Key elements of product management that

1. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Product Management For Health
Care Entrepreneurs
April 18, 2012
L. VanArsdale
lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu

2. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
What Is Product Management?
Product Management constitutes
everything necessary to provide
sustainably differentiated value to
one or more target markets.
IMHO
1
2
3

3. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Pro(du/je)ct Management
Driven by Users
Just Execute
Planning

4. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Roles / Responsibilities Definition

5. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Product Marketing
Product Management
www.280group.com

6. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Conceiving: Innovation, the Fuzzy Front End
The Whole Picture!
I have a strength   There is a need
I have an idea
Who needs my idea?
What leads those who need it to my idea?
What is the value they would derive?
What next?
How can I grow my market?

7. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Stage Gate Product
Management Lifecycle
Source: Kahn, Kenneth B., Editor, The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development
Concept
Strategy
Design
Develop
NPI
Learn
Improve
Transition
Iterative, Agile Product
Management

8. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Strategies
DescriptionBusiness Type or
Firm Strategy
Reactor
• Maintain a secure position in a
stable market
Defender
Analyzer
Prospector
LevelofInnovation
LowHigh
• Growth through new products
• First to market
• Rapid deployment of well
conceived products
• Fast Follower
• Responds when forced to do so
• Passive
Case: Telehealth projects in the San Luis Valley

9. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Identify Markets and Their Needs
• Market research
– Demographics
– Needs Assessment
– Analysis
• Primary, secondary
• Qualitative, quantitative
• Exploratory, confirmatory
Voice of the Customer
Customer Visits
Focus groups
Ethnographics
Surveys
Crowdsourcing
Conjoint analysis
Quality Function Deployment
Functional Requirements
Program of Demand
Failure Mode Effect Analysis
Value Engineering
Product use testing
Target Costing
Market testing
Hire a market analyst…

10. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Roadmaps, Markets and Segments
Charter: Research and Initial Engagement
• Who are the real customers?
• Where have they been and where are they going?
• Why can you win?
– Market opportunity
– Factual customer information
– Defined customer needs
– Relative competitive position
– Customer value
– Match with your core strengths and strategy
Key Activities
Market and competitive research
Initial market participant relationships
Reports and consensus
Product and portfolio directions/strategy refinement
Product line and solution mapping

11. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Concepts
Feasibility
• What has been done?
• What possibly could be done?
• What have we done?
• What could we do?
• What are we best at doing?
• How would we produce this product?
Priorities
• Market sizing and timing
• Risk assessment
• Competitive landscape
• Alignment
Xkcd.com

12. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Agile Product Process
Design + Development

13. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Pricing
• Value-based pricing
– Assess value to intended benefactors
• Comparative / substitution
• Ask them, but not directly
– “whole” value
• Longitudinal factors
– Match market maturity
• Truisms
– Downward rigidity of prices
Early
adopters
Market
growth
Maturity
High price
Competitive
Pricing
Commoditized

14. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
New Product Introduction
• Internal buy-in from organization and partners
– Training on product AND its value
– Involve in launch plan and execution
• Buy-in from key market players
– Current customers and champions
– Analysts, mavens
• Messaging and market promotion
– Timing, phases, stages
– Appropriate content for each segment
– Great expectations – inspire hope, fulfill promises (no vaporware)
• Market test and adjustment
• Transitions – internal and external

15. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Support
• Customer relationship management
– Get software and use it!
• Ample and clear warning
– Change, bad stuff, opportunities
• Easy-to-understand-and-use answers
• Planning for the hard problems
– Risk management
– Plan to be reasonable and fair

16. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Support: Change Management

17. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Support: Transitions
• Market testing
• Product launch
• New Revisions
– Minor
– Major
• End of Life
• Substitutions
• New product lines

18. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Summary
• Sustainable Differentiated Perceived Value
• Use innovation best practice – lots of choices
• Methods and roles are important
– Strategy, concept, development, support!!
• Focus
– Customer/Market
– Knowledge
– Agility
– Resilience
More information:
www.pdma.org,
www.aipmm.org,
www.pragmaticmarketing.com

19. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Case Study #1
• Dr. John Casestudy practices and teaches at the University Hospital.
• He has a great idea for a kiosk product that can be made available for patients
waiting for their appointments in clinics to automate history collection and
administration of screening and other appointment prep questionnaires prior to time
with the doctor / PA. His family and friends love the idea and think he’ll make
millions. In fact everyone he’s told about it has really loved the idea and has great
advice for him. Sometimes the advice is conflicting, but the feedback shows market
interest in John’s eyes, making John really happy.
• He has assembled a development team in India and hired a highly experienced
project manager to keep that team on task, delivering to required deadlines. John
has also contracted with a top-notch sales guy, Wayne, who has a great track record
for successfully growing market share for new products.
• On October 6, 2011 the project manager told John that the product was “pretty much
done and ready for prime time.” John saw a demo of the product and just loved what
the team had done!
• A truly beautiful website was created and multiple marketing campaigns were
conducted from October through the end of January. By February 21, 2012 there
were no sales or anything concrete in the sales pipeline. John needed to go out for
additional funding in order to keep the company afloat, and he was worried.

20. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Case Study #1 Questions
• What strategic improvements could John make?
• How might John better understand the market potential
so that he can make some reasonable sales forecasts?
• What product risks does he face? How best could he
manage those risks?
• What are the three best next steps he should take?
• What are your predictions for John’s company’s future
and what could he do to improve the odds for success?

21. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Case Study #2
• Lisa DeBrie, MD created a small company to produce a mobile app
that allows a patient to report HbA1c levels through a personal
device that automatically feeds data to a secure database. After two
years of hard work, her team achieved approval from the FDA.
They had a roadmap of new features they were hoping to release
within three months. These new features would bring huge new
value to their customers.
• They advertised the device in all the right places and the market
flocked to them in droves. They were not only having trouble
keeping up with shipments, but their two support engineers were
having an order of magnitude more trouble keeping up with support
trouble tickets. The product engineers were starting to spend more
time fixing than driving new features. Lisa was totally frustrated, but
hopeful if they could just improve processes, they’d be able to grow
their workforce and get back on track.

22. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Case Study #2 Questions
• What is Lisa’s strategy and is it aligned
well with her company’s capabilities and
market need?
• How might Lisa satisfy market demand?
• How might Lisa address her quality
problems?
• What is Lisa’s best path to get back on
track with her roadmap?

23. lynne.vanarsdale@ucdenver.edu
Thanks!
Questions?
Lynne VanArsdale is a PhD student at the University of Colorado, Anschutz campus studying health
information technology within the Clinical Sciences department. Her experience ranges from
systems engineering, to software engineering to product marketing and management.
She holds Project Management Professional Certification from the Project Management Institute
(www.pmi.org). She completed black belt training in transactional six sigma methodology, which
she applies to innovation and new product development processes. She has achieved New
Product Development Professional certification from the Product Development and Management
Association (www.pdma.org), as well as Pragmatic Marketing certification
(www.pragmaticmarketing.com).
She currently works for the Colorado Business Group on Health at the Director of Health IT,
implementing a payment reform pilot in two Colorado counties. She served as Product Director for
Payer Products within Ingenix’s Claims Integrity and Connectivity group. Prior to Ingenix, Lynne
was Director of Marketing and Product Management for Rolta TUSC Software Center of
Excellence where she lead a program to create a service oriented technology platform. Before
joining Rolta TUSC, Lynne held senior director and manager positions with data storage and
software technology companies.
Lynne holds an MBA from the University of Houston, a MS in Agricultural Engineering from North
Carolina State University and a BS in Engineering from Cornell University. For more information
on her background go to http://lynnevanarsdale.com.