A simple metaphor product managers can use to think of products and new capabilities. From backlog items to release themes

1. YOUR PRODUCT IS A
STARFISH
A simple way to think of your
product growth
Audience: Product Owners, Product Managers,
Product Marketing managers, Product executives
Donato Mangialardo
Product Guy

2. Think of a simple starfish

3. Maps its arms to key aspects
of your product ANALYTICS
EASE OF USE
EDITING
INTEGRATIONSAPI

4. The longer the arms, the
stronger are the capabilities ANALYTICS
STRONG
EASE OF USE
EDITING
INTEGRATIONS
WEAK
API

5. The longer the arms, the
stronger are the capabilities ANALYTICS
STRONG
EASE OF USE
EDITING
INTEGRATIONS
WEAK
API
If a capability is very valued, unique
and hard to copy by competitors,
it’s a competitive advantage
Shorter arms mean that the
capability is solid but not that
unique, or that is very unique
but not that solid. It’s a GAP

6. Rounded shape, short arms
The product has little-to no competitive
advantages. It’s ok for many things but it
never really excels at something. Not a
remarkable product
If your productìs starfish looks
like this you are probably in a
de facto monopoly :)

7. Strong Product
Defined characteristics that make it
competitive
It’s a factor that drives company’s
competitiveness
Weak Product
Not particularly good at anything special. No
character.
Not an elemeno of competitiveness
E.g. the company does well because of
service level or first-to-market, not product
Better be on the left side

8. Making an arm longer
makes that competitive
advantage stronger
Lengthen
Any new capability can be
seen as a change to the
starfish shape.

9. Widening an arm means
making it more robust.
Covering more use casesWiden

10. New
Introduce new competitive advantage
(rare: it does not apply to small features)

11. Fill
Fill holes that prevent reaching the
benefits of an arm (e.g part of the
journey is broken by a limitation)

12. We can map every new
release with actions to
the shape of the
starfish.
● The starfish is a good way to
get a qualitative
representation of the impact
and the themes of a new
release

13. Example: Pagery V1
A new way to automatically adapt the user
experience to select audiences based on
behavior, through machine learning algorithms
(actual capability made generic as it is proprietary information)
Longer Arm +
Wider Arm
CONFIGURABILITY
MOBILE
Longer Arm

14. If you are a product company,
chances are your business is
centered around your product...
Your product’s competitive
advantages are the reasons why
your business exists.
THINK OF THE ARMS OF THE
STARFISH REPRESENTING
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

15. Any product release can be
represented with changes to the
starfish.

16. Let’s play with it
● Try to map key elements of your backlog to
starfish arms to see how well it feeds
competitive advantages, which is always a
top priority for keeping your business
alive.
● Map your latest release. Compare with the
upcoming one
● Find examples of holes that prevent
reaching the tip of an arm (e.g. limitations,
malfunctions)

17. Accepting
customers or
sales requests at
face value
Don’t do this please :)

18. xFeature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
Feature 2
Feature 4
Limitation 1
Bugs on
capability 2
New major
capability
Release 2019.2
Map to releases > find themes

19. Release 2019.2
xFeature 2
Feature 4
Limitation 1
Bugs on
capability 2
Map to releases > find themes

20. Thank youDonato Mangialardo
Product Guy
Linkedin: bit.ly/donato-LI
@donatomm