Thoughts on Product ManagementThoughts on Product ManagementProduct management, Marketing and Sales - Focus on Business Efficiency - Converging world, the marketplace - Technology focus on emerging future - Cross-functional team management Articles
This blog will be inactive in two weeks
2008-04-05 20:38:00 I have debated in myself a lot in last few weeks and it just made sense to me. No time to maintain? Yes. Having shifted my focus work areas from application programming to data networking to telecom/wireless to value-added services and finally to IT security, I find it too much on my plate to keep up with. Building on fundamentals and a little bit of hands-on with technologies takes time, and expertise on a role like PM is secondary importance to me.Delete the blog? Yes. We're already facing so called "information chaos" online. Just like we clean up the mess in the house, we can do a little bit of cleaning up on the trails we leave on our online presence. It's interesting how the IIPs (Internet information providers) still manage to provide relevant information in today's age.Changed goals? Partly yes. I am way off the statement that "Product manager is the mini-CEO of the product". Business context have changed dramatically. Business success decisions are sometimes more about g... More About: Blog , Weeks
Just Enough Engagement - A Recipe For Product Management Success
2008-03-02 08:54:00 First comes the need for engagement for a job to be done, then the decision on the people for the job, and finally the persuasion & negotiation skills to get the job done. In Sales, they do it beautifully while dealing with Customers.Product management is a crucial position and it is safe to say that more than 75% of the jobs get done by engaging with cross-functional team members. And the sheer range of activities involved can range from business discussion, to company-wide initiatives participation, to technical discussion, to important customer issues. This makes "Just Enough Engagement " a crucial skill in product management success. This becomes all the more obvious because we always have more work than we can do with a day's work! First and foremost, a product manager needs to agree on the most important work in his/her portfolio - right product definition and its follow-through from concept to launch with relevant stakeholders. It means taking out time to make sure you de... More About: Management , Recipe , Success
Navigating the Strategy, Technology, and Market Transitions Successfully
2008-02-24 17:55:00 Last week, we looked at 5 major challenges encountered by Product managers in the course of strategy, technology, and market transitions.Obvious becomes a long exerciseFluctuationsSelf-learning gets substituted with engagement with CustomersTrying to find out market trends from CustomersProblems of Engineering and Sales are not understoodThis is a fact. That, transitions will be a way of products going forward. This is due to rapid innovations happening in computing and its applications to society. And this will be the reality. I have always maintained that in any business function, we often learn more by watching our efficient fellow colleagues and senior leaders. I have been fortunate to witness some of those wonderful people and let me try to summarize as best I can.Some of the solutions that successful product managers work out to manage transition are as follows.Own the Macro-innovation and deliver. It is a misconception that innovation is not a product manager's job. R&D ... More About: Technology , Market , Strategy , Transitions
Product Management Challenges during Technology, Strategy, and Market Trans
2008-02-17 18:48:00 From business perspective, the technology products may fall into one among different categories, like:1) Huge Customer base, high margin, sustained market leading2) Shrinking Customer base, Shrinking market lead3) Growing Customer base, Growing market lead4) Robust business case, high potential, proven value-add in the field5) Robust technology, outdated business case, etcBased on the category that your product falls into, the set of product management activities and their priorities and focus get different. Let us add up the flux elements, which is always present in technology products. 1) Strategy transition: Born inside the Organization at the top, it takes shape down the business units, and influences product directions.2) Technology transition: Starts at the research labs, and sometimes alters the whole trend in the market.3) Market transition: One influencer of market transition is technology, but there are many more. Government regulations, End user adoption, Elsewhere priori... More About: Management , Product
Is domain expertise critical for Product Management or Marketing success?
2007-10-09 21:36:00 Thanks to the people at Pragmatic Marketing for initiating such targetted discussion among the blogging community. This type of discussion is different than common blogging, because the consolidated writing serves as a much better reading than any single post, and even any tutorial.My take on this topic is as follows; in the scope of complex, high-technology products.Domain expertise is necessary. Product management & marketing skills are indispensable.Domain expertise need not be required on day 1. It can be acquired in a few weeks or months. However, the product management & marketing skills may take years of time, reading, and introspection to acquire.Now a hitch- product management skills are invaluable to business, but cannot be measured effectively. Domain expertise is seen as a weakness any moment; after all you always discuss about the product! Domain expertise can prove detrimental, when acquired in pieces. There're decision makers (product managers) and there are ... More About: Management , Success
Importance of tradeshows and demos
2007-08-29 21:08:00 Given my experience, I have following observations on trade shows.It is often difficult to follow up systematically with the leads from the show.Often all the leads end up receiving similar pitch: "Thank you for meeting us at XYZ show. Here's our attached brochure. Please, how can we help?". If no response, then it's closed. Pragmatic marketing rightfully questions the need of demo in trade shows in their article "Why demo at trade shows?". Before getting into demo, let's first see if we need to participate in trade shows, after all. We participate in trade shows as part of marketing initiative. The goal is better selling, i.e. improve up-selling/cross-selling, generate new customers, understand the competitors etc.Let's say your regional sales team have their plates full at work. Do you need to participate in any such initiative? Of course not, because that effort will never be followed up to fruition.What if your best price points in offering just do not match the regional dem... More About: Demos , Import
Measuring the engagement with cross-functional teams (CFT)
2007-08-04 21:29:00 Having spent 8 years of my career in mature companies, and among different teams, I have a fair idea of engineers, managers, and CXO's perspectives on quality & process improvements. Possibly the last thing a business worker needs is to measure her work & engagement.To give a empirical idea of work effort, the following table and chart show a very high level statistics for a team size of 2 over 8 weeks. Please note that the effort type may vary quite a bit depending on various factors; however, one thing is certain that a product manager has to spend most of his time working with CFT teams. This brings us to the point that an efficient collaboration among cross-functional teams is crucial to business success.Let's think qualitatively. Have you heard from engineering veterans: "Man, I don't know what we're doing... I spent 3 months working on this and now they tell me that the plan is changed. I spent 6 months building that beta, and then it just remained in there"? Escalatio... More About: Cross , Teams , Engage , Engagement
Market climate: Impact of Change & Complexity on Business Workers
2007-07-28 12:38:00 Let me start by saying product complexity is indispensable along the growth path. The customer base grows; technology changes rapidly; genuine knowledge workers are deemed replaceable; Support & Sustaining spreadsheets take up increasingly more decision time; and quarter results demand that any product optimization be given a backseat.That is fair enough. Let us look at the evolution at human, solution, market layers in this rapidly changing world.Human aspect: Information assimilation & critical review is giving way to information accumulation & display. Now I have about 1000 or more bookmarks; I am scared to let go of them as they are crucial assets to me. But I will not use them either. When I moved my blog to Blogger, my only intention was to take it up as a programming homework. But it remained just in plan. I am sure I am not alone though. So the terabytes of information that we are being exposed to helps improve our vocabulary of terminology, but at the same time, learnin... More About: Business , Workers , Market , Climate , Change
Inside the “BUZZ” in the Marketing of High-Tech Products
2007-07-14 09:57:00 Let’s visit the case of two different product releases in the last month; one is Apple iPhone and another one is the Indian movie Sivaji. On Apple iPhone, some of the snippets from around the net are as follows. … Apple Inc.’s campaign to build excitement about its iPhone may be the most successful marketing effort ever, surpassing the drive to promote Ford Motor Co.’s 1964 Mustang and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 95. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch in New York, estimates Apple will spend about $100 million on the introduction, roughly half what Microsoft spent for Windows 95. “Apple is one of those rare brands that can create mystique around a product,” says Matt Williams, a partner at Richmond, Virginia-based advertising firm Martin Agency. “They created a buzz that has taken on a life of its own.” Apple released details little by little, teasing consumers to keep interest high, and followed with its first television spot with the simple tagline ... More About: Marketing , Products , High Tech , Tech , Inside
What problems does Marketing solve?
2007-07-04 10:18:00 Most people agree on the following when it comes to Marketing . Marketing is often perceived to be a cost center. Finance and sometime Senior executives are eager to define the RoI from Marketing. It is under pressure to deliver more from less funds.Marketing in the new decade is substantially changed than what it used to be; consider advertising, social networks, globalization, channel distribution, customer knowledge etc.Marketing & Sales, when operating in perfect sync, can spell wonders for business. Things, however are less than ideal in practice.The role of Marketing is sometimes misconstrued in the industry - restricted to product pricing, promotion and PR. Building and growing brand and customer equity is most important. This requires a diverse set of activities from before the product concept all the way to after the Customer acquisition. Let me try to outline some of the ills being faced by high-tech businesses and the role of Marketing as the solution. Preemptive Products... More About: Problems
Tracing Individual Product Performance in Complex Solutions
2007-05-28 10:17:00 From engineering perspective, the product performance & scalability is very challenging and requires a multi-dimensional approach; sometimes each one being a project in itself. 1) At hardware layer, various component (CPU/Cache/Memory, I/O bridge and access, Data path components- DSP, NPU, Fabric etc) decide the upper bound the the performance. Based on the application requirement, it is often the control path (MIPS) or data-path (NPU,DSP, Fabric) processing that decides the upper bound. 2) At infrastructure layer, OS parameters (process priority, queue length, event mode/polling mode, etc) decide the product performance.3) At application layer, the critical paths in the application flow (modeling, profiling, optimizing). Processing required for an event may be real-time, near real-time, and non real-time and the code is optimized for best performance. As a result, the standalone product delivers optimized performance. It is obvious that each performance/scalability project require... More About: Performance , Product , Complex , Individual , Solutions
The Emerging Ecosystem of Software and Products
2007-05-05 10:15:00 Do we know what mix of technologies will dominate 2-3 years down the line? Most likely, we can visualize the applications and multi-modal interface, we can visualize pervasive computing, we do know that chips getting smaller yet delivering more horsepower. But when it comes to computing experience after 2-3 years, it is difficult to judge what mix of technologies will be used to deliver that experience. Think of the following:- Today’s niche/high-margin will become tomorrow’s commodity/low-margin.- With the blink of an eye, a new product is appearing. Technology choices have become numerous.- Building, sustaining and growing partnership (sometimes culminating in mergers/acquisitions) is increasingly becoming a key strategy for growth. After all, that’s possibly the best way to get into a new market, deliver a complete solution, or use synergies to build a new product. Finally who will dictate the terms? The end user and the market forces, Period. Irrespective of a B2B or B2C... More About: Software , Products , Ecosystem , Stem
A microscopic view of Operational Excellence at workplace
2007-03-31 10:14:00 Imagine a family living in a royal building with all luxuries, but lots of internal bickering…the outside view looks perfect, but the inside (microscopic) view is pathetic. In contrast, imagine a family living in a decent house with basic amenities, but with lot of togetherness…the outside view is good, and the inside (microscopic) view is perfect. Businesses strive for operational excellence at macroscopic level…reduce the OPEX, Six sigma, streamlined business processes etc. Most employees care about operational excellence at microscopic level; do I feel good at the workplace, do I feel secure, am I getting to learn etc. I am just about completing 9 years of working in IT industry and it’s a good time for me to put down some of the fundamental attributes for operational excellence as I have experienced. Fortunately for me, it has always been more good things in my career and always more than what I possibly deserve. Let me put down some of these attributes in random order.... More About: Workplace , View
Business Development Skills of a Product Manager
2007-03-30 10:13:00 Being just an amateur in business development, it helps me getting into some free flowing thoughts. There are overlapping zones among business development, product management, strategy, sales, and marketing. And when we look at the pragmatic framework, the diversified role of product management and marketing becomes clear. Product management is a passion. And we need bit of engineering, support, sales, strategy, business development, market, technology, supply chain and project/program management to give the best to our jobs. Support and sales are two key touch-points with the customer. And they deal with different human resources in customer base, so we get to know the pain points of customer from two different angles. But how often have we seen the product managers interacting closely with support? In reality, product managers are heavily loaded. Most of the time, the conflicts between product management and engineering happens because product manager thinks engineer is over est... More About: Business , Development , Manager , Skills
Talking about wastage… again
2007-02-21 10:11:00 One of my earlier posts contained discussion on cost of project failure and cost of repair. If we search of “bad software requirements”, we get numerous, insightful pages. I happened to come across the following two figures. 1) From: http://www.geekgap.com/ According to the Standish Group, only about a quarter of technology projects in the UnitedStates are successful. The rest are behind deadline, over budget, have unsatisfactory results–or never completed at all. These failures cost about $68 billion each year. Add to this figure “shelfware”–projects which are completed but never used because the business has no need of them–and that number rises to around $100 billion. Most of this waste could be avoided if business and technology professionals learned to communicate clearly and work together effectively. 2) On a different note, Gartner predicts that Enterprises/Carriers will waste $100 billion through next 5 years in building wrong networks and choosing wrong equi... More About: Talking
What’s the value chain of your product in the marketplace?
2007-02-18 10:10:00 In B2B marketplace, it is difficult to build a product and is even more difficult to sell it. Some of the reasons are the following: A business needs a solution, not one product. Most of the time there’s a set of players involved in delivering the end-to-end solutions. There’s a pricing pressure introduced by the competitors and system integrators. And then it’s not just one product alone, but the ecosystem of products involved in the solution that decides the win/loss in the deal. In this flat world economy, there’s a huge variance in per capita incomes of end consumers among countries (do your own research in World bank and OECD web). Add the distribution of income groups to that and purchasing power parity. And then there’s a difference in the way an individual household spends money in various categories (food, entertainment, education etc). It means that the business in that country can only afford to spend in due proportion to buy solutions and services. Your offer i... More About: Product , Marketplace , Value Chain , Chain , The Mark
Should product managers bother about patents?
2007-01-01 10:08:00 “Trying to operate a company without patents in this crowded market is akin to swimming in a shark tank with a nosebleed,” said patent attorney John Ferrell of Carr & Ferrell in Palo Alto. “You’ve got to have them or you’re going to get eaten alive.” Just search for “bad software patents”, and a huge number of relevant pages will show up. Let me put down some extracts from various sources. A small story First of all, an experience of a renowned lawyer, as quoted in “Patently absurd“. My own introduction to the realities of the patent system came in the 1980s, when my client, Sun Microsystems–then a small company–was accused by IBM of patent infringement. Threatening a massive lawsuit, IBM demanded a meeting to present its claims. Fourteen IBM lawyers and their assistants, all clad in the requisite dark blue suits, crowded into the largest conference room Sun had. The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents IBM claimed were infringe... More About: Product , Patents , Managers , Product manager , Tent
The politics of requirements management
2006-12-12 10:07:00 Incidentally, there’s one paper with exactly same title that appeared in IEEE Software. The date may be well in the past, but the content is still very valid. The author starts with six questions (in brief below), “political litmus test” for a project: What is the project request?What is the project’s purpose?What are the functional requirements?What are the “nonfunctional” requirements? How should they be rank-ordered?Do we understand the project well enough to prototype its functionality?If the prototype is acceptable, will everyone sign off on the prioritized functionality and nonfunctionality to be delivered, on the initial cost and schedule estimates, on the estimates’ inherent uncertainty, on the project’s scope, and on the management of additional requirements? Then the author goes on to explain how different players (project manager, business owner, business partners) have different agenda. And then individuals have the habit of defending their agenda while a... More About: Politics , Management , Poli , Politic
Discussion forum for product managers in India
2006-11-12 10:07:00 IPMF - India product management forum. The yahoogroup is at: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/IPM F/ Please join, discuss and make it work. More About: Product , Forum , Discussion , Managers
The challenges in Offshore product management
2006-11-11 10:06:00 Featureplan have a webinar on similar topic: http://www.featureplan.com/community/2006 /11/product_management_offshore_en.asp I am not going to dwell upon the opportunities much. The following are some of those. Cost savings.Closer interaction with Engineering.Ownership of APAC region.A balanced product management organization. etc. Now about the challenges. For this, we can draw a similarity with the transition of engineering to offshore and evolution of the same since early nineties. Then the challenge of execution existed on both ends; headquarters as well as offshore location. For product management, it is the same.The primary motivation of getting engineering work offshore was cost & manpower. For product management transition, while cost factor still applies, the manpower does not. With the transition of engineering, there’s this engineering-facing activities of product management which can be best done when the product manager is co-located with engineering and program manag... More About: Management , Product , Offshore , Halle
Practical pitfalls in requirements authoring
2006-11-07 10:04:00 The requirements we write mostly can be categorized into the following situations- It is very clear what is to be done. The input source (Customer, Technology, Platform) have clearly defined the goals with details.Customer himself does not know about the details, he just knows what he needs. We need to map that into a complete solution and then into what we need to do to on our system. The good part is that other vendors have implemented something similar and so we have a well defined approach here.Similar to #2. But in this case, we’re trying to do something new. There’re bits and pieces coming up from proprietary ideas, standards groups, other’s implementation etc, but we need to get the right pieces together.Customer is inaccessible. We have a vague idea of what is to be done, but noone to ask our questions to. It can happen mostly because of tactical/political issues. Irrespective of what situation the work falls into, we need to have versioned deliverables (requirement do... More About: Falls
Negotiation skills of a product manager
2006-10-15 10:00:00 You do not need to negotiate, if goings-on are smooth. You can still do without negotiation, if you own the people with whom the contract is in troubled waters… a typical example of a project manager trying to resolve a conflict with the team. Negotiation is NOT about winning an argument. Let’s look at negotiation challenges on the part of a product manager: Customer facing issues- The product house promises deliverables in future releases and backs out at one point. The business is ongoing and NOW you need to address the issue and sell the product.Customer is critical of some gaps that remain in the solution and without resolving those, they will not sign on the dotted line. And you can not just make a business commitment without doing the necessary homework (feasibility assessment, business case buy-in for additional feature requests).Issues during deployment of solution/product. Engineering facing issues- Feature signoff for a release. A lot, lot of discussion goes in from t... More About: Product , Manager , Skills , Product manager
How efficient is your Customer-facing technical interface?
2006-09-21 09:59:00 This is the “last mile” in the product delivery. A good product has been engineered and built, and now it’s time to sell it. The salesforce need more information about the product first, than the product, to effectively sell it. I am not going to repeat on release note, product configuration guide, product caveats etc. I touched that topic under: http://productmgmt.wordpress.com/2006/04/ 23/delivering-training-and-documentation- is-as-much-important/ Let’s look at what kind of Customer -facing interface (with technical focus) that a product manager gets into? Pre-sales technical queries. These are emails that comes typically from Customer or sales teams. If the Customer is clear about the product, features and just have a couple of queries to fix the deal, they do not need to float a RFP for that.RFPs/RFIs. Depending on the size of the end-to-end solution, the RFPs can be really big and a bunch of the questions will be pertaining to your product. Some questions are straightforw... More About: Technical , Interface , Facing , Efficient
Random notes about patch engineering
2006-09-16 09:56:00 Some practical thoughts, as follows. Almost always, a good percentage of folks involved are not the ones who wrote the code in the first place. That makes the patch engineering difficult.They occasionally/frequently have bitter experience trying to isolate the problem and sometimes the schedule off-shoots all estimations.Those folks can recount horror stories of patches going wrong: The performance was screwed up.The code space was not enough.Some real-time code was thrown off-guard, causing service disruption. etc The patch feature requirements are often not fully documented, leading to undue rework, disputes at later stages.There’s a huge amount of effort duplication or even effort wastage happens on a patch. It is not uncommon for guys to unsuccessfully struggle for a week to isolate a problem, and then the right guy from called development group gets to the bottom of it in a day. It is not because of that fact that the development engineer is smarter, it is just that that gu... More About: Engineering , Random , Notes , Patch , Erin
Dealing with an angry Customer… communications aspects of product managem
2006-09-13 09:55:00 Let us look at long cycle-time, B2B complex product/project delivery. When an angry Customer gets attention? First of all, it really comes down to IMPACT. The following types get attention immediately: Large account Customers,Those with the profile to grow account, andThose which are strategically important (first win in a region, first Government project, for example) targets etc. Why do the Customers get angry? Obviously, something has been screwed up which directly impacts their customer base and/or margin and is directly related to undelivered/ill-delivered commitments. It could be because of anything like engineering schedule slip, inefficient feature planning etc. There’re different product life-cycle stages where this can happen. Some examples: A Customer was committed a feature. The commitment became a low priority on the table during release planning. It happened for 2 consecutive releases resulting in delay in terms of years. Deal is not signed yet.The committed solution... More About: Product , Angry , Aspects , Communications
When a good product bites the dust?
2006-08-30 09:54:00 Imgine your home. You embark on a spending on $x per month and you divide that into rent, food, clothing & accessories, children education etc. Do you give improportional preference to one child over other? Normally, NO. You allocate your budget so as to manage all the things and not one thing in particular. Think of a Company with multiple products. It’s like a family. The company has $x budget allocated annually and it’s divided across product lines. This allocation of budget depends on factors like past allocation, past revenue and revenue commitment, future growth etc. Finally, it comes down to how the product line prospects are conveyed by management to senior executives and what senior executives perceive of the product line. Like evey budget allocation, compromises are made unless a company is swimming in revenue. Then it comes down to a budget allocated for a product line, or more typical a BU (business unit). The BU heads decide the budget for individual products in... More About: Product , Good , The D , Bite
Hiring sector - next level for consultancy services
2006-08-29 09:53:00 From http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/2004/07/ma tch-candidates-to-jobs-with.html: Employers lose a total of $105 billion a year by failing to recognize the talent that’s in front of their face. That’s a US only statistic found in 2004. Hiring business is a lucrative one today, from the perspective of job consultancy companies. A job consultancy firm gets paid, when the referred candidate is selected and joins the Organization. The work sometimes also involves verifying the employment and educational credentials of the referred candidate. Most important thing is: hiring decision is made by the Organization. Let’s look at the competence required for hiring suitable candidates for a job: http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/htpblogger .html Needless to say, not all the employers have the suitable resources to hire the *right* candidate for a job. We all know that the productivity ratio between an excellent worker and a non-performing worker can be even 5:1, 10:1 or more. Think of a “Hir... More About: Services , Consultancy , Ulta
Fundamental product constraints in the dynamic IT market place
2006-08-22 09:51:00 IT market place is under constant evolution. Processes, Technologies and Standards are evolving in the direction to ensure: Easier, more natural, and complete real-time experience for the end user.Increased effort (code, component, service) reuse, faster time-to-market, and better application integration. The following constraints almost always decide a product’s (or service’s) success. Product scaling in different dimensions (dataset size, parameter ranges, memory foot-prints, performance etc).Ability to incorporate features with faster TTM (time-to-market), with little sacrifice in scalability.Resilient business processes, as the product transitions from a start-up to a mass-market environment. It is important to note that there’re a host of other activities like precise and complete requirements, marketing, sales, user interface etc, that contribute in equal measure to the product success. However, the 3 points mentioned above are crucial in the sense that they expedite a p... More About: Market , Place , Fundamental , The D
Product manager’s role in product testing
2006-08-14 09:50:00 There’re three different types of skills which contribute to software product testing success. Experience and knowledge on software testing of similar products (GUI, Distributed applications, Embedded systems, packet forwarding platforms etc). This is mostly technical and individual skill, and is often a combination of knowledge in testing and technology/product.Experience and knowledge of test automation of similar products.Testing skills, existing test environment for the specific product in question. It may take from weeks to months to master, depending on the complexity of the product. Now, does a product manager have to worry about testing… or for that matter development? The answer is YES… just for one reason. How much money is being put in to deliver a release/feature? And you will try to keep the cost low in the long term, yet ensuring a quality delivery. Now obviously as a product manager, you’re not the decision maker on this, but you do stand as an important revie... More About: Product , Role , Product manager , Ager
Conflicting business issues? Survival tactics for a product manager
2006-08-05 08:44:00 Some thoughts from real-life situations. B2B businesses are invariably complex, with longer sales cycles. Customers need a complete, yet non-redundant solution to their problems, and not just a product. Investment protection is a key product differentiator; Customers want to make sure that the product roadmap addresses their system evolution requirements. Let’s say the dotted line is just about to be signed and only condition the Customer needs is a written assurance that feature XYZ will be supported in future release a.bb.cc. And you drafted a letter in no time, delivered to Customer and got the much needed $$. After all, roadmap evaluations happen release to release. In short term, it looks good. But the written commitment given to Customer can be easily lost from the product roadmap. Or even, whatever was committed to Customer may be a non-viable requirement in the product. If it happened, that can backfire on the product and vendor credibilty with much intensity. The solutio... More About: Business , Tactics , Product , Issues , Manager |
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