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EDITOR’S NOTE Motivation behind this magazine Our world wastes over $640 billion a year in resources on failed products. That $.64 trillion was spent on development. Thus, those who spent that did not get a return on their investment. Even if we could do just a little better, the increase in productivity would result in billions of additional resources, which would significantly improve the world’s economy. I would suggest that improvement could conceivably add to the cycle of money passing through the economy. This would amount to close to half of the entire U.S. government budget. Such highly productive churn will have a measurable impact on improving society because successful products can enhance lives, create jobs and waste less — thus also helping the environment. The popular notions out there (some of which are taught in MBA Schools) actually contribute to product failure. For example, profit should be the sole measure of company success. Or stock price is all that matters. Or people are a liability on the balance sheet. And inventory is an asset. Lately, some product managers are teaching that the way one comes up with a great product is to “ideate.” Many product management consultants, like me, would be millionaires if we were given a nickel for each time a product gets done and we are asked to get customers. When we start digging, we find that all or most of these things are missing: value proposition, market and competitive research, personas, positioning, target market, pricing research, distribution strategy, and sales, support and training plans. In other words, the product lacks a product market strategy or plan. For the first time, we now have a magazine focused on product success. That is what a product manager is responsible for – product success. And now, finally, after the profession has been around for 79 years, it has its own magazine. It’s about time.
INSIDE 05
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT As with any field of management, managing the development of product across the complete life cycle is not for the faint hearted.
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HIRING THE FIRST PRODUCT MANAGER FOR STARTUP A great Product Manager can help build the discipline and rigor to the process of keeping a product organization running smoothly.
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STRUGGLING AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE? “Product Managers are the CEOs of products,” says my friend A. Ravikiran, “but without the powers of a CEO,” he adds with a grimace.
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CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS PIVOTAL FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION
Continuous improvement, or Kaizen, is a method of identifying opportunities for streamlining work and reducing waste.
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IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR STARTUPS Startups are a wonderful movement that has gripped the new age market and has created a platform for ideas to market in a short period.
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EDITORIAL TEAM
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By that point, or usually, after the first phase of my enlightened monolog, she smiles, turns, and walks away. This has happened dozens of times over the years, and quite frankly I doubt now that I will ever get married and have 2.3 kids like the demographic studies says I should. I have an MBA, am financially successful and have a babe magnet car. Alright, it’s a Volt, but. I have looks too, but that is another blog post. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I need to make an urgent request for you to save my family life and contribute to the success of my product, not to mention you will help save the planet!
Memo to Boss: May I Change My Title, Please?
May I humbly request letting me change my title to “Product Success Manager?”
To: Boss
That says what I do.
From: Me, your Product Manager Subject: My Title Dear Boss, I know you probably don’t have this problem, but when I go to a cocktail party and am talking with a beautiful lady, she sometimes (ok, infrequently) asks me what I do. Nevertheless, what I say is important. I say that I am a product manager. She says, “What is that?” I say I am responsible for my product. I work with sales, engineering, customers, operations, training, support, CEO, and the boogie man. I am sometimes a project manager, business analyst, UX designer, general designer, scrum master, product owner, product architect, dispute mediator, referee, but mostly a janitor cleaning up the messes everybody else causes. I get a little credit if we succeed and all the blame if anything goes wrong. Heaven help me and my future family if the product fails and ...
Product Success Manager says I am primarily responsible for my product’s success. That title bleeds with what I do. I intimately understand what our customers want to do. I communicate those needs to development. I determine the product’s value proposition, target personas, and market, lay the groundwork for the test, market, sales, support, distribution and other plans. I help set the pricing strategy and picking the metrics to know how well the product is progressing. Plus the other 30 things that make up a product’s market strategy that ensures product success. I ensure we are building a product that satisfies those things that our customers want to do. I ensure we get a good return on investment. In short, my job is to ensure my product is one of the 60% of the new products in the world that is successful and not a failure. To not be one of the $600 billion wasted each year in product failures, thus draining the world of valuable resources. Can I change my title please to Product Success Manager?
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EDITOR’S PROFILE
David Fradin has trained thousands of managers throughout the world. He infuses his workshops with insights and experiences gained as a product leader at companies like Apple and HP. He is the author of Building Insanely Great Products: Some Products Fail, Many Succeed…This is their Story available now on Amazon. Plus, a series of planning workshops and online courses covering how to do market research right, innovation, design, value proposition, product market strategy, marketing plans and social media marketing.They are available at https://wp.me/p39FDx-1GH David was classically trained as an HP Product Manager and was then recruited by Apple to bring the first hard disk drive on a PC to market. As a result of his leadership and management skills, Apple promoted him first to Apple’s Group Product Manager and later, to Business Unit Manager at the same organizational level at that time as Steve Jobs. David Fradin has over 47 years of product management, product marketing management and senior management experience. Over the years, he
has been responsible for 75+ products representing over $250 million in revenue (actual dollars). After founding the University of Michigan Flyers, a flying club that has trained over 4,000 pilots since 1969, David started the Federation of Americans Supporting Science and Technology (FASST) in 1970 which grew to over 15,000 student members on 40 campuses. He is one of the world’s first environmental mediators, and a White House Fellows finalist. He resolved major disputes and pioneered the concepts of total resource jobs just before HewlettPackard recruited him to handle their new facility sittings, energy policy, and PR for HP co-founder and Chairman of the Board, David Packard.
David Fradin Principal | www.spicecatalyst.com Editor | Prodmagazine.com
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THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
As with any field of management, managing the development of product across the complete life cycle is not for the faint hearted. Beyond the most trivial of products, if a new product introduction (NPI) is to be successful, the Product Manager must be proficient with both the softer aspects of management as well as the myriad processes required to deliver a product: In essence, the Product Manager has to learn to behave like the CEO of the product. So is there any science to Product Management?
The following outcomes are clearly processdriven and based on specific competences that the Product Manager has to develop. In many cases, there are well-established tools and techniques that the Product Manager must learn to use.
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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
• Understanding the market and competition • Adhering to relevant regulatory requirements • A strong understanding of the nuances of the specific domain • Ensuring that the product will have a long “shelf-life” by managing the technology used in the product or service • Building a strong service strategy • Ensuring that the product is ultimately manufacturable • And finally, expertise on the NPI Process
And where is the art? Despite one’s best intentions and application of the right processes, tools, and technologies, NPI is still a very human process. It is important for the Product Manager to display a whole set of leadership traits if he/she is to be successful in the role. The Product Manager must possess a high level of Emotional Intelligence. Data, if massaged sufficiently, will tell you whatever you want to hear. This is true of market surveys, customer feedback, user studies etc. Great Product Managers validate all this data with their “gut feel”. Customers only think they know what they want.
Ability to influence people across levels, functions, and organizations. It is important to learn to work within and around the organizational complexities and politics. Lead a cross-cultural team – especially when the product team is spread geographically. The Product Manager must be critical while being creative. Must be a great planner – at strategic, product, and project level. Last but not the least; the Product Manager must be a Systems Thinker. It takes more than experience to be a successful Product Manager. The word that comes to mind is “chutzpah”. If the person does not possess strong nerves and a little bit of what I call “positive arrogance”, it is more than likely that the person will quit midway or the product will never see the light of day. And perhaps it is for this very reason that a career as a Product Manager is truly an aspirational one.
Bhaskaran Srinivasan Founder, Business Zenz Editor | Prodmagazine.com
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HIRING THE FIRST PRODUCT MANAGER FOR STARTUP
Product Management has many definitions but the one most people agree on is that the function is a bridge between the customer and the organization, shepherding the product from concept to reality in a way that delivers superior customer satisfaction while providing long term value for the company and its stakeholders. While the role is technical, the person in the role does not need to be a software developer though they absolutely need to be immersed in the technology of their domain, speak the language of technologists and designers to win their trust and respect. It is a role that manages up, down and sideways through the organization by influence
both strategically and tactically making it both challenging and very exciting. The role of product management encompasses three main areas, namely, Product Strategy, Product Development and Product Marketing. Product Strategy is identifying and prioritizing
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PRODUCT MANAGER
a set of opportunities, selecting the customer target and defining the product to be built with appropriate validation. The Product Development stage is working closely with software developers to implement the intended features of the product to match market expectations. Product Marketing is about taking the product back out to the market through positioning, messaging, pricing, driving customer adoption and enabling the sales force to sell effectively. This level of role separation occurs in larger organizations, whereas in startups all these roles may be played by one person. A question that is asked often is what is the right time to hire the first Product Manager in a startup? In the early stages of a company, the founder wears the product management hat where the idea of the startup is being validated. Unless the founder or co-founder happens to be a Product Manager by background, the need to hire the first Product Manager typically arises when the company has achieved product-market fit, when the idea is validated and customers are accepting of the initial versions of the product. My advice to those hiring their first Product Manager is to bring in someone with experience rather than promote one of the existing team members or a fresh graduate. This has the following advantages:
• There is a fresh pair of eyes on the customer needs and value proposition by questioning the status quo • An experienced Product Manager can help prioritize critical vs. important • Their experience will help align everyone else in the organization on a common understanding of the customer, their problem being solved, the approach to the solution and taking it to market. • Experienced Product Managers are more confident to stand their ground when making hard decisions A great Product Manager can help build the discipline and rigor to the process of keeping a product organization running smoothly while ensuring that every member in the team is focused on the right customer experience and success metrics for the product.
Ramkumar Narayanan Digital Transformation | Product Thinking | Strategy Zinnov , Sukino Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd Editor | Prodmagazine.com
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STRUGGLING AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE?
“Product Managers are the CEOs of products,” says my friend A. Ravikiran, “but without the powers of a CEO,” he adds with a grimace. He should know, having been a veteran at Siemens and then Nokia, where he headed R&D and Product Business before leaving to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and institution-building. “So,” I ask him, “what would be your dream parameters for a Product Manager’s job?” Surprisingly for me, his answer is, “More decision-making power across the board, but especially in matters of people.” Probing further, a whole different world opens up before me – the world of corporate bureaucracy, mediocrity and politics. A world far removed from the ones I have traversed through in my own career – but then, my stint in corporate employment lasted only five years, that too at a senior management level. Since then, I’ve encountered this world from
across the table, as a vendor or consultant, and I’ve never seen anything but passionate, driven and highly-stressed managers who bargain hard and are ruthless in their decisions – but always focused on attaining the highest possible quality and excellence for their product.
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PRODUCT EXCELLENCE
In this blog episode, I’m going behind the scenes of product development, to try and bring you the real story of what it takes to lead a product from conception to market success.
Ownership of a Great Idea/Innovation It’s common knowledge that Product Managers lead product development and rollout, but what’s not common is their feeling of ‘ownership’ of the core idea or innovation driving the process, nor their feeling of conviction or motivation in terms of the brilliance of that idea. Too many Product Managers are stuck with flogging weak ideas given to them by somebody else, where ‘ownership’ basically means that it’s their fault if the product fails but not their credit if it succeeds.
A Great Boss This may be stating the obvious, but it’s worth stating and restating constantly. While bosses who give full autonomy to the Product Manager may be rare, bosses who can constructively critique the manager without constraining her/his freedom to operate are even rarer.
The Right Frameworks Nowadays, most Product Managers are MBAs or have some academic training in techno-commercial management. Which means they are stuffed solid with all kinds of wizardly frameworks that supposedly explain and guide you in every situation you’ll encounter. However, as is the case with real life, it forgot to read the textbooks, and so throws up situations that defy the greatest guru and her/ his omnipotent model. It helps, then, if the manager has had some hands-on experience under her/his belt – but what really helps is a framework that the manager can really use to toggle between doing her/his job, and explaining it articulately to others. Think of it as leading an expedition into the wilds on the ground, and having an incredibly detailed roadmap as well.
A Rock-solid and Dedicated Team It’s not hard for a dedicated Product Manager to win the hearts of customers and prospects – because they are as interested as s/he in seeing an improved, better, more effective product outcome.The harder part is getting all the internal stakeholders on board. Different specialists will push for their specialist perspective, disgruntled employees will subtly (or not) subvert the initiative, and most people will be too caught up in their own KRAs to really bother. This is perhaps what Ravi was ruefully recounting to me at the head of this article!
Clarity on KRAs and Evaluation Since the Product Manager’s job involves Sales, Marketing, Development, Quality and Service, s/he becomes an easy target for anything that can go wrong in the product narrative. Of course, there is no looking away from the integrated nature of her/his job, but making a separation of product performance and personal performance would go a long way in a more balanced and fair evaluation.
Seeing Both, Forest and Trees The main professional challenge before the Product Manager at every stage of her/his job is making the right trade-offs – between bottom line and customer delight, or API versus a dashboard, or topline versus good media buzz, and so on. From my experience, this is where the manager’s own personality shows through in terms of the choices s/he tends to make – whether s/he is conservative or entrepreneurial, people-person or technogeek, perfectionist or broad-brush generalist, etc. Whatever be the case, one can only wish for the manager to be able to see both the contradictory options and exercise a choice that the customer will appreciate!
Arvind Lodaya Strategic Innovation & Branding Consultant | ALo Consulting Innovation Mentor | SELCO Foundation Editor | Prodmagazine.com
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CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS PIVOTAL FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION
Continuous improvement, or Kaizen, is a method of identifying opportunities for streamlining work and reducing waste. The practice was formalized by the popularity of Lean/Kaizen methods in manufacturing and business, and now it is being heavily used in software/IT industry, thanks to adoption of lean and agile product development methodologies. However, Continuous Improvement (CI) is more than just about ‘process’. The notion of CI has long been focused in software development practices, but what about product management? If we only
improve the development side, we only solve half of the problem. We end up creating really fast and efficient processes to release products that users end up hating.The goal of Continuous Improvement should be about maximizing customer success, product quality and profitability with effective process as a vehicle. It is about the cultural mindset of product organization to continuously innovate and stay relevant in the market and competition.
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PRODUCT INNOVATION
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
CONTINUOUS Customer Product Centricity Quality
IMPROVEMENT Process Business Efficiency
Profitability
Company/Organization Culture A good product manager constantly looks for opportunity to improve in weak areas of product without compromising on strengths. From a product management perspective, here are four key pillars for continuous improvement. Having a right organization culture and innovation mindset provides a strong foundation for these pillars.
Customer Centricity: Customer centricity is not about offering after-sales support or great customer service. It’s a strategy about putting your customer first, and their success at the core of your business. It’s about listening to customers’ problems, engaging them all through the product lifecycle and seeking their feedback proactively for continuous improvement. As part of customer centricity, product managers should set up listening posts that help them understand what their customers really want, gather the customer’s voice and buying behavior through various channels — e.g.,
sales, frontline support, social media, sentiment analysis, net promoter score, most liked/hated features etc. Product managers can then adopt prioritization techniques such as the Kano model to understand which features are delighters vs. satisfiers vs. dissatisfiers and create feature roadmaps that align well with customer expectations.
Product Quality: Product managers often face a dilemma when asked by stakeholders to choose between speed (TTM) and quality. Quality should no doubt be on top of their mind even if that means releasing the product with fewer features or late into the market. A few important features offering quality customer experience is better than many unwanted features with bugs. A product with critical quality issues will not just impact customer satisfaction, it increases engineering costs and eventually the product gets into a vicious cycle of fixing problems instead of focusing on continuous improvement based on customers’
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PRODUCT INNOVATION
feedback. A proactive quality assurance system will shift the focus back on the customer and provides more time to enhance products with more useful features. So, build it right the first time and every time.
Process Efficiency: Process efficiency is not just limited to engineering development cycle as in Agile/CI/DevOps. It’s more about having the right systems and tools in place to effectively gather customers’ feedback and requirements, how quickly product management is able to converge on priorities and roadmap decisions and finally, how product managers can improve the feature velocity and reduce the waiting time for customers.
Business Profitability: The goal of product managers should be to maximize profitability by increasing revenues and margins. Product managers play a key role in influencing or
making investment decisions. Hence, they should regularly monitor various business KPIs such as bookings, average run-rate, customer acquisition cost, churn rate, sales funnel leakage, and continuously look at ways to enhance in these areas. E.g., create loyalty or lock-in programs that may reduce churn rate. To summarize, change is inevitable in the world of technology products. As Mark Twain puts it, “Strive for continuous improvement instead of delayed perfection,” and product managers play a pivotal role in adopting continuous improvement practices that are limited to just engineering processes today.
Muralidhar Somisetty Co-founder & CTO | Woises Editor | Prodmagazine.com
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IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR STARTUPS
Startups are a wonderful movement that has gripped the new age market and has created a platform for ideas to market in a short period. I agree with the Steve Blank definition of startups as “temporary organizations in search of scalable and repeatable business models”. In the early stages of ideation, it’s all about creating a meaningful solution which solves the core problem at hand and it’s an iterative process with customer validation.There are not many processes applied during this phase except of light agile methodologies. This is the ‘zero to one’ phase of startup innovations as defined Peter Thiel.
However, as the startup begins to scale, there is a strong need for structure approach to make every work repeatable.The skillset of the company needs to change from a hacker mode to a process-oriented one.To have a reputable business model, the startup needs to act like an oiled large company and this requires standard product management practices
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PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
like requirement management, prioritization-based on customer and revenues, road mapping, planning and tracking and more importantly, keeping the new growing team with current information. Product management should be mandated by investors in the companies that get funded to get better ROI as they bring in more treatable and predictable operational models. Entrepreneurs should embrace and adopt the standard product management practices to suit their culture and
innovation at hand. The learnings from such adaptations will help in refining and evolving new age startup product management.
Ravikiran Annaswamy Founder & CEO | Woises Editor | Prodmagazine.com
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Editorial Team DAVID FRADIN
Principal | www.spicecatalyst.com Editor | Prodmagazine.com David was classically trained as an HP Product Manager and was then recruited by Apple. He has over 47 years of product management, product marketing management and senior management experience.
MURALIDHAR SOMISETTY Co-founder & CTO | Woises Editor | Prodmagazine.com
Muralidhar is a technology leader, start-up mentor, and a yoga instructor. He led engineering and product management portfolio of multi-million dollar SaaS/Analytics businesses at Cisco Systems. He is passionate about product innovation and applications of artificial intelligence in solving real-world problems.
RAVIKIRAN ANNASWAMY Founder & CEO | Woises Editor | Prodmagazine.com
Ravikiran is incubates various innovative products using analytics and deep learning. He works closely with global programs like Founders Institute (Fi.Co) and Unreasonable Institute as Mentor and Coach for early stage startups.
RAMKUMAR NARAYANAN
Digital Transformation | Product Thinking | Strategy | Zinnov, Sukino Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd Editor | Prodmagazine.com Ramkumar (Ram) Narayanan is a global leader focusing on data driven, digital product innovation spanning consumer and enterprise markets. He has also been associated with eBay,Yahoo!, and Microsoft.
ARVIND LODAYA
Strategic Innovation & Branding Consultant | ALo Consulting, Innovation Mentor | SELCO Foundation Editor | Prodmagazine.com Arvind Lodaya is trained in Product Design and consults across branding, design and innovation. He advises and teaches at premier institutes in India and overseas.
BHASKARAN SRINIVASAN
Founder, Business Zenz Editor | Prodmagazine.com
Bhaskaran Srinivasan conducts bespoke training on technology and management. He helps companies craft and live a strategy to improve financial parameters, customer KPIs, and employee satisfaction.
TATHAGAT VARMA
Country Head, ChinaSoft International Editor | Prodmagazine.com Tathagat Varma builds and leads the ChinaSoft business in India from scratch. He is a software executive, product leader and technologist.
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“The value is in what gets used, not in what gets built.” Kris Gale
“Any damn fool can make something complex, it takes a genius to make something simple.” Pete Seeger
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates
“No matter how good the team… if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails.” Woody Williams
“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.” Deep Nishar
“Roadmaps are evidence of strategy. Not a list of features.” Steve Johnson
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