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Making sure you hire the best Product Manager for your business

When it makes sense to hire a Product Manager

As an ex Product Manager myself, I now work as a mentor with startups and scaling SMEs and one of the most common questions I get asked is:

When is it time to hire a Product Manager?

The answer to this is not necessarily straightforward and really depends on how you define product management. Product Management, although pretty widely adopted as a discipline in organisations is still quite misunderstood.

If your organisation has adopted an Agile development methodology then the engineering team will likely be pushing for the business to hire a product owner:

A Scrum Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.

https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-product-owner

The primary goal of the product owner is to maximise the value delivered by Agile Scrum teams. For this reason, they need to understand and be respected by engineering and quite often they have an engineering background or technology focus. Because product owners lean more towards engineering than marketing they tend to be quite inward focused. The majority of their time is consumed by the agile development process – attending to the backlog, supporting sprint planning meetings etc. They typically have very little time (or inclination) to focus on market analysis or strategy.

The problem is that once a business hires a product owner they often feel that they have product management covered. My view is that this is often not the case and let me explain why.

In many early stage businesses the CEO/Founder is often the person who understands the target markets better than anyone else. They will have clarity on the vision, the target markets, the competitors and market needs and they will guide product strategy. If there is an established agile process in the business they will influence the product backlog. As the business scales they will find it harder to work directly with the engineering team so will likely push to bring in a product owner to do this. In early stage businesses the CEO/Founder will also guide and influence strategic marketing and sales.

As the CEO/Founder becomes increasingly busy just dealing with the day-to-day requirements that come with being a CEO of a scaling business they won’t have the same capacity to share their market expertise with the senior leaders of the business.

So who takes on the role of delivering clarity on the vision, target markets, competitive landscape, buyer personas, market needs, etc. when the CEO is too busy to do this to the same level as before? Who provides clarity on direction to the sales, marketing and engineering teams?

Many believe this should be the product owner – but as we discussed earlier they are generally pretty busy just keeping on top of a backlog of product development requirements. They have little time to focus on elements of strategic marketing. I ran a Product Management function in a large software development company myself so I understand how challenging it can be for product owners to take on both the strategic and tactical elements of product management.

Fig. 1: Key Product Management Focus

So if your product owner is too busy or too technical to focus on strategic marketing, then is it worth considering a supporting hire that has the capacity and capability to do this?

Someone with the title Strategic Marketer or Strategic Product Manager could add real value at a senior level in the business. Although closely aligned with the product owner, this role would be more strategic and outward focused and would perform many of the strategic marketing tasks that the early stage CEO/Founder undertook – articulation of vision, target market segmentation and prioritisation, competitive analysis, capturing of market needs, articulation and dissemination of a value proposition, etc.

I believe that at a certain point in a business’s growth there are signs it is time to take on someone with a strategic and market focused approach – read on for my view on what these signs are …

“Inside-Out” rather than “Outside-In” Product Management

Is your business having ad-hoc conversations with the market – often in broadcast (sales focused) rather than listening mode (strategic alignment, capturing market needs)? Are these engagements typically driven by a a handful of the senior leadership team?

If so then it is likely that no one person has responsibility for feeding back what they are hearing to the product development team or for owning how this is captured and framed in a value proposition for sales or marketing purposes. It may be the case that your product owner may not even be aware of these conversations! As a result the engineering backlog is likely driven by hunches and an internal view of the world as this is the only view the product owner has.

Although your business may have a Digitial Marketer, a Marcoms team, a Website Developer – are these resources typically in broadcast mode and focused on lead generation? Are they taking a strategic focus to market development?

Does your business have a high level understanding of target or addressable markets but not enough detail at a competitor, customer or market level to support a focused and prioritised approach to sales and market engagements?

If the product owner is focused inward then in reality product requirements will only tentatively link to market needs and it is likely that your product is being developed in a vacuum.

Product Manager not aligned with organisational functions…

Where it was once easy to align everyone, is this now becoming increasingly difficult as the business scales?

If the senior team are travelling more and required to attend more external meetings to grow the business then they will find it even more difficult to align functions across the business.

Have your engineering, marketing, finance and sales teams grown organically? If so then they are likely operating in silos with little cross-functional alignment and it will have become more difficult to benchmark or measure the effectiveness of these teams.

If the CEO/Founder is finding it increasingly difficult to align the senior leadership team on a market-focused approach to driving the strategy then it may be time to find a supporting resource to help with this – don’t assume the product owner has the capacity to do this.

Hunches setting the product strategy…

As an early stage business you had no option but to focus on strategy. Investors demanded it! As the company has scaled, has it been all hands on deck to deliver project commitments and has strategy had to take a back seat to tactical delivery?

Are Senior leaders in the organisation making product strategic decisions that are driven more from personal hunches rather than a validated view of the market?

To drive revenue, are you chasing every business opportunity even if it only has tentative links to your strategic vision?

Is this leading to confusion and an unhealthy lack of focus? Are business priorities unclear and is there a lack of focus across different functions?

If this is the case then it is likely that a culture of  priority du jour has developed. If your business is evolving chaotically then it is likely that the product backlog is often re-scoped to suit tight deadlines or sales demands and key market-focused features may be omitted or neglected. This could have a direct impact on your ability to attract and retain broader market interest.

A tactical rather than a strategic approach to product strategy…

In order to win business have you been driven by customer demands and do you have a tendency to approach each sales opportunity as a tactical bespoke deployment? Are solutions tailored to each customer’s exact needs rather than being taken off the shelf?

If this is the case then you likely have a lack of repeatability across customer deployments and your service deployment team is growing.

As a consequence, your software solution may become difficult to manage across customer sites and the development team may struggle to manage an increasing number of customer quality issues. This could have a direct knock-on impact on your ability to service the needs of the broader market through regular quality product updates.

Your product strategy is failing to attract or retain buyer interest …

Many technical companies have a strong product development heritage. Although your company may have mastered the competencies to deliver a high quality and technically masterful product are you failing to articulate its value to the market? Do you find that your business is struggling to understand and speak to the challenges or problems that your target markets are experiencing?

It’s hard to be heard when everyone is broadcasting to rather than communicating with the market.

Research has shown that people spend 60% of conversations talking about themselves. And this jumps to 80%  when communicating via social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

Are you spending more time talking about your own business rather than your customer’s challenges? Is your message unintentionally encrypted for your target market?

Although it is so tempting to begin broadcasting about your products to anyone who will listen, it is so important to clearly speak to challenges your market can resonate with. You often only get one shot at making an impact when you broadcast – try and make it count by hiring someone whose job it is to understand your target markets really well and to support marketing and sales to create messages that will resonate.

Finding it hard to understand return on investment from Product Strategy…

If your business is winning lots of projects, are you assigning resources arbitrarily with little focus on “return on investment”?

It can sometimes be difficult to justify the investment in a project if the organisation cannot align it with a strong market demand.

Is your sales organisation chasing deals that are driving revenue but these deals are often once-offs and have loose ties to the overall strategic drivers of the business?

An active but misdirected sales team can consume organisational resources at a significant cost to the business.

Also, if product development activity is not carefully managed and aligned with a clear market strategy it can cost the business dearly. We would be foolish to invest in a large home renovation project, for example, without the guidance of an architect. We need their help to ensure our exact needs are met, to design the best solution and to ensure that the builders stay within budget. Product development projects are no different – strategic product managers ensure projects are well architected and align with market need. They manage and control investment in engineering development and work with product owners to ensure the business gets bang for buck!

Innovation is at a standstill….

Do you find that there is no clear process for capturing or prioritising new ideas?

Do you have a mechanism for gating ideas or preparing for what is beyond the next horizon? Does your business have the opportunity or capacity to seek out adjacent market opportunities and to fund blue sky thinking?

Every business needs time to plan for the future and to anticipate and react to industry trends and market needs. This requires foresight and investment and is a key part of strategic marketing.

Struggling to stand out in a competitive landscape …

Is your competitive landscape crowded and the market is finding it difficult to find compelling reasons to select your company’s products? Do you struggle to identify unique selling points for the products or solutions and it has become increasingly difficult to position your company competitively?

Although it is very difficult to maintain sustainable competitive advantage in a world where technology and market needs evolve quickly it is really important that every business focuses on what makes them great and what makes them stand out against the competition. Someone in the organisation needs to keep a close eye on the competitive advantage that your organisation can drive and maintain over time.

Although these indicators can manifest themselves to varying degrees in companies, depending on their stage of growth, they are a useful litmus test for the need to consider hiring someone who is focused on strategic marketing or strategic product management and who can support you to align everyone in the business around your vision.

How can IntegratedThinking Help you with Product Management?

Helping you to understanding what strategic product management or strategic marketing means to your organisation. Applying a step-by-step Insight2Value process that helps you to:

  • Create scalable and repeatable service, products or solutions that customers truly value
  • Drive future growth through the continued progression of innovative ideas
  • Remain focused – making sure everyone is marching not only in the “right direction” but in the “same direction”
  • Work to a clearly defined business model that meets corporate strategic objectives
  • Allocate your finite set of resources to the right projects and achieve maximum return on investment

It is so important though that you seek support when establishing the product management discipline – making any kind of change in an organisation requires alignment from the top down to ensure you draw a line in the sand and take the right approach moving into the future.

Contact: email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details


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Do you have a solution looking for a problem to solve?

Aligning your Product Strategy with Market Demand

How would Product Management answer if asked to explain how your product strategy reflects the needs of the market?

Does your Product Strategy start by introducing the features of your product or solution before you speak about the market you are targeting? Do you present architecture diagrams showing how your product can integrate into the customer’s network without first explaining who the customer is? Do you talk about the great things that your company or product can do and include a lot of technical spiel with a sprinkling of ‘ilities’ … reliability, flexibility, usability? Can you talk at length about how performant your product is, how well you support the customer when they find a bug and what a fantastic user interface you have?

At what point in your Product Strategy do you start to talk about the customer?

Many companies struggle to talk about the market that they are targeting and the key problems or needs that they are solving for that market segment. Often they have little understanding of the buyer personas in the target market – what jobs they do, what motivates them, the difficulties they have in doing their job.

So why are technology companies generally so poor at representing the customer in their Product Strategy?

In my opinion, it is because they feel more comfortable jumping straight to the “how” without trying to articulate the “what” and the “why”. Technology people just want to make things – they love to create new things and to apply cool technology in interesting new ways.

Technology companies are often not good at understanding or articulating the problem they are trying to solve for their target customers.

Even when companies do take a stab at describing the customer, they struggle to provide evidence that they have ever validated their hypothesis with existing or prospective customers. They rarely talk to customers about their needs or wants. They often operate in broadcast mode – selling the latest feature or attempting to upgrade the customer. If they listen to their customers at all it is often in a support role where the customer logs bugs or issues with the existing product.

“If you base your product strategy around incrementally adding new features to your product, without a clear understanding of how these features benefit your target customer segment, then you run the risk of having a complex product searching for a problem to solve!“

IntegratedThinking

Could your business benefit from clarifying the core market problem you are trying to solve, through a structured approach to insight gathering? Contact: email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details

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Product Management – how to be the best Product Manager!

Product Management Product Manager
Failing Fast @ Product Management

Product Management is a discipline that is gaining more traction in organisations over the last few years – more and more companies are saying that they have a product manager or at the very least are applying aspects of the discipline. In my experience there is still a huge amount of misunderstanding in the industry as to what product management actually is and its implementation in companies varies widely.

But hey, everyone says it is important to “fail fast” – to recognise when something is not working and move on – so here are some things that you may already be doing that ensure you have a better chance of failing fast at product management:

You let vested interests drive the product management agenda 

There will be many stakeholders in your organisation with an interest in “guiding” product management’s agenda. Sales might like them to attend every sales meeting or create snazzy powerpoint presentations to support their sales engagements … at the end of the day this can only help them to meet their sales targets and it will certainly keep the product manager very busy. Engineering might like them to “project manage” their activities or generally act as gofer in the product development process. After all, product management do “own” the product, so when there is someone needed to do some random task related to the product and nobody else wants to do it then who better to ask … right?! When product management become too busy delivering an agenda for one dominant stakeholder they will not be looking at the bigger picture and delivering on the organisation’s overall core objectives.

You continue to use hunches or “gut feel” to guide decision making in the organisation 

Allowing those who “shout loudest” or who wield the most power to influence decision making and ignoring market data, ROI calculations and other business metrics presented by product management will likely mean you are simply “taking a punt” and risking your hard earned money.  Continuing to manage your organisation as a bottomless pit of resources that you can just throw ad-hoc projects into will ensure you continue to have product releases that miss deadlines, products that miss the mark with regards to customer expectations and revenues that continue to flatline.

You don’t communicate business objectives to the product manager or provide any input on their role objectives

A product manager with little insight of corporate objectives will have to try and guess what it is the company is trying to achieve (this is always fun) so they will probably flip-flop between projects that delve into project management, innovation, programme management, product marketing, sales engagement, possibly a little bit of product development and really anything else that someone believes the “owner” of the product should be doing on any given day. Failing to communicate any corporate objectives to product management will often mean that the organisation as a whole will lack clarity and focus and there will be mis-alignment as to what the company is trying to achieve. If the product manager does not understand how they should apply the discipline of product management in their organisation and what the leadership team expect from the role then they are much more likely to fail to meet expectations.

You allow product development teams to pay “lip service” to product management requirements 

Hiring a product manager and assigning them to an engineering team as a glorified “backlog manager” runs the risk that they are just responsible for moving things up and down the backlog on the direction of the engineering team. This will undermine their responsibility for the overall strategic direction of the product and you will be allowing engineering to call the shots and decide what goes into each release. Engineers rarely talk to customers and will typically not understand the needs of a broader market base. Allowing a product manager to become consumed by the engineering process (the “how”) and not enabling them to focus on the strategic (the “what” and “why”) is more likely to drive your product further and further away from what potential customers and the broader market really wants!

You don’t provide mentorship or support for your new product manager 

Hiring a product manager and just letting them loose in the organisation, even though they have never performed the role before, is likely to set them on a path to failure. Not providing any guidance or training on managing up and across the organisation, on handling a portfolio of requirements and choosing the ones with the best ROI, on communicating with a leadership team and board members, on managing product strategic direction and on ensuring that the company remains innovative, can have serious consequences. We all know you need to get training and support for sales, engineering and leadership team members. Equally, product managers are not born knowing how to deliver product strategy, so failing to train, mentor and support them will result in a key resource who does not have the confidence to execute strategy.

I don’t think any of us want to fail at what we do. We definitely need to be able to recognise when things are not working well and do something that makes a positive difference. We just don’t have the time to sit around and hope things get better by themselves!

If you are interested in taking a diagnostic to help you to understand the gaps in your company’s adoption of the discipline of Product Management then contact me by email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details.


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Product Management: How can you make sure investors love your strategy?

What Investors Care About?

Investors hate missing out on a great opportunity but equally they fear making a bad investment. For Product Management it is essential that they consider the needs of this crucial stakeholder.

So what are some of the things that investors think about when investing in product companies…

  • The challenge the product is trying to address and the evidence you have captured that this is a challenge the market wants solved
  • The size of the market opportunity
  • Any early traction you have obtained for your product
  • Your articulation of the value you bring to the market and how you will monetise this value
  • Why your business is uniquely different and how you compete with others?
  • Why you think people will be compelled to buy from you? Who your buyers are and what do they care about?
  • What team is in place to execute on the product strategy and how effective are this team?
  • Your strategy for marketing communications and sales
  • Your strategy for partnering with others to gain market traction or to execute on your product strategy

If this is what investors want to understand about your business, then how much attention do the leaders in your business, including Product Management give these areas?

As someone who has helped startups with their business plans and product strategy I understand that to capture the interest of the investor community it is hugely important to articulate the growth opportunity for your business through a business plan and associated Product Strategy.

Articulating the market opportunity and your value proposition for each target market is crucial. Clearly representing the challenge you address for your target market, capturing insights from this market and understanding how you will capture market interest to drive revenue growth is essential to ensure you get the kick-start of investment you need to scale your business.

Strategy is based on a differentiated customer value proposition. Satisfying customers is the source of sustainable value creation.” 

Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Strategy Maps)

Of course your Product Strategy needs to consider areas such as your mission and vision (with associated metrics of success), segmented market opportunity, your pricing strategy, your positioning of value for each target market, your competitive differentiation, any partnership strategy and a link to any sales and marketing strategies. You also need to highlight the key metrics that you will monitor to ensure product success – recurring revenue goals, customer acquisition rates, etc.

Everyone in the organisation needs to have sight of the key objectives (OKRs or SMART metrics of success) that the business is aiming to achieve at a high level so that they can define and align their own metrics of success to drive these corporate objectives.

A company that has captured initial investment through a clearly defined business plan and product strategy will move quickly to focus on the execution of this plan – hiring engineers, marketers and sales personnel. Keeping these resources aligned to deliver on the promises made to investors is now crucial!

It is really important that you can demonstrate to an investor that everyone in the business is aligned around the product strategy and that you can show how cross functional goals and initiatives are aligned. So it is important to define clear corporate goals and objectives that can be cascaded throughout the business. This ensures that you:

  • Create an aligned and collaborative organization that shares a common understanding of how the business will create value
  • Ensure the organization remains focused on corporate strategic objectives
  • Maximize ROI for corporate resources and ensure all resources are delivering effectively
  • Support decision making for all employees
  • Enable Sales and Marketing to clearly position the products and solutions to the target market and thereby drive revenue growth

How can you make sure you are investor ready?

Whether you are a startup or SME you should take the time to ensure that you have captured the right insights from the market to create a clear and compelling Business Plan and Product Strategy.

There are so many things that Investors care about but you need to focus on what is key in the context of your industry.

I have recently spent time running strategic insight gathering and value proposition workshops with companies across multiple industry sectors. The exercise has been enlightening for everyone – particularly those companies that have spent a lot of time focusing on the “execution” rather than the “strategic” side of product management and for those companies that have a requirement for near term investment. These workshops support the company with the insights that are needed to create a compelling product strategy.

Contact me siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details on how your business can capture market insights to drive future opportunity.


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5 ways for a Product Manager to make a positive impact when working with other leaders

Product Mentor Product Manager Product Management
Work with a Product Mentor

One of the more difficult challenges for any Product Manager is “managing up” or “managing across” the organization. The ability to demonstrate the soft skills required to effectively communicate and work with multiple people in the organization is often an underestimted part of the product manager’s role. This is not about becoming the bosses best friend, it is about stepping through the sometimes subtle political minefield that exists in most organizations.

Few of us receive specific training or work with a product mentor on what is a very important part of what we do. We don’t often discuss the negative impact of this aspect of our role  with others for fear of showing weakness. The training to deal with political interactions is often “on the job”, with many of us bearing the battle scars.

So what are my top 5 approaches for getting results when working with other leaders (although like all of you I’m still learning!)

As a Product Manager, build a relationship of trust with your key stakeholders

Difficulties in establishing a strong relationship with other stakeholders can stem from a lack of trust and a lack of understanding of the other person’s role. People can sometimes have a tendency to retreat to their trenches and adopt a stance based primarily on mistrust.

Making an effort to understand the value that each group in the organization brings is crucial. We may think we know it all and that we are clearly adding the most value but in reality we are all part of a bigger team. All stakeholders have the potential to add value – no person is an island, you need other people as much as they need you. In your communication with others show how you can support them in their role and how they can support you. Great companies are built with great people who develop strong relationships.

Understand your counterpart’s objectives and their management style

Conflict can often occur when as a Product Manager you don’t understand or care about your peer’s objectives. Although we may be working to different team KPIs at the end of the day there must be some common ground – do we not all aspire to create successful companies?

Rather than going head-to-head with someone over a position they have taken, try and understand their motives and objectives. If you are new to the role, try and speak to others in the organization to understand the different “management styles” that exist in the organization. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes first – it can help to avoid conflict if you know what motivates the other person and what they are trying to achieve.

Take advice from others – work with a product mentor

Product management is a multi-faceted role – it requires good communication, a strong focus on commercial aspects of business development, an ability to multi-task, the capacity to lead and above all the capability to deliver order from chaos. Often the product manager is a solitary figure with no direct reports but they communicate with and require support from many people in the organization.

I found huge benefits in working with a product mentor in my early days of product management and today I find it hugely satisfying to mentor product managers in their role.  Product Management can be a lonely place but it is an immensely rewarding role if approached in the right way. Take advice from as many other people as you can, especially those who have faced similar challenges to you. If you have a product manager in your team, ensure they are receiving the right supports from inside and outside the organization.

We are all on a journey of continuous learning – reach out to others who have made mistakes, learned from those mistakes and who can guide you in your approach.

Adopt processes that support better communication and interactions

Misunderstandings are more likely to occur when there is no formal process in place to guide how people work together. In the absence of a process for communication things can fall between the cracks and one side can blame the other.

Your product strategy and product roadmap are a great way to communicate your vision for the product. Ensure that each are communicated in a way that is relevant and understandable to the stakeholder you are engaging with.

Even if you don’t report to the CEO as a Product Manager and you do not have a seat on the leadership team ensure you have a forum for engaging with this team in relation to product and corporate strategy – this is essential. As a strategic Product Manager, reporting through someone else to the leadership team is never ideal.

When engaging with other stakeholders involved in executing on the product strategy, use a tool like the RACI model to outline who is responsible, accountable, consulted or informed. Product Management may be accountable for the success of the product but they cannot be responsible for everything that goes in to making products successful.

Keeping lines of communication open to all groups in your organisation and establishing forums of communication can be hugely beneficial.

As a Product Manager, understand your leadership team’s strategic objectives

It is important for product management to have a “voice” at the leadership table – they support alignment, guide decision-making and ensure everyone is moving in the same direction. As much as possible they reflect the CEO’s corporate strategy in their product strategy. I love OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) – particularly when they are outcome focused. Ensuring that your product strategy and your product roadmap are aligned with the strategic OKRs of the business is crucial. OKRs are a great way to achieve leadership alignment on strategy and to cascade strategic objectives right through the business.

Sometimes the leadership team may disagree with or do things that undermine the product manager’s strategy. Dealing with this situation can be a political minefield but use the product strategy or product roadmap as the mechanism to bring everyone back into alignment where possible.

In summary:

Managing up is such an important part of what we do and sometimes our passion for “doing the right thing” can override our ability to recognize that sometimes there are people more senior than us, who (for the best of reasons) may not agree with our vision. Product Management must tread a fine line between giving good counsel and dictating strategy. We have to ensure that we can see the bigger picture and that we recognize that there are often many contributory factors to good decision-making. As long as we enable our leadership teams to make informed decisions, with the right data, then we are doing our job. It’s important to realize though that we may not always agree with every decision that is made.

Although product managers may feel like they have no authority they do have the ability to lead and guide good decision-making and that is where they can add true value. Remember, don’t bring problems to the leadership team without some well thought out potential solutions.

 


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Top 10 signs that your company should look closely at Product Management

Whether consciously or not, most companies adopt some aspects of a Product Management discipline from their inception. The founders often perform the product management role – defining product strategy, setting revenue targets, meeting customers, capturing requirements, supporting
marketing initiatives, and managing investment priorities.
However, as the company grows it becomes more difficult to cover all bases and the essential parts of a true product management discipline need to be part of a more structured function within the company.

So what are the top 10 indicators that your company needs to reposition to adopt a product management discipline?

1) Absence of Customer or Market Focus – “Inside-Out” rather than “Outside-In”

Although your company is having conversations with customers they are typically driven by a handful of people, often senior leadership, and there is inconsistent feedback to the product development team. There is little understanding across the organization of the target or addressable market resulting in ad-hoc capture of competitor, customer or market data. This lack of customer focus means product requirements are not linked back to a customer need or problem and there are no formal links between marketing and product development. With no mechanism in place to support proactive engagement with customers your company is struggling to create products that customers truly value.

2) Lack of Alignment to Drive Strategic Objectives

As your company has grown it has become increasingly difficult to align everyone towards a common goal. Engineering, marketing, finance and sales teams have grown organically but are  operating in silos with little cross-functional alignment. This has led to  a lack of cohesion on how these functions will drive corporate strategic objectives or prioritize product strategic direction. It has become difficult to benchmark or measure the effectiveness of these teams.

3) Lack of Focus – Unclear Product Direction

In your early stage company  your founder worked to a clearly defined business plan and growth strategy which ensured they captured necessary investment. As the company has scaled the focus has shifted away from the customer or market and the product strategic direction has become predominantly driven from personal hunches. In the quest to win more business there is little focus on customer validation and tentative links to corporate strategic objectives. The “Highest Paid Person in the Organization (HIPPO)” is having a huge influence on how individuals prioritize their work and in this culture of the priority du jour there is a large element of confusion and an unhealthy lack of focus.
In order to cope with fluctuating markets, requirements are changing continually – business priorities are not articulated clearly and the product direction is not aligned across functions. Engineering is calling the shots and often drop or change features with little or no consultation with key stakeholders. Requirements are not understood during development so are regularly re-scoped to suit tight deadlines with little understanding of market or customer impact. Resources move frequently between projects and there is a developing culture of “fire fighting” or “organized chaos”. Engineers are creating and testing code but if asked to link back to a clear business case they are struggling.

4) Adopting a Tactical rather than Strategic Approach

In order to win business your company has  approached each customer engagement as a bespoke deployment, with solutions tailored to the customer’s exact needs. This  has resulted in a lack of cohesion or repeatability between customer releases with a large “services” component for each deployment. Code has become difficult to manage across customer sites and the development team are struggling to manage an increasing number of customer quality issues with a knock-on impact to release dates. Engineering priorities are predominantly driven from sales opportunities with little focus on the strategic direction.

5) Ad-Hoc Product Positioning

Although your company may have initially created a technically masterful product they are failing to articulate its value to the market. When asked, Engineering position the product from a technical standpoint and fail to understand or demonstrate how the product relates to a customer need or problem that can be addressed. Consequently, Marketing battle to understand the technical complexities of the product and with a lack of a defined value proposition the company is struggling to position the product to their own sales team and ultimately to the market.

6) Unclear View of Product Commercial Performance

Development resources are assigned arbitrarily to projects, with little focus on “return on investment” or any link back to corporate objectives. It has become difficult to ascertain the cost to develop a product release or to link these releases to a value proposition or product strategy. Marketing promotions are failing to associate upcoming releases with value to the customer. Win/Loss analysis does not exist or is ad-hoc at best and customer data is not fed back to the product development team. Product pricing is  arbitrary and unclear. There is no mechanism to associate product releases with clear revenue targets. Pricing varies across customers due to the bespoke nature of the deployments.

7) Too Many Projects and Too Few Resources

Due to an uncertain economic climate or investor pressure to grow revenues key decision makers in your company are feeling the need to say “yes” to any new revenue generating projects. In this tactical environment, resources are scurrying between projects with little focus on the end-game or corporate strategic objectives. The company has no gating process to prioritize project investment based on ROI.

8) No Innovation/Ideation Strategy Established

Due to the tactical nature of your business there is no clear process for capturing new ideas, prioritizing these ideas or bringing them through a gating process. You have a team that have the potential to generate lots of ideas but there is nobody to catch these and prioritize investment.

9) Unconscious Decision Making

With a lack of market or customer data product decisions are being made in a vacuum. The company is moving so fast that it cannot recognize that it is in a cul-de-sac.

10) Lack of Competitive Differentiation

Your competitive landscape is crowded and customers are finding it difficult to find compelling reasons to select your company’s products. You struggle to identify unique selling points for the products or solutions and it has become increasingly difficult to position your company competitively.

These indicators can manifest themselves to varying degrees in companies, depending on their stage of growth, but are a useful litmus test for the need to adopt a product management discipline.

Understanding what product management means to your organization – irrespective of your stage of development, product management principles will help to align key stakeholders in your organization to deliver your growth strategy, supporting you:

  • To create scalable and repeatable products or solutions that customers truly value
  • To ensure future growth through the continued progression of innovative ideas
  • To ensure the organization is focused – marching not only in the “right direction” but in the “same direction”
  • To ensure that the organization works to a clearly defined business model that meets corporate strategic objectives
  • To allocate the finite set of resources available to the company to resource the right projects and achieve maximum return on investment

I am a mentor in Product Management and have experience in supporting clients across multiple industry sectors to adopt the discipline. Get in touch to find out more.