MITPS PGP19 Meeting 11

Agenda:
1. Software Product Management
2. A Product Managers Job
3. Technical Marketing
What is a software product ?
Software that is built and implemented as a product
Wider audience, not adhoc or for a limited clientele (mass market)
Single application or a suite of applications
Customers could be businesses or consumers
Software products may be modules in solutions, or used in services
Has multiple Requirements Documents
Is SaaS a software product ?
SaaS: avoids the customers need for installation
But complicates the product managers job it now has largers Ops scope
Many products start-off in the SaaS mode: e.g. web search
Some others acquire SaaS or, much more easily, ASP based status
An Application Service provider violates the multi-tenant logic of SaaS
SaaS has advantages with respect to:
Configuration
Maintenance
Upgradation
Is SaaS tightly-coupled with the Universal Client ?
Software Product Management
Why is it important ?
Products were being service-ised. Is the vice-versa true ?
What role does Product-isation play in solutioning ?
The platform factor (SPlaM)
Is the SPMs job the same as:
Technical Project Management
(Technical/Product) Marketing Management
Market Analyst
How to know if companys Product Management practice is mature ?
What does an SPM do ?
Consistent and empowered product managers role:
Brings about higher success rate in engagements
Schedule predictability
Quality
Project duration
Product Requirements
Release Definition
Release Lifecycles
Creating and leading a multifunctional introduction team
Under the SPMs control: Implementing the Business Case
Do product managers exist in other sectors ?
Generic product mgmt applies where product/solution/service:

Is governed form inception onto delivery to customer/market

Is handled in order to generate highest possible value to business

Is run by mini-CEO with ideas of strategy definition and operational execution

Is handled by one knowing right product mix and strategy fit for engagement.

Is handled by person aware of lifecycle to revisit assumptions/decisions

ProdM: More soft skills or More Tech skills ?
So what is different in product manager from Conventional SW ?

Variety of needs of markets, customers, and stakeholders

The owner of the lifecycle process (e.g. migration, compatibility)

Systems perspective needed to judge on value proposition and priorities

There are a large number of Product Managers with a technical background

Why do product releases fail ?
- why software product startups fail and what to do about it ? Mark Crowne
Misunderstanding or Mis-interpreting customer needs
Unable to cope with associated changes
Sales not following Product Managers roadmap
Working practices established may not scale to a larger Org.
Unreliable software and the vicious cycle of bug rectification
Design, maintenance and documentation required over multiple projects
Productization is not incremental expenditure: support, marketing and sales
Feature selection by committee:
Weak product owners with string of ad-hoc, non-strategic, decisions.
Customers evolutionary needs being trusted for feature selection.
Development teams run down by service provisioning
What are the tools of a product manager ?
Roadmaps
huge bug list and new features ? Or Gantt Chart ?
Requirements
Rational DOORS and BigLever Gears meet to give Software Product Line (SPL)
Gate Reviews
Phase-gate: depends on not just progress but also business case at the time.
Business Case
Interaction and Co-ordination
The Alcatel story of product management
Built a discipline of product management
As-is: Had a wide variety of
Unclear profiles or role understanding
Insufficient training
Informal selection processes
Fragmented processes
Insufficient understanding of customer/business needs
To-Be: built the related competencies in parallel:
Product Marketing Management
Project Management
Had platform products customized for contract projects
What does a Product Manager do
- that a Project Manager doesnt ?
A Product Managers success is evaluated in terms of:
Time-to-market or Go-to-Market (GTM)
Adherence to schedule
Handover Quality
A Product Manager is:
Measured on the success of several projects
looking beyond success of one or more defined projects
Is also monitoring the success of other projects
Has to arbitrate as regards resource allocation between projects
Likely to be involved for longer than project duration
What does a Product Manager do
-that a Marketing Manager doesnt ?
A Marketing manager sets up a
Customer marketing plan for the Product Manager
Matrix reporting structure to the Product Manager
A Marketing manager helps to
Do inbound tasks:
Represent the Voice of Customer
Do outbound tasks
Create marketing collateral
Size Customer requirements
Understand Customer needs (vs. wants)
Communicate value proposition
Drive the sales plan
The life-cycle perspective of IT Products
Product Managers role involves:
Requirements Engineering
Plan and prioritize requirements
Into roadmaps, releases and projects
Working according to ProdBOK (Oct 2013) best practices:
whats the profit and loss projection ?
Building MRDs and PRDs (and then FRSs and SRSs)
In Business Case, Best- and Worst- case scenarios with SWOT analysis
No standards otherwise:
CMMI does not take any perspective above project
ISO/IEC 15288 etc. have a downstream view, not an upstream one
Developing a Product Business Case
-Creating a Compelling Product Business Case Q&A, Rackley and Solomon, 2012
Business Case is for the most part MRD+PRD
Sometimes a little more: Revenue forecasts, sales/marketing strategy
Applies to products and often solutions
Cite evidence, analyst opinions, third party input, and data from market,
customers, buyers, users, and competitors in the space.
Product Business Cases support the overall business plan of the Org.
Seismic shifts vs. releases in the same Business Case
Getting buy-in: research, degree of cross-disciplinary collaboration
When is the Product Mgr. a Project Mgr. too: question of resources
Cannibalizing legacy products. How to retire a product
without sacrificing brand value, public perception, or support problems
Marketing Requirements Document
Customers wants and needs for a product
MRD is made with aid of research, MarCom, engineering, sales & Fin
Target market and Customer
Competition
Features and Schedules (based on market needs, and prioritized)
Sales channels
SWOT
conceptual views representing the external characteristics of the
product multiple conceptual views, e.g. system installer
Product Requirements Document
Use cases
Functional Requirements
Usability Requirements
Technical Requirements
Interaction (Compatibility) Requirements
Support requirements
High-level workflow and milestones
Evaluation Plan and Performance metrics
Points of interest to IT Product Manager
To manage the hierarchical dependencies between:
Portfolio
Product Line
Product Release
Project
Performance objectives based on context of business unit:
Success in business case, cost targets,
portfolio optimization and profitability
Milestone accuracy and time-to-market
Many objectives are outside the product development scope
Core Team
Group of Product, Project and Marketing managers
Other associated module leads, e.g. R&D
Project plan directly linked with requirements
Any change is synchronized and approved by core team
Tool to place all milestones, content and quality targets
Including vaulting repository to store business case, MRDs and PRDs
Connecting requirements to work products or work packages
Connecting requirements to test items
Set realistic targets without focusing on zero delay notions
Timeboxing only works for mission-critical, contract or date-bound projects
What is the commonsense step of Roadmap ?
Product vision: essential features mapped to releases
Setup a business case for this
Evaluate requirements:
Capital investments, Ops Cost, Opportunistic factors
Complexity in development and maintenance
Extensible ?
Map major requirements to releases:
Also map releases to markets
Have vault for regional business cases (made by Sales groups)
Technology roadmap:
Identify dependencies
Modular and future-proof architecture
 Agreed Communication strategies:
With marketing, engineering groups involving big picture points
Stay predictable:
Use a suitable development methodology
Re-evaluate if concrete time-to-profit targets are not met
Only at life-cycle points accept wide-spread scope changes
Create a formal decision process of all stakeholders
Deliver to business objectives
Managing Risks
What are the sources of risks in product management ?
Uncertain customer needs
Supplier commitments
Technology evolution
Good solution is incremental stabilization: measure earned value.
Portfolio evaluation
Between releases: the content is the buffer
Value to the enterprise is also inward-looking:
Inventory of all software engg. assets: reusable SW, skillsets, opportunities
Frank evaluation of other opportunities vis--vis ongoing activities
What role does Leadership have to play ?
Understand clashing objectives:
Long-term vs. short-term
Sales vs. profitability
Grant directions empowerment to product manager
Accountability for revenues and profitability: short- or long- term
baselined commitments must before core team takes ownership
Stable process framework: unusually important to get right 1st time
Agile, Lean principles in product management
Efficient gate Reviews with online checklists, project information
Technical Marketing in IT Products
A separate, and unique, function among IT Product vendors
Sales enabler, not sales organization per se
The TM group:
Qualifies the sales lead:
Prior experience, market intelligence (all Oracle shop), technical compatibility
Works with sales group till buyer decides on purchase
Does not usually have revenue target but has:
Lead-to-order conversion rate
Cost of TM activity
May not be directly related to product or service delivery
Organizational structure
Sales and TM headed by same corporate executive
E.g. a geography manager
Sales considered profit centre, TM considered cost centre
TM group members report structurally to a regional manager
Functionally to TM Head in geography or region
Have responsibility of training
Sales staff and channel partners
No commissions or incentives unlike Sales:
Only fixed pay plus a variable pay component
What products need TM support ?
Certainly not plug-and-play installation products:
Are there TM groups in information appliance sellers ?
TM micro-analyses the Voice of Customer:
Buyers knowledge of product or service
Price propensity/elasticity
Business requirements
Nature of product to be sold: experiential, or credence goods
Customer lifetime value
Competitors behavior in similar segment
TM group associated with Product Sales
Hierarchy of Buyer entities, many technical vs. many not-so-technical:
CXOs (financials)
Program Managers, Project Managers (productivity)
Engineers or QA staff (features)
Comparison of competing products
Roadmap education to sales staff: upgrades, patches, releases
Speaking at vendor slots at various for a
Preparing two important financial documents:
RoI for any fresh investment from buyer
TCO based on maintenance requirements
TM Group associated with Product Sales.
Simulate the buyers IT environment:
Check compatibility with other SW/services in deployment scenario
Check compatibility with standards
May even have to convince buyer on:
Post-sales support quality by virtue of higher credibility or independence
Public Relations:
Analyst briefings, developer conferences, technology academics
Sizing enterprise software for buyers (e.g. # of licenses)
outsized success:
Testimonials, joint statements, buyer-loyalty web forums etc.
TM Group in Services Marketing
Comparison with solutions proposed by the competition
But, real effort is with responding to:
RFIs and RFPs
Including dealing with entity outside the buyer (e.g. consultant)
ROI, TCO and YoY productivity modeling
Adverse impact on business:
While transitioning from existing vendor
SLAs for transitioning, and steady state
Large Bids groups:
Domain specialists coupled with TM staff
Understanding scope, sizing the bid
Assist sales in pricing the bid
Typical TM activities
Case studies, buyer quotes, endorsements
Incentive to re-use or repackage from existing portfolio
Identifying and reporting trends to product managers
Identifying basket of offerings (to become suites)
Pre-sales training of buyer staff
(Channel) Partner certification tests
Liaison with other vendors in order to compose a solution
Cross-selling, up-selling on a 2nd-rung basis using credibility
Skills and tools
Cross-domain: breadth of technology and standards
Business skills: domain expertise
Quantitative skills: financial aspects, sizing
Communication skills and Legal introduction (SLAs)
Customised presentations
Financial models
Collaterals, White papers, and Silver Bullets
Testimonials and discount schemes for testimony-giving buyers
Analyst ratings and independent benchmarks (help in sizing too).
Benefits due to TM in IT organizations
Companies that have best practices:
Record every step in a failed, or successful, bid
Helps create buyer-focused products and services
TM staff engages in value selling:
In contrast to top-line boosting, cut price based, activity from Sales
Communicate the goodness (VP) of the offering and command a premium
Avoids the notion of a hard sell
Discover new buyers in un-addressed markets
Link to technological entrepreneurship
Organizations image in the market:
Cheaper than hiring PR firms
Product Management, Leadership, pipeline
Product/Service Launch and its issues
Buyer does not throw away existing product:
Incompatibility
Missing features
Punctured vendor hype
Upgrade path or migration path depending on the theme
Old assets can be transformed to the type needed for new products
Old assets interoperate with new products
Migration tool as a competitive tactic
Pricing models (esp. in services)
Per bug fixed (application maintenance)
Per call resolution
Per IT asset (when auditing security)
End
Part 2 dealt with Chapters 10 and 11 of textbook.
Part 1 came from the publication
The Impacts of Software Product Management by Christof Ebert, 2007