Combining Classical and Agile Product Management

I was asked to present, at an interview, on how I see the role of the product manager working in an agile scrum environment. The key areas that I highlighted were:

• Scope and responsibilities of the product manager in scrum
• Typical product management activities in scrum
• A typical day in the life of the agile product manager
• The agile product management framework
• A case study – the benefits

See full presentation below.

However since the interview/presentation and starting in the new role the company has decided to change direction and combine waterfall with scrum. The idea is that we start off in waterfall mode move into scrum and then finish in waterfall.

Since joining the first thing I noticed was that the current scrum team is being led (as opposed to the team self managing itself) by a contract technical team lead cum product manager who spends part of his time being the scrum master and part being a business analysis.

In order to bring clarity and set expectations from the start I went about working with the head of development and head of product management to define, at a real granular level, the scope of the product manager aka product owner and that of the scrum master who is currently the technical team lead.

The end result was a list of 90+ activities: starting off with documenting the product vision and ending in the release of a sprint. The activities combine classical product management with agile product management – a real hybrid taking the best of both worlds. The roles and responsibilities matrix was signed off by both heads – now the journey begins.

Next week I meet with the development in order to explore the journey we’ll take together in developing the products allocated to us.

How I See The Role Of Product Management

View more presentations from Derek Morrison.

Product Management interview question on strategy and tactics

I was being interviewed for a Product Managers position by a Chief Operating Officer (COO) who used to do the job that I was interviewing for. The company has adopted and really embraced scrum so naturally expects the Product Manager to take on many of the Product Owners responsibilities. I ask the COO to broadly split the role down into three aspects. His reply was:
1. Vision and Strategy
2. Execution and delivery
3. Stakeholder management and collaboration

I jotted the above answer down on my note pad. He then asked me “what percentage of my time I think I would spend on each of the above three activities.” I paused for a second – gathered my thoughts and jotted figures next to each one:

1. Vision and Strategy – 20%
2. Execution and delivery – 40%
3. Stakeholder management and collaboration – 40%

Fortunately for me he agreed.

I often hear and read of Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers stressing at their yearly appraisals that they get too bogged down with the tactical and have no time for the strategic and visionary part of the job. The problem is that if you don’t use it (the visionary and strategic thinking) then your loose it. Amy C Edmondson in HBR puts it this way:

“Execution is difficult to sustain – not because people get tired of working hard, but because the managerial mindset-set that enables efficient execution inhibits employees’ ability to learn and innovate. A focus on getting things done, and done right, crowds out the experimentation and reflection vital to sustainable success”. Harvard Business Review July – Aug 08

Correct implementation of the Scrum process aims to solve the problem where the Product Managers/ Product Owners gets burned out due to “efficient execution” and a sharp focus of “getting things done” and “done right”. A Product Manager/Owner knows the cycles of the team and can therefore plan his/her work in advance. The key is to ensure that there is a well balanced Scrum team. I like the way Marty Cagan puts it:

“You will need product managers to represent the needs of your target users and lead the product discovery effort. You probably already have project managers (aka Scrum masters), but if not, you’ll need product managers too; just don’t make the mistake of trying to hire one person to cover project management and product management.” (italics supplied)

It’s important for each product person to deliberately carve out time for themselves to do activities that will be the catalysed for strategic and visionary thinking. Such activities would include (but not limited to): visiting customers, researching the marketing and competition, discussions with the development team on the latest and greatest technologies as well as discussions on how existing technologies can be used in an innovative way, looking at how other industries (current and past) have solved problems. When I led a team of product managers – I gave them one day a month to spend out of the office in order to research what ever they wanted – all I asked in return was for a one line explaining what they had discovered. The key is not to get distracted by too many tactical things – hence the one day out of the office: Tom Grant Forrester analysts expressed it this way:

“Product Managers need to focus on the strategic inbound tasks instead of being distracted by too many tactical demands… companies need to hire or cultivate product managers who have the skills and experiences necessary to produce high-quality product management deliverables – not something that anyone can do with out training”

Tom continues by identifying the benefits of ensuring that Product Managers spend quality time on vision and strategy activities:

“Companies that make these product management reforms will be more competitive and better able to use product management deliverables to make better strategic decisions.

In short it’s a win: win situation for both you and the company. So we product people need to take the time to develop ourselves and companies need to give us the time and ensure we have the band width to do it.

A book for all Product Managers: The Art of Product Management

Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator by Rich Mironov

This book compiles some of Rich's most popular columns from 2002 to 2008. It includes thoughts on building and maintaining product organizations, understanding how customers think, ideas for how to price new products, and ways to motivate people who don’t work for you. Collected into a single volume, it paints a picture of a typical interrupt-driven day.

Rich Mironov is a software product strategist and veteran of four high-tech startups. He is currently Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Enthiosys, a product strategy consultancy headquartered in Silicon Valley, where he advises technology companies ranging from F100 to pre-funded startups. Rich is considered an expert on software product management and marketing with a focus on business strategy, pricing and market analysis.
The five key section are:

1. Falling in Love
2. Organizing your Organization
3. The almost New – New thing
4. Getting into the Customers Head
5. What Should Things Cost

Rich draws analogy between being a parent (and at times a first time parent) and product management – an analogy that I used to describe the difference between product management and project management.
The book promises to be a good read for product managers who are working for start ups and for large corporate organisations – click here to purchase the book from Amazon or here to read more about Rich and his book The art of Product Management.

How to Create Products Customers Love

Product Management View Webinar Series – Marty Cagan, of SVPG, presents “How to Create Products Customers Love. A webinar that is well worth half an hour of your time - where Marty highlights 10 Techniques for discovering products that are: valuable, usable and feasible - taken from his book inspired.


1# Make sure you know what problem you’re trying to solve and that it’s worth solving.
2# Create a product strategy so that you know what you are trying to solve – even if you’re using agile!
3# Create a prioritized set of product principles so you know the nature of the product you’re trying to build.
4# You simply won’t get great products by asking customers what they want – customers don’t know what’s possible – customers won’t know what they will like until they see it and use it. However this does not negate your responsibility to be close to your customers.
5# Don’t try you define /design by committee – empower the key three stakeholders: product manager (function/value) – user experience lead (form/usability) – engineering lead (technology/feasibility).
6# Realize that function (requirements) and form (design) are completely intertwined – forget the old waterfall model of “requirements followed by “design”.
7#If mostly what you do is race to add features, you’re probably: not actually improving the product - no really making a difference.
8# As important as the engineering is, the user experience design is even more important, and usually more difficult – make sure you have skilled user experience designers, especially interaction designers.
9# High-Fidelity Prototypes: gives you something realistic to test on users – force you to think through the product – illuminates the true product requirements – helps you narrow down to minimal product – communicates product to the team.
10# It’s all about trying out your ideas on real users – before you build anything – test with real target users and customers – test early and often, throughout discovery.
The book: www.svpg.com/inspired
Click here for the webinar

How to get into Product Management

ProfSvcs has left a comment on my blog post "Moving from Technology to Product Management to increase business skills" ‘asking how someone gets into product management’. The answer became what I would consider too long for a comment so I’ve written this article that I hope will help him and others who what to move into product management. I must stress that this is my opinion based on my own experience and the experience of others I’ve worked with.
Rest assure very few people leave education (college, university…) and walk straight into 'technical product management' (as opposed to 'marketing product management' which is closly related to 'brand management')– we all have had a life before product management and that life (job) helps form the basis of our current role, consider where the following Product Managers have come from:

Bikram Gupta was a developer,
Marty Cagan a software engineer,
Andy Wicks a Business Analyst,
Daniel Leon a web-master and then a project manager,
Paul Young a web developer,
Brunella Russo worked in Account Management/Client Support role,
Jeff Lash worked as an information architecture and user-centered (IA & UCD)design, and
Matt Rowe has a background as a business/ systems analyst.

Two possible routes to landing your 1st Product Mangagement job

Go for an internal transfer from where you are into product management.

Strive to get into product management in your current company. If your company uses product management speak to the person who head up the department. See if you can obtain a job description and critically rank your self against it – also use product management job descriptions from companies that operate in similar industries as your current company. Your analysis should result in you being able to clearly identify areas that you believe (and are able to demonstrate to another person) what you could do straight away (out of the box so to speak) and what are the areas that you would need to improve on. Once you have done that set yourself an action plan (with time scales) and aim to improve your areas of weakness. This may include spending time with engineers and/or with product managers so that you become familiar, on a practical level, with various aspects of the role. Take one of the product managers or engineers out to lunch and talk over these areas with them. You could consider sacrificing a days holiday – arrange to come into work – and spend the day with a product manager or the engineering team or arrange to go on a customer visit with the product manager and attend some of the meeting that s/he chairs. (Note: I'm not saying tha it can all be done in a day - but the journey of a thousands miles must begin with a single step)...
Put the results of your analysis and action plan into a presentation – book a meeting with the Head of Product Management and make a pitch for a job. Remember you must show that you can add value.

Again you could think about raising your desire to move into product management at your annual appraisal. Ask if you could be seconded to Product Management for a period of time.

A lot depends on the culture of your company and the type of managers your dealing with.

Change your approach AND your company in order to get into Product Management.

In my experience it’s easier to change roles in your current company than to try and move into a new role in a different organisation. However you could change your approach from looking inside your company to looking at companies that operate in the same market segment or offer similar products. If you can proof that you have solid domain knowledge coupled with the understanding and skills of a product manager then they would be sure to want to speak to you. The covering letter that accompanies your resume (CV) should highlight that you have the skills that they are looking for. It will be tuff so you will have to do twice as much work as anyone else applying for the job. Study the company you’re applying to and the product ranges they offer along with competing products and companies. Be prepared to answer any question they may through at you and be able to ask them questions that demonstrate that you have done your homework and thought through the issues.

Finnally you need to be constantly reading and studying.
You need to immerse yourself with good reading material I would personally recommend the following:
How to be a good product manager
Silicon Valley Product group
Listern to the Webinas on Product maagement View

How Product Managers can push back at an interview

Interviews are about persuading the interviewer(s) that you are the right person for the job. That you will be able to deliver the goods even when the going gets tough. A question that I like to pose to perspective Product Managers to determine if they can deliver in the face of adversity is:

OK here's the question - followed by a possible answer:

"What would you do if you were invited to a high level business meeting with the Sales Director, Head of Business Development, Director of Product Marketing, CEO and other senior stakeholders… The Head of Product Marketing gives a power point presentation on a new (on-line) product. The presentations concludes that the launch, of this new online product (that by the way is nothing like the company has done before) will be launched in three weeks time. After all, the CEO says, it's just another website."

What the interviewer(s) are looking for:

#How would you, as the product manager, manage upwards?
#Do you have the product management skills to communicate at the CEO/MD level?
#Are you able to push back in a diplomatic way?
#Are you able to manage expectations?

Suggested thoughts that need to be projected are as follows:
It’s important to be in tune with the commercial aspirations of chief executives and senior stakeholders. You need to demonstrate that you share the vision and will be an asset and not an obstacle to achieving the ultimate goal. However – and here comes the but – BUT you need to be able to positively steer the thinking towards realistic time frames and firming up on the unknowns [power point presentation are generally shallow]. Details need to be properly defined – here you have the opportunity to demonstrate [to the interviewer]:

• your skills in creating a road map –


• that flows into a project backlog –


• that divides down into a set of user stories -


• that can be estimated in terms of complexity and


• time to complete.

Sets of user stories can be grouped together as themes for a programme of sprints which will eventually give a picture of the size of the project. If your more acustom to a water fall enviroment then talk in terms of product plans etc...

Once all of this has been thrashed out you then have the ability to communicate high level estimates for the project and give feedback to the senior stakeholders. This then opens up another round of discussion regarding resources for the project:

• Who? (permanent or contract),


• When (do you need technical resources to assist in the research if research is needed) and


• How much does will it cost (different organisations have different approaches to recharges – central departments or each business unit having their own development team(s).

Ensure that you demonstrate your ability to balance your business and commercial acumen as it’s the combination of 'business sense and technical sense' that makes a good product manager. Remember organisations (and therefore processes) differ one from another - the interviewer will understand this - so it's the logical thought processes and stakeholder management skills you show when answering that determine if you give a satisfactory answer or not.

From Software Engineer to Product Manager to Founder of SVPG - Interview with Marty Cagan

Marty Cagan has worked for several leading Hi Tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, America Online, and eBay. During his career he has performed most of the roles that are key to any technology company: product management, software development, product marketing, user interface design, usability engineering, technical writing, software testing, engineering management, and general management. Marty is a founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group a company that provides services that span the full product life cycle. He also authors a news letter that both informs and inspires. In this interview Marty shares his thoughts on Product Management.

1. What’s your academic background/training?
My education is in Computer Science, and I also did the Stanford Executive Business program. But my real education came from having the opportunity to work for and with from some of the best product minds in our industry.

2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I was a software engineer at HP Labs.

3. Where did you work before you set up Silicon Valley Product Group?
I was previously SVP Product Management and Design for eBay.

4. What inspired you to become a product manager?
I learned the hard way that it doesn’t matter how great your engineering team is if the product manager doesn’t give them something useful to build.

5. How did you make the move from being a developer to becoming a Product Manager.
I found someone that I thought did this job really well, and he pointed me in the right direction.
6. What do you like best about the Product Management job?
Creating products and services that are used and loved by millions of users and customers.

7. What do you least like about the Product Management job?
So many people out there have no idea what product management really is. They think it’s marketing. Little wonder the vast majority of products and services are such dismal failures.

8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
If you love technology like I do you can’t help but want to follow developments closely. Also, many of my friends and colleagues are leading engineers and architects and I constantly learn from them.

9. Describe the Product Managers job in one sentence.
This is the person responsible for discovering and defining a product that is useful, usable and feasible.

10. What’s your dream product to manage?
Been there and done that (and extremely grateful for it). Now I love to help others create their dream products.

13. What would be the top three attributes you need to do the Product Management job?

#1. Willingness and ability to engage deeply with engineers on technology – to understand what’s just now possible.

#2. Willingness and empathy to engage deeply and directly with end users and customers to understand their needs. Especially to try out your ideas on them and not let your ego get in the way of learning, adjusting and identifying the right product.

#3. Willingness to do whatever it takes to get that product shipped.

14. Product Managers come from different backgrounds: what advice would you give someone who wanted to break into Product Management who had an engineering background. How would that advice differ if they did not have a strong technical background?
(That’s a great question and one that I want to think more about and then probably write an article on for my newsletter, as many software developers talk to me about switching to product management. For the second part of that question, for people that aren’t technical, I happened to write about that in my last newsletter: http://www.svpg.com/blog/files/are-you-tech-enough.html)


15. Looking back, as a former Product Manager, what’s the one product (or product range) that has brought you the most satisfaction?
My favorite job ever was at Netscape as the Internet was just emerging. New technologies were being invented almost constantly, combined with daily interactions with developers and customers from startups and established companies all racing to learn how they could use the Internet to help solve long-standing problems. A great time to be a product manager.

Interview Questions for Product Managers

Several months ago I spent a lot of time interviewing potential Product Manager and Lead Product Managers to head up a product team. Listed below are some common interview questions along with some that I hand crafted for the particular PM jobs being advertised at the time. There are no right or wrong answers for most of the questions. The purpose is to find out how a person will operate under different scenarios. I hope these questions will help any one who is preparing for a job interview as a product manager or going for a promotion to a Senior, Lead or Head of product Management position. Periodically I’ll post possible answers or should I say possible thought processes that your future employer could be looking for.

1. Where do you see yourself in three to five years time?
see Where will the product manager be in 3 years time? for my thoughts on how you could answer this question.


2. Why do you want this job?


3. What’s your greatest achievement to date?


4. How do you see the web (or the market space your in) 3 years from now?
   Read Where do you see your product in two years time? for two mini case study answers.
   
   
5. How would handle a senior business stakeholder that demands more than you can deliver with in a certain timeframe?
   # One thing not to do is to exercise your freedom of speech - but to think of all the possible options - read Interview answer to questions regarding demands on development resource for an outline answer to this interview question.
   
6. You, and your team, were involved in a successful launch of a new product that exceeded business expectations during its first phase - what would you do?
   # Read Interview Question: How Do Product Managers Handle Success? for a suggested answer.


7. What is more important to you: being liked or being respected? Why?
   
8. How do you handle stress? Read Product Managers need to reduce and handle stress
See link above for tips on handling this type of interview question.


9. Do you believe in processes? Is there ever a time when you think it’s acceptable to break an agreed process?
Read: 7 things the Product Manager needs to consider when bypassing processes


10. How do you keep up with new and emerging technologies and how do you access and get to understand their usefulness to your product range? see: How do Product Managers Keep up with Technology? for a suggested anwer and how others have Product Managers have answered this question.
    
11. Tell me about a project you have run or a product you have managed through its life cycle? Read How do you demonstrate that you can manage products for my thoughts on this question.


12. What would you do if you went to a high level business meeting with directors the CEO and other senior stakeholders… viewed a power point presentation on a new (on-line) product. The presentation concluded by annoucing that we aim to launch this new product in two months time?
    Read How Product Managers can push back at an interview for a suggested answer.

Interview with a Director of Product Management

The 4th Interview in the series is with the Director of Product Management at NetStreams – Paul Young. Paul is also the author of the product management blog: “Product Beautiful” and has a proven track record in product leadership, thought leadership and problem solving.

1. What's your academic background/training?
I have a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin.

2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I was a web-based applications programmer (Oracle, PHP).

3. Where did you work before you worked for NetStreams?
Before NetStreams, I was a Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager for Cisco Systems.

4. What inspired you to become a product manager?
I was one of those annoying developers who always asked "why?" "Why are we doing this?" I found myself talking to the Product Managers quite often. I also noticed that the Product Managers were the people that got to work with the Executive team most frequently and had an influence. I knew that I wanted to make a similar impact, so I strove to join that group.

5. How did you make the move from being a developer to becoming a product manager?
I was a developer for a web-based portal that Cisco's service customers used to check service requests and trouble tickets. The product manager for that product went on maternity leave and when she came back, moved to a different product. Because I was intimate with the product's features, I moved into that role. Later Cisco gave me additional services to manage (managed WAN and LAN services).

6. What do you like best about your job?
I like talking to customers! What I really enjoy is talking with customers who bought into our products because they solved a problem they couldn't solve any other way. That's cool - and profitable.

7. What do you least like about your job?
Ankle biters. That is what I call the little tactical things that you have to do to keep the lights on. Quarterbacking products for trade shows, explaining how the trade off process works to your sales team for the 82nd time, and handling hyperventilating Executives who think the sky is falling because of some new competitor.

8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
I try to read a lot. I make heavy use of Google Reader to keep up with RSS feeds from favorite tech sites like Engadget. I also regularly read the other Product Management blogs that I link from my site, Product Beautiful. I am always amazed and humbled by the great thoughts and posts that other Product Management bloggers are creating.

9. Describe your PM job in one sentence.
Product Management is 50% strategy, 50% tactical, and 50% listening. Oh, that was supposed to be specific to my PM role...here goes... Directing the Product Management team at NetStreams is all about making sure that we fire the very limited development ammunition we have at the right targets in the market.

10. What's your dream product to manage?
I've mulled this over many times. In general, my dream product is something that is blazing a new trail, a product that is in a greenfield area where I can do real problem discovery and think about new problems being solved in ways that haven't been done before. I would really like to focus on a product that helps people in some way. Software as a Service (SaaS) seems like a wonderful model from a Product Management perspective, because of the ability to quickly adapt the product to new problems and experiment with low overhead. I'm always interested in how other Product Managers are reacting to agile.

11. How would you describe managing product development before you/your company adopted agile?
We haven't adopted agile, mostly because it is less applicable to mixed hardware/software products. The hardware gears turn more slowly than the software gears which can move very fast, but since we sell through a channel, our users can only accept software updates to their hardware so often. So agile would be counter-productive in our case.

12. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?
Curiosity , Patience and Good Listening Skills.

13. What do you do when you're not managing products (outside interests)?
I try to keep up my health, so I run and play basketball a couple of times per week. Sometimes my wife and I get down to 6th Street to see my friend Mike Hoffer play with one of his many bands, like Calling Jack Burton (a great 80's cover band if you're ever in Austin).

Paul gives some insightfall comments on how to get along with the engineering/development team - and how to make the transition to from where you current are to being a product manager. Refer to the article"How to become a product manager and How to along with developers" for details.

Interview with an Ex AOL Product Manager

Brunella Russo has worked as a product manager at AOL – she currently works at Reed Business Information and has gained valuable experience in launching new products into untapped on-line market spaces.
1. What’s your academic background/training?
I have a BA (H) in International Business and a Msc in Information Systems.

2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I was working in Luxembourg for a Financial Company in an Account Management/Client Support role.

3. Where did you work before you worked for RBI?
AOL and prior to that I worked for Schroders Investment Management

4. What inspired you to become a product manager?
The variety of the job

5. How did you make the move from being a Account Manager to becoming a product manager?I started as an Account Manager in a Financial company while studying for my BA. Once I graduated I was moved to London by the company to an e-marketing position, holding a role which was similar to the Product Management one.

6. What do you like best about your job?
The great buzz that this role gives and its variety. Also, it is a role which combines the best out of several different roles, from project management to consulting.

7. What do you least like about your job?
The fact that rarely the roles involves completed ownership of the product, which generally lies with the Business Owner (who has ultimate P/L responsibility).

8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
By reading a lot on the Internet and getting the latest hints through friends and colleagues in the field.

9. Describe your PM job in one sentence.
Rather challenging but good fun!

10. What’s your dream product to manage?
Games or Disney movies/music :-)

11. How would you describe managing product development before you/your company adopted agile?
Far more difficult and less successful as the waterfall approach was not responding to the constantly changing needs of an internet-based company.

12. How has using agile (scrum) changed your working day?
With the adoption of agile development methodology the day is far more structured and organised both for me and the development team. There is also more visibility on the accomplishments that the team achieves and potential issues that might affect the development are spotted well in advance.

13. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?
Great communication skills, ability to quickly move from the little detail to the overall picture and vice versa and ability to work well under stress.

14. What’s the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?
Geekiness!

15. What do you do when you’re not managing products (outside interests)?
Mmm… at the moment I ride my motorbike, dance tango, go to the Theatre and Opera, play volleyball, play guitar and cook a lot!

Interview with Jeff Lash: Author of How to be a Good Product Manager

The second interview in the series is with Jeff Lash author of the blog "How to be a good Product Manager" - Jeff has a wealth of experience managing various on-line products and has produced a number of articles and podcasts on the topic. If you want to be good at product management continue reading Jeff''s interview.
1. What's your academic background/training?
I was originally interested in advertising and studied marketing in school. However, I had always had an interest in technology and computers, so I got involved in the (at the time) burgeoning world of online business. At the time, I learned a lot of what I did on the job -- everything from graphic design to server administration, back when one person could do all of those thing.

2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I spent a number of years working in information architecture and user-centered (IA & UCD)design. I worked to help clients and project teams to better understand their users, their needs, and come up with products and interfaces that were useful and easy to use.

3. Where did you work before you worked for Reed Elsevier?
I worked in the Usability Services department of MasterCard International, working on various external-facing products and consulting with many internal teams on user experience design.

4. What inspired you to become a Product Manager?
I have always enjoyed the process of understanding customer needs and translating that into a well-designed product. I realized that if my ultimate goal was to build the best products possible, one way to do that was to be a user experience designer and help teams to accomplish that -- but another way to be in a product management position where I could achieve that goal from another angle. There were also aspects of the customer experience that I could better impact from the product management side rather than from a user-centered design position.

5. How did you make the move from (IA & UCD) to becoming a product manager?
A lot of the skills, techniques and methods learned and used by user experience designers are the same as the important parts of being a product manager. I was fortunate to work on a number of projects as a user experience designer that allowed me to understand and get involved in aspects of product management. Those gave me a much better understanding of -- and some great experience in utilizing -- the traits of a good product manager.

6. What do you like best about your job?
The most important part of product management is still my favorite -- spending time with customers, watching them use my product and competitive products, understanding more about their needs, and coming up with ideas to solve their unsolved problems.

7. What do you least like about your job?
There are small frustrations with any job. Probably the part I like least is the fact that there's always much more that I want to be able to do with my product than we can accomplish at one time. Product management -- and all management -- is about prioritizing limited resources. It's just a fact of the job, but there's a huge backlog of work to do that would benefit customers and ideally I'd like to be able to get it done today!

8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
It's a challenge, the scale and speed of technology changes is increasing exponentially. I try to read as many blogs as I can manage, read general consumer and business magazines, and learn from colleagues. I try to use as many new web sites as possible -- I always sign up for the "notify me when this service is available" email notifications, since there's too many to remember. As much as I try to stay ahead of the curve, though, I can't keep track of everything. My feeling is that if something is really going to be important, I don't need to be the first to find out about it, since I'll probably hear about it soon enough if enough people are talking about it.

9. Describe your Product Management job in one sentence.
Understand customer needs, figure out ways to meet those needs, work to get those solutions implemented, and provide and communicate them to the market.

10. What's your dream product to manage?
There isn't one specific one. My products -- MD Consult and First Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com/) -- are used by physicians around the world every day to answer their medical questions and improve patient care. It's very gratifying to work on a product and for a company that has such an impact on the lives of so many people all over the globe. My "dream" product would probably be something in that same realm -- something that can have a real impact on the most basic aspects of people's lives around the world. The computer developed out of the One Laptop Per Child project ( http://laptop.org/) is the first thing that came to mind.

11. How would you describe managing product development before you /your company adopted agile?
In a few words -- less efficient and productive. There was more of some things -- more unnecessary documentation, more process for process sake, more overhead -- and less of others -- less communication, less trust, less effective working relationships. We got projects completed and created good products, though it took longer and was more painful than it needed to be.

12. How has using agile (scrum) changed your working day?
I'm much more involved with our engineering team on a day-to-day basis. I know much more about what's going on with the product and with projects in development at any point in time. I don't think it's any more or less time consuming than any other process, though I feel like my time is much better spent.

13. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?
Integrity, communication, and curiosity. Without integrity, you can't galvanize support from the various different departments and groups who need to work together to create and keep developing your product. Communication goes along with that: keeping people on the product development team informed, keeping your stakeholders engaged, promoting the benefits of your product internally and externally -- these are all essential and often-overlooked aspects of the job. Curiosity is crucial to help you understand the real roots of the issues your customers are going through, why they like/dislike your or any other product, or why a technology is being used in a certain way. With the iceberg metaphor, curiosity is what helps you discover the 90% of an issue that's below the surface.

14. What's the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?
Respect. If you don't respect their skills, experience, and knowledge -- if you're constantly trying to overrule their technical decisions or arguing with them about issues that are really their responsibilities -- then you'll never get any credibility. At the same time, if they don't respect you -- if you don't spend time with customers, if you don't have a vision for your product, if you keep changing your strategy -- then you'll never get anything accomplished.

15. What do you do when you're not managing products (outside interests)?
I try to keep my blog How to Be a Good Product Manager updated on a regular basis. I've been biking a lot more lately, and when I get a chance, I like to play Wii -- it's an amazing product and so well designed. I love Nintendo's strategy of letting Microsoft and Sony fight it out for the hard-core gamers while they went after the much bigger market of non-gamers (like me). I never was big gamer, but the more I play Wii the more I am impressed by it.

Interview with a Product Manager

*What’s it like being a Product Manager?

*How do you become one?

*What attributes do you need?

*And what do you need to be able to get on with your development team?

This is the first in a series of interviews with people who have successfully moved into the Product Management arena. Matt Rowe is a Product Manager currently working in online publishing with in the chemical market.

1. What’s your academic background/training?
Australian equivalent of the British A levels which is basically a high school certificate/diploma, external courses and lots of reading!

2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I was a business/ systems analyst (BA) responsible for specifying and implementing SQL core development and bespoke applications.

3. Where did you work before you worked for RBI?
Monster / TMP Worldwide

4. What inspired you to become a Product Manager?
I had spent seven years in the same company and had little chance of furthering my career any further. I applied for a job as a BA at the Guardian – was interviewed by a Product Manager. His explanation of what he did left such an impression on me that I decided that Product Management had to be my next job.

5. How did you make the move from being a business/ systems analyst to becoming a product manager?
Studied a few methodologies combined with a lucky break.

6. What do you like best about your job?
Seeing ideas become a reality – I get a sense of real of achievement and job satisfaction.

7. What do you least like about your job?
Not always having enough resource.

8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
Google (RSS) reader and pub talk.

9. Describe your Product Management job in one sentence.
Continual challenges, ever changing and always rewarding

10. What’s your dream Product to Manage?
Guardian Unlimited it’s an award winning web site. They take a common sense approach to software development – they also know how to keep things simple and effective.

11. How would you describe managing product development before you where introduced to agile?
I’ve always taken a common sense approach, so agile just reinforced this giving more structure to the SDLC.

12. How has using agile (scrum) changed your working day?
More focus on the planning.

13. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?
To be confident, but not cocky, focused but flexible.

14. What’s the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?
Clarity (and a sense of humour :-) )

15. What do you do when you’re not managing products (outside interests)?
Sleeping !

How to keep Product Management Simple and Effective

Product Managers who work in organisations where needless complexity tend to be less efficient than those who work in companies who have simplified processes, procedures and best practice.

I worked for a company sometime ago that was able to produce ground-breaking cutting edge products, but found it difficult to put in place the most basic processes and workflows, needless to say I spent a lot of my time fighting to do the simple things in life.

I’ll be publishing a few blog post over the coming weeks on organisational complexity and simplicity and what product managers can do to assist in turning the complexity (processes and workflows etc) into simplicity and therefore boost productivity and be able to focus and give more time to the important matters in your product management work-life i.e. deliverables (strategic planning, high value projects, meeting deadline…).

E-mail Causes Complexity with in Organisations
But for today I want to have a rant on by pet subject: “email” or should I say the abuse of email! (Tackling the constant flood of e-mails that consumes much of my working day is one of the things I aim to do better in 2008).

Ron Ashkenas in his article Simplicity – Minded Management list email etiquette or lack of it as one of the causes of a company being unnecessarily complex. He writes:

“When you send a large number of people a message that discusses issues many of them don’t need to know about, you’re just burdening your colleagues with low value information that distracts them from important matters.”

I’m sure we’ve all experienced being CC(ed) in on pointless emails and have spent much of our valuable working-day ploughing through emails ensuring that someone has not buried an illusive request or piece of information that could be critical if not attended to.

Likewise I’m sure we’ve all been in meetings where critical issues are being discussed, with colleagues that work in the same office, and you hear those irritating words – “I sent you an e-mail” usually it’s the extra-long email that was sent to half the company – the bit pertaining to the product manager was buried somewhere in it. The email sender never thought to pick up the phone or come and see you in person about the issue. I often wonder if such people would handle their personal business (moving house, transferring large of money between bank accounts) with out following through with a 1 to 1 or a phone call illicit feedback.

Tips on handling E-mail
Brian Lawley in his podcast “How to Get Twice as Much Done in Half the Time” gives a number of good tips on how to be more efficient with your time – ironically managing e-mail is the first topic he deals with. Brian gives several email pointers:
1. Check email 3 times a day – not throughout the day.
2. Separate work and personal email
3. Turn off email notifications – when the alert pops up on your screen it a) interrupts your chain of though and b) tempts you be drawn away from the task at hand to read/answer the e-mail.
4. Process e-mail rapidly & empty your inbox
5. Keyboard short cuts – helps speed up using outlook.
6. Read large emails that need thought and a long response at a set time.
7. Turn emails into tasks by dragging the email into the task bar.
8. Avoid jumping into long and controversial threads – 50% of long threads burn themselves out.
9. Clear your inbox out – leave it empty – by close of business every Friday – it’s sure to leave your head clear for the weekend – knowing that you are returning to work on Monday morning to an empty inbox.

What I’ve experienced so far.
So far this year I’ve adopted number 4 and 7 and it has helped to keep things simple and boost (albeit by a small percentage) my over all productivity. I’m not convinced that all of the nine pointers that Brian mentions are appropriate to all product managers – however it’s always worth reviewing and challenging your own working practices to see if they can be simplified before attempting to simplify your teams, departments or companies working practice.

Great Product Managers are on route to becoming tomorrows CEOs.

Mark Dance in his podcast for featureplan (Are Great Product Managers Born or Made) states that the first rule for hiring great product managers is to hire product managers that can grow to be CEOs because they are: the CEOs of tomorrow and are the CEOs for their products. Adam Bullied, in his blog post Not Being CEO, reviews the common aspects of the CEO and Product Manager role, he states that:

“The responsibility of the roles heavily intersect. A large part, in my estimation, is due to both positions having visibility company-wide, and the requirement of working with everyone in a company in order to get your job done.”

Mark Dance also compares the role of CEO and Product Manager: stating that both are strategic and operational in that they:
#1. Create value for customers
#2. Capture that value and
#3. Protect that value

The steps taken from moving from Product Management to becoming a Chief Executive

Barbara Tallent who progressed from Product Management to being a CEO via being a VP of a few departments’ notes in her blog post Product Manager to CEO in 10 short years says:

"In some ways, being a CEO is no different at all then being a product manager. You are responsible for everything and yet there are outside influences that are out of your control. Yet in some ways it is very different. As a product manager, you have all the responsibility, but none of the authority and you need to coax, cajole, or con people into what is best for the company. As CEO you have a level of authority that is easily misunderstood and even more easily misused. But you still have to build consensus and make people feel like they are part of the decision process so, from that perspective, product marketing prepares you well for the CEO role."

Barbara Tallent reviews her career and gives four attributes that all Product Managers need to embrace to prepare themselves for more senior positions in their organization:

#1. Start thinking like a CEO – think beyond the product, the next sprint, enhancements and bug lists. Think about the position of the product and the company in the market place. Bring people together to talk about the product road map.
#2. People skills: motivation, communication – telling people why products, features etc are or are not important. Be able to lead people.
#3. Live in the sales world for a while – understand the sales process – improve your sales skills because the CEO is always selling, either to customers, investors, or employees.
#4. Learn as much as possible about fund raising and its process. CEOs particularly of start-ups will need to raise funds. Also learn what venture capitalists look for when investing in a company.

Growing CEOs from with in the company

Joseph L. Bower in November’s issue of Harvard Business Review gives a number of pointers for those wishing to progress to the level of CEO. The article points out that:

#1.The most successful CEO’s, on balance are developed inside the company – but manage to retain an outside perspective: there is a need to maintain enough detachment from the local traditions and ideology to maintain the objectivity of an outsider.

#2. Build a track record of delivering in the short term while building for the long term.

#3. Take the opportunity, should it arise, to run a business unit, department or even a risky project that gives you the opportunity to be responsible for profit and loss (P/L).

Attributes needed for driving a company forward

Bower also lists four key skills that a new CEO needs to drive a company forward and produce the results that the board and shareholders are looking for:

#1. Anticipate where the world and the companies markets are heading and create a vision to position the company accordingly.

#2. Identify and recruit, if need be, the talent that can transform the vision into reality.

#3. Gain a real understanding for the problems and issues that the company faces.

#4. Understand how the company really works – who are the key players that make things happen.

Irrespective of whether you’re a Product Manager who wants to improve their Product Management skills and standing within their company or whether you are looking to climb the corporate ladder – the advice and tips, I’ve summarised, from the authors quoted in this blog post are applicable.

Final word from Tallent was that “There is a whole lot of good ‘fortune’ and timing that goes into anyone's career” including her own she adds.

I believe the key is to be striving to reach your full potential, at each step in your career, so should the doors of opportunity open (running a risky project, taking on P/L responsibility for a business unit or becoming a CEO) you are prepared to rise to the challenge and walk through the open door.

Successful Product Managers collaborate to ensure innovative product development

One of the key attributes that a Product Manager has to have in order to be successful is the ability to work in a collaborative way across teams and departments in order to bring new products to market or maintain and increase the profitability of existing products by adding innovative features and enhancements. Collaboration is one of those key requirements listed in the majority of job adverts for Product Managers. Collaboration is a key issue for CEOs because they know that bringing a group of people together from diverse backgrounds, skill-sets and professions to work as a team or virtual team is a challenging job.

According to Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson:

“The most productive, innovative teams were led by people who were both task and relationship-oriented.”

As such it’s the responsibility of Product Management to be able to work with and co-ordinate stakeholders with different skill sets and from a variety of backgrounds and at different levels.

Three factors that help Product Managers successfully collaborate are:

#1. Work closely with your teams on a daily basis – sit among the engineers and if possible have a hot desk in departments and/or the officers of other stakeholders – spread yourself around.

#2. The Product Manager has to be a universal translator: understanding the commercial and business world and yet have the appropriate technical understanding of the technologies that underpin the products so that they can understand and explain both sides of the equation. This will ensure that business and technical sense is maintianed.

#3. Be clear on your role (what is expected of you) and ensure that other stakeholders know the boundaries of your role. This will aid in dispelling ambiguity and ensure that tasks aren’t inadvertently left undone.

In short the successful Product Managers will understand the issues, technical and business pains of their stakeholders and be able to communicate and help resolve these pains for the common good of the success of the product.

How Product Managers can avoid innovation traps #part 1

Product Managers often need to collaborate, co-ordinate, drive, release and launch innovative ideas into the market place. However there are pitfalls that product management need to avoid if success is be to secured. This is a two part series based on Rosabeth Moss Kanter article in Harvard Business Review entitled Innovation: The Classic Traps. The article focuses on four areas: Strategy, Process, Structure and Skills.

Strategy Mistakes
It is not possible for every innovative idea to be a huge success such as the new iPod - therefore Product Managers, Business and Product Owners should be careful not to reject opportunities that at first appear too small because they do not have the inherent promise of being the next killer app. A number of small incremental wins to a product feature set could ultimately result in overall product success - especially with online products.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter states that:
Not every offering [feature, enhancement or new product] will be a blockbuster, but 'Time Incorporated' had learned what successful innovators know. To get more success you have to be willing to risk more failures, Rosabeth quotes the following example from the traditional media business as a case in point:

"Time Incorporated, the magazine wing of Time Warner, for a long time was slow to develop new publications because managers wanted any start-up to have the potential to grow into another People or Sports Illustrated, two of the company’s legendary successes. During the period before Don Logan took the helm in 1992, almost no new magazines were launched. After Logan brought a different innovation strategy to the magazine group, Time developed (or bought) about 100 magazines, which dramatically increased the company’s revenues, cash flow, and profits."

The same would naturally be true for on-line media companies aiming to increase revenue by innovation– whether it’s adding new enhancements, functionality or widgets to an existing website or launching a new on-line product in a new or related market area. The balance will be the risk and reward of innovative ventures versus the risk of the traditional and status quo which could result in the risk of loosing market share to a number of younger meaner online publishing machines.

Process Mistakes
There is a risk of stifling innovation by subjecting it to tight controls and procedures of existing businesses. Again Rosabeth Moss Kanter gives us a practical example:

"AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) in 2000 sought new Internet-based products and services using established strategic-planning and budgeting processes through existing business units. The CEO asked the divisions to bring their best ideas for Internet-related innovations to the quarterly budget reviews. Although designated as a priority, these innovation projects were subjected to the same financial metrics the established businesses were. Budgets contained no additional funds for investment; managers working on innovations had to find their own sources of funding through savings or internal transfers. What emerged were often retrofitted versions of ideas that had been in the pipeline anyway."

Product Managers would do well to justify time for engineering teams to carry out research and therefore help secure budget for both pure and applied research. It would also be advantageous to map the areas of applied research to future product functionality in order to demonstrate transparency..
See also
Innovation the classic trap
The Innovation Value Chain and Product Management
How Product Managers can avoid innovation traps #part2

The Innovation Value Chain and Product Management

Morten T Hansen and Julian Birkinshaw published an interesting article in HBR about what they call the Innovation Value Chain.
The article highlights the three main phases of innovation:
*Idea Generation
*Idea Conversion
*Idea Diffusion

Idea Generation:
The aim is to generate ideas from various sources: from with in your own business unit of team; from other business units or teams; from across the company; from customers; end users; competitors; universities; related industries and the list goes on…

Idea Conversion:
The list of new ideas need to be appropriately screened and categorised to determine the degree of technical difficulty to develop in terms of engineering time and resources verses the commercial return on developing such a product or new feature. It could be that the new idea will not bring the company or business unit direct commercial success but will help the company enter uncharted territory or, if a new feature, help maintain the products competitiveness due new developments in a rival product.

Idea Diffusion
Hansen and Birkinshaw state that “Concepts that have been sourced, vetted, funded and developed still need to receive buy in” from various internal and external stakeholders.

The key to the article is that a company's ‘innovation value chain’: idea generation – conversion and diffusion is as strong as the chain's weakest link. Hansen and Birkinshaw suggest that companies need to identify where the weak links are and either create new roles for employees to help strengthen the link – and/or when hiring new candidates seek those who will be able to address weakness in their ‘innovation chain’.

I would say that a company with weakness in it’s 'innovation value chain' needs to either review it’s product management team and come up with a plan to strengthen the product management role or consider adopting product management as a new function with in their company.

Also read:
How Product Managers can avoid innovation traps #part 1
How Product Managers can avoid innovation traps #part2