Was great to get the opportunity to speak at the Product Management Festival in Zurich this year. I presented on how portfolio management techniques could support corporate ideation – had some great conversations on the topic with other attendees after my talk and there seemed to be a lot of interest in the area of innovation.
It was fantastic to be part of a great lineup that included Ellen Gottesdiener, Rich Mironov, Teresa Torres , Michael Eckhardt to name but a few. It was also really great to meet so many European counterparts – so interesting to get their perspective on how product management is working in their organization.
The event offers great opportunities for Product Managers to network and is certainly not just about listening to speakers. It is really great to see an event focused on Product Management. Unfortunately I couldn’t get to all of the speakers but here were just a few short takeaways for me:
Michael Eckhardt – 7 Deadly Sins to Avoid
Don’t just talk to current customers – talk to mainstream customers who have not yet adopted your solution. Understand your customers compelling reason to buy. Ensure your messaging is clear – communicate a “superior selling proposition” – good template provided.
Thomas Bauch – Crossing the Strategic Gap with Product Portfolio Management:
Thomas walked us through some really useful tools in the area of Product Portfolio Management: 9-Array Matrix, Extended ABC Analysis, Project Value Contribution Index.
Gaurav Katyal – Gamification for Product Managers:
Gaurav helped us to recognize how gamification techniques could support other real world examples. Understanding what makes games engaging and how they motivate user behavior. How to drive user engagement of our products.
Teresa Torres – Moving Past Vanity Metrics:
Teresa presented a very insightful case study from a company where she worked previously in where they recognized that they were really capturing metrics that just made them feel better rather those that would really show if the product was successful. She encouraged us to “define product success in terms of when your user has success – not in terms of business success”. She also recommended “evaluating every idea, every decision based on expected impact on your goal”
IPTV Portfolio Funnel – Thomas Haas
Thomas reinforced the importance of portfolio management techniques and he described how he applied this technique in an IPTV case study – defined criteria for prioritization that included cost of delay, duration and weighted the prioritization based on shortest job first (WSJF). Requirements prioritization is a key function of product management and good to see focus on this throughout the conference.
Nikolai Mokros – Product Management Training on the Job
Encouraged us to hold “Quick Product Management Intelligence” sessions on a weekly basis – no more than 30 minutes. Understand your “golden nugget” learning of the week – building up a suite of topics that can be accessed even by those who could not attend on the day – very useful idea.
Ellen Gottesdiener – Rope your Scope
Understand “what” you are building – the 7 product dimensions, “who” you are building it for – reign in your scope creep.