Toronto p camp 2010, strategic pm

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www.productcamp.org/toronto

May 30, 2010 – Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University

PM Becomes Strategic…Are You Ready?

TO M G R A N T

S E N I O R A N A LY S T,F O R R E S T E R R E S E A R C H

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Tech vendors are asking PM to play an increasingly strategic role. That’s a good thing as long as you’re ready to take on those responsibilities.

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Agenda

•How do we know if PM is strategic?

•What is making PM strategic?

•What does this mean for me?

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Agenda

•How do we know if PM is strategic?

•What is making PM strategic?

•What does this mean for me?

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How do we know if PM is strategic?

•Who’s my boss?– More reporting to CEOs or GMs

•What’s my job?– Greater clarity and specialization

•Do I have the skills and experiences?– Higher bar, emphasis on people and business skills

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How do we know if PM is strategic?

•What’s my deliverable?– High-value content for many consumers

•How do you measure my performance?– More directly tied to business outcomes

•What’s my authority?– Less ambiguous decision-making power

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The new PM archetype

PRODUCTMANAGEMENT

PRODUCTMARKETING

OutboundInbound

Customer intelligenceMarket intelligence

RoadmapPortfolio

StakeholdersUse casesAdoption

Social mediaEtc.

CEO, GM, or other executive

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Agenda

•How do we know if PM is strategic?

•What is making PM strategic?

•What does this mean for me?

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New challenges, common responses

Social media Customers expect a two-way conversation

SaaS/cloud Customers see, try, maybe buy, maybe leave

Invest carefully

Business technology

We’re dealing with more stakeholders

Articulate value clearly

Recession We need to re-think our business, perhaps taking new risks

Innovation Someone needs to shepherd the process from ideation to adoption

Deliver, deliver, deliver

Agile We can develop faster, but can we deliver?

Understand the market

CHALLENGES

RESPONSES

Portfolio What is the value we’re delivering our customers?

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Agile: the challenge

CustomersPartnersSales, marketing,

and other externally-facing groups

Development

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Agile: PM’s response

PMs must juggle the services they provide to the development team with other responsibilities, including the ripple effects of Agile.

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Social media: the challenge

OUTBOUND

INBOUND

VENDOR CUSTOMERS

Whether or not you invest in social media, customers will be talking about you.

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Social media: PM’s response

“Which of the following would motivate you to participate in social activity — or participate more — for work purposes?” (Up to three responses accepted)

Base: 793 BT decision makers at companies with 100 or more employees

Source: Forrester’s North American and European B2B Social Technographics Online Survey, Q1 2010

Using social media in this fashion is a new discipline (PLOT) that doesn’t come for free.

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SaaS/cloud: the challenge

CUSTOMERS

PRODUCT

PRICING

RELEASES

PARTNERS

MARKETING

ETC. ETC. ETC.

BEFORE:ON PREMISE

AFTER:ON DEMAND

What’s the same?What’s different?

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SaaS/cloud: PM’s response

Define releases as the interval between when you can deliver new value, and the customer is ready to receive it.

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VALUE

Innovation: the challenge

CONCEIVETEST BUILD

DELIVERADOPT

ASSESS

IDEAS At each stage, vendors must make critical decisions, based on both business and technical criteria

Tech vendors have stressed these stages…

…And are learning to appreciate these stages.

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Innovation: PM’s response

PMs must be “innovation coaches” at every stage of the game.

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Business technology: the challenge

US Canada UK France Germany0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

Justification

Business re-quirements

Selection

Implementation

ROI

Frequency of use, discussion forums/communities as sources of ERP advice, by stage

Source: B2B North American and European B2B Social Technographics Online Survey, Q4 2008

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Business technology: PM’s response

PMs must focus more on the social science parts of their job.

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Portfolio: the challenge

Manage resources efficiently

Adapt to marketplace changes

Finance

Human resources

Supply chain management

Dashboards and reporting

Decrease corporate risk

Auditing?

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS

ConfigurationsIntegrationsAdoptionMarketingSalesSupport

OUR PORTFOLIO

Portfolios are a strategic bet that you will provide valuable assistance in addressing business problems.

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Portfolio: PM’s response

Make the portfolio the measure of products. Enforce product alignment with the portfolio.

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Agenda

•How do we know if PM is strategic?

•What is making PM strategic?

•What does this mean for me?

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Define strategic PM

• Do a brutally frank assessment of your department– EX: In an Agile organization, how can we juggle both tactical and

strategic questions?

• Create specializations– EX: Portfolio manager, product manager, product owner

• Insist on decision-making power– EX: No project goes forward unless a PM can explain how it

meets the following criteria…

• Insist on clear boundaries– EX: If we’re going to focus more on requirements, or support

social media, someone else needs to shoulder sales enablement more

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Build credibility and leverage

• Determine what matters to executive management– EX: Aligning company, portfolio, product goals

• Become the guardian of company performance metrics– EX: Customer satisfaction, post-launch readiness

• Build a repository of useful customer and market intelligence

– EX: Personas, user stories, solutions architectures

• Propose a new innovation process– EX: Rapid market testing and adjustment at each phase

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Balance authority and accountability

•Pick reasonable objectives with real business outcomes

– EX: Shorten sales cycle

•Make them shared objectives– EX: Shared responsibility of PM, Sales, Marketing

•Measure, measure, measure– EX: Frequency of sales bottlenecks

•Market, market, market– EX: Make sales training less about products, more

about successful implementations

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Try some bigger changes

• Propose field certification– EX: Sales training ends with a presentation…

• Abolish the idea of customer– EX: Embrace and evangelize user stories

• Replace the words “product” and “service” with “value”– EX: Shift from product management to solutions or portfolio

management

• Throw out the old concepts of release and launch– EX: Our measure of launch is a threshold of value, not just

something new

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