My Philosophy on Product Management

Scott Smith

Who defines what product a company makes? In many software companies, there is a visionary, someone who sees a problem and ways to solve it. In many cases, this visionary is a founder, lead engineer or CTO. Through the visionary and other experts, the product idea is given form and taken to market.

As a company grows and the software product matures into multiple products the development process becomes more complex. Technical issues like architecture, interoperability, databases, object models, backward compatibility, have to be addressed along with the technical vision. Also the sales forces, customers, support and partners are adding their own product and time-to-market requirements. These stakeholders (those individuals or groups that have a vested interest in a product and company’s success) along with the technical vision need to be taken into account because each group’s requirements need to be considered to build a successful product. In other words, the product definition process needs to be managed to take into account the above issues and more to release a product. The product development process needs a Product Manager.

One goal of the Product Manager is to own the product definition process (PDP). This includes defining product features and a product road map. The product needs to be thought of in terms of the ‘whole’ product. Whole product consists of all the factors that make a product usable for customers and profitable for the company. Training, documentation, technical support, installation are parts the whole product offering. The PDP traditionally manifests itself in a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) and Product Roadmap.

The goal of the PDP is to create a product that solves the targeted customer’s problems in a way that meets corporate growth and profitability objectives. Product feature decisions are made by collecting requirements from different stakeholders. By focusing on stakeholder requirements and testing these requirements with customers there should be a significantly increase the probability of success from the product in the market place. The PM’s responsibility to manage this process to make sure it is the right product for the company.

The PM manages the PDP by continually testing the product plan. This means collecting requirements, testing these requirements and providing feedback to the stakeholders. Requirements are collected from customers, engineering, sales, competitive analysis, management, analysts, partners, and marketing. Requirements are tested with these same groups. Feedback is then taken back to engineering and refined into a new plan and is generated and tested.

The Product Managers goal is to manage Stakeholders. Some of these include:

Engineering

Engineering is usually driven to build the technically best product possible but may be disconnected from the customer. The PM should be focused on connecting the customer to engineering, providing feedback on product plans and communicating customer needs. Interaction with engineering goes in two directions. Testing Engineering ideas with customers and developing business plans based upon customer input/feedback to be fed back to Engineering.

Issues to be resolved with Engineering:

Architecture: Open or closed, modular or static, .NET or J2EE, etc.

3^rd party interoperability: What can be farmed out to speed time-to-market?

Quality: What are the quality metrics?

Installation: What is the process? How is backward/foreword compatibility handled?

Documentation: What is needed?

Features: What is required? What is optional?

Ease-of-use: Who is the target user? What is skill set? How is the app designed targeted?

License management: How to prevent unauthorized use: License or Locks?

Roadmap: What is the strategic vision?

Outbound Marketing

Marketing needs a clear understanding of who the customer is and how the product solves their problem. It’s this focus on the value proposition for the customer that needs to be

identified during the PDP process and used to shape marketing materials, lead generation and PR activities.

Issues to be addressed with outbound marketing:

Customer ROI

Differentiators

Value statement

Partner programs

Developer programs

Channel programs

Sales

Sales need a product that customers will buy and fit the company sales strategies. Products need to be both complementary within the product line and with partners. Sales also need a product that is easy to sell. Requirements include the ability to demo well, be easy to install and have a short time to value. The product must also have a short sales cycle.

Issues to be address with Sales:

Price

Competitive differentiators

Ease-of-sales

Time-to-market

license

Finance

Product plans must me put together in such a way that financial consideration for product development and marketing can be factored into the overall company business plan. Anticipated resources and revenue must be accurately communicated to finance.

Business plan

Development costs

Pricing

Margins

Corporate ROI

Customers

Customers are looking for real ROI but they are also looking for companies that understand their needs and are easy to do business with. This means the experience of dealing with the company must start with an easy sales process, must continue with a solid, reliable product and continue with top-notch technical and consulting support.

ROI

Time-to-value

Support

Ease-of-use

Training

Quality

With customers, we need to understand what the business problem the customer is facing and how not solving the problem will effect their business. Next, we need to identify how our product can solve these problems. Lastly, we need to understand the results. Was the business improved? What was the ROI?

Partners

Bottom line: Partners are looking for complimentary products that help them sell more of their own products while enhancing the user experience. This means that partners would ideally like to see partner products as transparent as possible. Nothing is worse for a partner to see a partner’s product fail thus jeopardizing their own business.

- Developer programs

Conclusion:

While all of these issues are ‘apple pie’ and should go without saying, it sometimes happens that not all the whole product issues are addressed and a poor whole product is brought to market. It is the goal of the product management team to insure through the Product Development Process that this does not happen and that a product is brought to market that result in happy customers and a profitable, sustainable business.

Scott Smith, November 2002