software product and creating a product roadmap that outlines new features, platforms, and release schedules for at least the next 3 release cycles.
2) Forming a product planning committee with representatives from marketing, engineering, sales, and customers to discuss requirements, priorities, and tradeoffs.
3) Considering how the product roadmap will impact potential investors, customers, and management in terms of market vision, support needs, and return on investment.
I've used this slide in many product management talks to illustrate the cross-functional and multi-lingual challenge of product management: provide related but distinct inputs to three key stakeholders.
How Agile plus Product Management helps Build the RIGHT Things the RIGHT WayRich Mironov
Strong product managers spent up to half of their time talking directly with customers, buyers, and partners. And the other half of their time with their teams: framing problems, collaborating on solutions, translating features into benefits and vice versa. Making sure that we’re building the RIGHT things as validated directly by users and buyers so that we deliver customer-defined value as well as increased velocity. That’s different from the narrow scrum definition of product owner, which is mostly internal-facing.
There are some fundamental laws of software economics that should drive executive-level decisions about business and product strategies. It’s easy to forget them, or decide they don’t apply to our special situation. ( After all, gravity’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.)
This describes some essential facts about the (software) world, and posits matching laws of product strategy:
- Your development team will never be big enough (thus: Law of Ruthless Prioritization)
- All of the profits are in the nth subscriber (thus: Law of Build Once, Sell Many)
- Software bits are not the product (thus: Law of Targeted Whole Products)
- You can’t outsource your strategy (thus: Law of Judgment)
Software Product Management – Optimizing WHAT to Develop Ernani Ferrari
Software companies, as well as development teams in IT departments within companies of other industries have, for years, struggled to find better tools, methodologies and training process for software development. Yet, most medium and small organizations, as well as some large ones, still struggle with the processes that define WHAT the software to be developed should be and how it will evolve over time. Proper processes are not established and most times organizations cope with conflicting roles and stressing day-to-day decisions. Product management for software requires a company-wide understanding of goals, opportunities and required discipline related to product management and is fundamental to maximize all development and ongoing maintenance efforts. This session will address why product management is crucial to maximize revenues and reduce costs in the short, medium and long terms; what the role of a product manager is; how to unfold company strategies into product strategies; what the several business aspects to be considered at product planning are; how to define productization artifacts; and how to orchestrate product releases across a software company to improve corporate communication and overall financial results.
Main Message:
Software organizations have improved HOW they develop and support their products – they have also to improve how to, on an ongoing basis, optimize WHAT those products should be.
Talk for Business of Software 2015 (Boston) laying out some laws of gravity for the software business. Also serialized as 4 long posts on www.mironov.com
In today’s competitive world the term Speed to Market plays an important role for everyone. So, Speed to Market means the pace of introducing any change, innovation, creativity, any market practice for the purpose of increasing the Promotion of the product as quickly as possible in the market. Copy the link given below and paste it in new browser window to get more information on Speed To Market:-
http://www.transtutors.com/homework-help/industrial-management/product-development/speed-to-market.aspx
I've used this slide in many product management talks to illustrate the cross-functional and multi-lingual challenge of product management: provide related but distinct inputs to three key stakeholders.
How Agile plus Product Management helps Build the RIGHT Things the RIGHT WayRich Mironov
Strong product managers spent up to half of their time talking directly with customers, buyers, and partners. And the other half of their time with their teams: framing problems, collaborating on solutions, translating features into benefits and vice versa. Making sure that we’re building the RIGHT things as validated directly by users and buyers so that we deliver customer-defined value as well as increased velocity. That’s different from the narrow scrum definition of product owner, which is mostly internal-facing.
There are some fundamental laws of software economics that should drive executive-level decisions about business and product strategies. It’s easy to forget them, or decide they don’t apply to our special situation. ( After all, gravity’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.)
This describes some essential facts about the (software) world, and posits matching laws of product strategy:
- Your development team will never be big enough (thus: Law of Ruthless Prioritization)
- All of the profits are in the nth subscriber (thus: Law of Build Once, Sell Many)
- Software bits are not the product (thus: Law of Targeted Whole Products)
- You can’t outsource your strategy (thus: Law of Judgment)
Software Product Management – Optimizing WHAT to Develop Ernani Ferrari
Software companies, as well as development teams in IT departments within companies of other industries have, for years, struggled to find better tools, methodologies and training process for software development. Yet, most medium and small organizations, as well as some large ones, still struggle with the processes that define WHAT the software to be developed should be and how it will evolve over time. Proper processes are not established and most times organizations cope with conflicting roles and stressing day-to-day decisions. Product management for software requires a company-wide understanding of goals, opportunities and required discipline related to product management and is fundamental to maximize all development and ongoing maintenance efforts. This session will address why product management is crucial to maximize revenues and reduce costs in the short, medium and long terms; what the role of a product manager is; how to unfold company strategies into product strategies; what the several business aspects to be considered at product planning are; how to define productization artifacts; and how to orchestrate product releases across a software company to improve corporate communication and overall financial results.
Main Message:
Software organizations have improved HOW they develop and support their products – they have also to improve how to, on an ongoing basis, optimize WHAT those products should be.
Talk for Business of Software 2015 (Boston) laying out some laws of gravity for the software business. Also serialized as 4 long posts on www.mironov.com
In today’s competitive world the term Speed to Market plays an important role for everyone. So, Speed to Market means the pace of introducing any change, innovation, creativity, any market practice for the purpose of increasing the Promotion of the product as quickly as possible in the market. Copy the link given below and paste it in new browser window to get more information on Speed To Market:-
http://www.transtutors.com/homework-help/industrial-management/product-development/speed-to-market.aspx
Three Product Challenges for EntrepreneursRich Mironov
Three perennial challenges for entrepreneurs and start-up founds are (1) seriously listening to their markets, (2) building customer-side savings/ROI logic, and (3) whole-product thinking. Tiny companies lack formal product managers, but need to apply some product management thinking to these fundamental product/market needs.
This talk was for Stanford Continuing Studies' Entrepreneurship course, “Getting from an Early Idea to a Real Business.”
Keynote for March 2012 Product Leadership Days ("Produktledardagen") in Stockholm, hosted by Tolpagorni's Magnus Billgren. A 2-day event with 60+ product mgrs/execs from Sweden & northern Europe.
Why Silicon Valley Continues to Innovate and Rock the WorldRich Mironov
This is a slightly overblown view of Silicon Valley’s network effects and tech culture for Tolpagorni's 2014 Market Insights Conference. Goal: drive discussion about what can be borrowed to other tech centers like Stockholm, and what resources/attitudes are harder to copy.
A presentation about applying Lean Startup principles to Product Management. Discussed are changing from Big Up Front Design to Minimum Viable Product, the build measure learn loop, and more. Interwoven are some general Product Management concepts
How to Evaluate Solutions and Build your Evaluation CommitteeBlytheco
In the fourth installment of the series "Are You Ready for Replatforming?", we take a look at a formalized process for creating criteria and steps for making an ERP or CRM solution transition, including who should be involved in the process and how they should participate.
Are your Product Managers using an appropriate framework? What do Sales, Implementations and your customers say about your products? Is too much time spend on process, and not enough on value and outcomes?
These are some ideas on a simple framework for Product Management that might work for you.
Big Data is changing business and at a fast pace. Rolta gives a complete answer for quicken end-to-end BI and Big Data Analytics development adventure to transform information into business results and development.
Intro to Agile Innovation (Agile 2016) Rich Mironov
Innovation is a complicated topic. Product folks often focus externally: how do we build products that customers and buyers find more innovative; out-design the competition; create market advantage? Process folks often focus internally: how do we develop faster, better, with higher quality? This talk suggestions innovation categories, focuses on validating real needs, and topples a few popular innovation myths.
What is Product vs. Platform Product Management by Oracle PMProduct School
With real life examples and plenty of battle scars, Joy Dorairaj, Principal Product Manager, explains the different approaches to managing platforms vs. products.
Main takeaways:
-What is the difference in being a product vs. a platform Product Manager
-How to distinguish what each one needs as opposed to the other
-How to manage the two different types and be successful
Here is a presentation to help people in key sales roles to improve their team\'s effectiveness using technology. Let me know if anyone wants this implemented !
Trade-Offs & Prioritization in PM by Amazon Sr PMProduct School
Main takeaways:
- Why trade-offs are important?
- Prioritization with and without data
- Building your prioritization framework and handling the 'We were asked to..." problem
How To Manage Misaligned Stakeholders (Who Are Usually Misaligned)Rich Mironov
Prioritization is hard, and we HOPE that a clear corporate strategy plus well-considered OKRs will get our internal stakeholders to agree on what’s most important: unambiguous #1 and #2 and #3 priorities. That our spreadsheets and analysis will sell everyone on our plan.
But that rarely happens: Sales wants us to put 100% of our development effort against shiny new features (except when every big deal includes a commitment for some tiny off-off item); Support/Customer Success want 100% against bug fixes and workflow improvements and productivity tools; Engineering lobbies for better architecture and scalability and more refactoring...
How do we understand this behavior, appreciate their effort (rather than just being frustrated), and find strategic tools that let us build out a single plan for our products and teams?
Using Customer Development to Build Your SaaS StartupArpit Rai
I recently spoke at the ProductGeeks conference organized by NextBigWhat in Bangalore on the 14th of April, 2018. The topic of my talk was on how SaaS startups can use customer development to build their product/growth
Three Product Challenges for EntrepreneursRich Mironov
Three perennial challenges for entrepreneurs and start-up founds are (1) seriously listening to their markets, (2) building customer-side savings/ROI logic, and (3) whole-product thinking. Tiny companies lack formal product managers, but need to apply some product management thinking to these fundamental product/market needs.
This talk was for Stanford Continuing Studies' Entrepreneurship course, “Getting from an Early Idea to a Real Business.”
Keynote for March 2012 Product Leadership Days ("Produktledardagen") in Stockholm, hosted by Tolpagorni's Magnus Billgren. A 2-day event with 60+ product mgrs/execs from Sweden & northern Europe.
Why Silicon Valley Continues to Innovate and Rock the WorldRich Mironov
This is a slightly overblown view of Silicon Valley’s network effects and tech culture for Tolpagorni's 2014 Market Insights Conference. Goal: drive discussion about what can be borrowed to other tech centers like Stockholm, and what resources/attitudes are harder to copy.
A presentation about applying Lean Startup principles to Product Management. Discussed are changing from Big Up Front Design to Minimum Viable Product, the build measure learn loop, and more. Interwoven are some general Product Management concepts
How to Evaluate Solutions and Build your Evaluation CommitteeBlytheco
In the fourth installment of the series "Are You Ready for Replatforming?", we take a look at a formalized process for creating criteria and steps for making an ERP or CRM solution transition, including who should be involved in the process and how they should participate.
Are your Product Managers using an appropriate framework? What do Sales, Implementations and your customers say about your products? Is too much time spend on process, and not enough on value and outcomes?
These are some ideas on a simple framework for Product Management that might work for you.
Big Data is changing business and at a fast pace. Rolta gives a complete answer for quicken end-to-end BI and Big Data Analytics development adventure to transform information into business results and development.
Intro to Agile Innovation (Agile 2016) Rich Mironov
Innovation is a complicated topic. Product folks often focus externally: how do we build products that customers and buyers find more innovative; out-design the competition; create market advantage? Process folks often focus internally: how do we develop faster, better, with higher quality? This talk suggestions innovation categories, focuses on validating real needs, and topples a few popular innovation myths.
What is Product vs. Platform Product Management by Oracle PMProduct School
With real life examples and plenty of battle scars, Joy Dorairaj, Principal Product Manager, explains the different approaches to managing platforms vs. products.
Main takeaways:
-What is the difference in being a product vs. a platform Product Manager
-How to distinguish what each one needs as opposed to the other
-How to manage the two different types and be successful
Here is a presentation to help people in key sales roles to improve their team\'s effectiveness using technology. Let me know if anyone wants this implemented !
Trade-Offs & Prioritization in PM by Amazon Sr PMProduct School
Main takeaways:
- Why trade-offs are important?
- Prioritization with and without data
- Building your prioritization framework and handling the 'We were asked to..." problem
How To Manage Misaligned Stakeholders (Who Are Usually Misaligned)Rich Mironov
Prioritization is hard, and we HOPE that a clear corporate strategy plus well-considered OKRs will get our internal stakeholders to agree on what’s most important: unambiguous #1 and #2 and #3 priorities. That our spreadsheets and analysis will sell everyone on our plan.
But that rarely happens: Sales wants us to put 100% of our development effort against shiny new features (except when every big deal includes a commitment for some tiny off-off item); Support/Customer Success want 100% against bug fixes and workflow improvements and productivity tools; Engineering lobbies for better architecture and scalability and more refactoring...
How do we understand this behavior, appreciate their effort (rather than just being frustrated), and find strategic tools that let us build out a single plan for our products and teams?
Using Customer Development to Build Your SaaS StartupArpit Rai
I recently spoke at the ProductGeeks conference organized by NextBigWhat in Bangalore on the 14th of April, 2018. The topic of my talk was on how SaaS startups can use customer development to build their product/growth
Product Management Basics (for SCU MBA program)Rich Mironov
For Prof. Kumar Sarangee's MBA class at Santa Clara/Leavey. Basics of tech product management: role, pricing, roadmapping, and "how it is in the real world." Energetic class participation
"Where Does (Should) Strategy Live in Your Company?" from SDForum Marketing SIG, 4/12/10. Tackles key cross-functional inputs for a strategy, who needs to participate, and where (in a start-up or small company) this should be located/managed from. Highlights product management as typically missing in small Silicon Valley companies.
A brilliant presentation by Rishi Bhargava I came through on web regarding Product Management's dilemma and feature blotting possibility in your product.
Rishi Bhargava is Director of Product Management at Solidcore Systems, Inc.
Product Management 101: Techniques for SuccessMatterport
This is a snapshot from a living document. To see the current document, please go to https://goo.gl/yFFrml.
Topics covered include:
- Resources
- General Overview
- The Role of Product Management
- Characteristics of Great Project and Product Managers
- Problem Space and Solution Space
- Customer Personas
- User Stories
- Product Documentation
- Agile Product Development
- Succeeding with Agile from The Lean Playbook
- Analytics, Customer Engagement, & Monetization
- Pricing Strategies
- Overall Leadership and Organizational Development
- Final Guidelines and Recommendations
How to efficiently build great products in a startupRoger Dudler
There are many ways to build a software product, but it’s quite hard to find the balance between a sustainable technical foundation, product innovation, implementation speed and prioritization of features. While having thousands of customers in a SaaS market, a start-up might soon have enterprise customers with special needs to take care of. This involves a lot of potential challenges – a tough journey.
In this workshop, you’ll learn about Frontify’s tactics on software product management, pitfalls and learnings as well as practical advice on tools, recruiting and more. Your business-related and technical questions will be answered by the Founder & CTO of Frontify, a fast-growing St. Gallen-based start-up.
2. What is a Software Product? A collection of functions and features: That can be purchased Or licensed, rented, subscribed, etc. That meet the needs of a specific buyer …. and has a life beyond the first release
3. What is a Product Roadmap? A Product Vision translated into a plan of action Product Vision = What does the perfect product look like? A Product Architecture that weaves together: New Components Platforms Industry and Technical Standards Covers at least 3 major release cycles An agreed upon Release Schedule: Major releases (12-18 mos.) Minor release (4-6 mos.) Bug Fixes (as needed) The closer in time the more specific the release details Plans can change; but you must have one. "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." – Dwight Eisenhower
4. Who are the Planning Participants? Product Planning Committee Led by the “owner” of the Product Vision Often the CTO in an early stage technology company Marketing, Tech Support and Customers Components, Features and Bugs Sales and Marketing Needs beyond the customer base Knowledge of Competition Industry standards. Regulatory requirements CTO and Engineering Platforms and Technical Standards Ex. New browser versions, Windows 7, iPhone OS 3.1 Technical Standards A resolution method that: Balances needs, time and company resources Resolves conflicting requirements "Alice: 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' Cat: 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.'" – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
5. What are the Business Impacts? Potential Investors Want a market and a vision (no vision, no funding) Customers Want to know that they will be supported now and in the future (no support, no money) Management ROI on new components, features, platforms and standards (miss something, lose a market; over-commit, lose a business) Makes buy/build/partner decisions on major components
6. Essential Reading Geoffrey Moore; Crossing the Chasm Pick a market Clayton Christensen; The Innovator’s Dilemma Have a strategic vision Steven Gary Blank; Four Steps to the Epiphany Know your buyer and adjust
Editor's Notes
A technology can have functions and features that address many markets, but it that makes it hard to sell…. (Noise Cancellation)An interesting feature can be complex and revolutionary, can be given away, but may not be a product… (Twitter)
If you are starting a company, you need to think beyond R1.If you want to get something out the door, you need to take your vision and break it into releasable chunksSet in stone, set in wet concrete, set in quicksand….
