1Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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
2Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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.
3Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
•How do we know if PM is strategic?
•What is making PM strategic?
•What does this mean for me?
4Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
•How do we know if PM is strategic?
•What is making PM strategic?
•What does this mean for me?
5Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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
6Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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?
9Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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.
16Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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?
23Entire contents © 2010 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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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