Strategic Product Management according to Open Product Management Workflow E-Book

Frank Lemser

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 173

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The book »Strategic Product Management« is the introduction to the topic of Product Management according to Open Product Management Workflow. Note: the tools and templates, which are mentioned in the book, are deliberately not included, but will be issued in the trainings, as their application needs to be explained and exercised under guidance in practical examples. Additionally the book can be downloaded as PDF for free on the proProduktmanagement website. Besides general questions about tasks and how to organize Product Management as well as roles in Product Management, the book offers a step by step explanation of how to get to a decision proposal or business plan, which is based exclusively on market facts. This way bad investments are avoided and discussions about strategies and future products are reduced. The exemplary product called »SelfBackup« shows comprehensibly, how you develop an innovative product on the basis of market facts. Starting from interviews with market participants, identifying problems and persona and simple analyses you are enabled to derive all strategies required for the consolidated business plan which is the end result of the workflow. In addition, the book »Strategic Product Management« contains numerous other tips and practical examples. This book is the first one in the series and the basis for the subsequent books »Technical Product Management« and »Successful Go-to-Market« according to Open Product Management Workflow. As mentioned above you can download the book »Strategic Product Management« on the proProduktmanagement website for free and read about the importance of strategic and market-driven Product Management. Thus, you create the basis for further steps such as Technical Product Management as well as Successful Go-to-Market.

Leseprobe

Author: Frank Lemser

This book is teaching material of:

proProduktmanagement GmbH

Deutschherrnstrasse 6

90429 Nuremberg - Germany

www.pro-productmanagement.com

[email protected]

[phone]

CONTENTS

Preface

Download Open Product Management Workflow

TM

Download free Product Management Dashboard for JIRA - Software

The course teaching methods - Flipped Classroom

Flipped Classroom, instead of teacher-centred teaching

Benefits for you as a participant

Benefits for your company

Learning objectives to make the very best of yourself

Introduction

Product Management Responsibilities

Product Management in the organisation

The Product Management Dilemma or how Product Management should build the future with a hammer and chisel

Use free software as Product Manager

Use Product Management Dashboard for Jira immediately free of charge

Open Product Management Workflow

TM

Innovation

Strategy

Priorize requirements, estimate time and costs

Typical approach of Product Managers

Which one or which few?

Product management vs Product marketing

Distribution of tasks

Manager of virtual teams

Technical Product Team

Go-To-Market Team

Open Product Management Workflow

TM

– Gap Analysis

Business Plan

Gate Process

Classic business plan - Document 18

Agile Business Plan

TM

– Document 19

Executive Summary (introductory summary for management):

Finance and figures

Summary of Business Plan

Definition of Customer Types

Customers

Potential customers

Evaluative customers

Conducting Interviews (Interview Market)

Typical sources for information from companies

Typical sources of Product Managers in established companies

How do I find out and learn something from the market?

The interview protocol - Document 2

Sources for conversation partners

Using the potential benefits of customer feedback

Surveys and Questionnaires

Identifying the market problems (Identify Problems)

Over-engineering

Interview Matrix - Document 4

Identify, consolidate and review market problems

Quantify - how many interviews?

Types of survey vs quality

Web poll

Telephone survey

Personal questioning

Identifying personas (Identify Persona)

Buyer and User personas - Document 5

Persona - Document 5:

Typical personas in the Business to Consumer (B2C) environment

Typical personas in the Business to Business (B2B) environment

Identifying the scenarios (Identify Scenario)

Win/Loss Analysis – Document 6

Competence Analysis - Document 7:

Competitive Analysis, SWOT Analysis - Document 8

SWOT Analysis

Strategies to win

Market Potential and Market Segmentation (Market Potential)

Definition of market segments

Definition of market segmentation according to market problems

Determining the market potential

Calculation of market potential

Total market potential

Determining target segments

Always focus on the target segment!

Buyer Persona Analysis - Document 5

Buyer Persona and Marketing-Mix

Technology Benefit Analysis (Technology Analysis) - Document 10

Product Profitability, KPI's (Product Profitability)

Controlling product success with KPIs (Document 11)

KPI measurement with the help of software

Innovation

Business Model Innovation

Sales Channels Innovation

Portfolio Innovation

Combination of several products Innovation

Combination of several services Innovation

Combination of sales and communication channels Innovation

Buy, Build or Partner

Market strategy

Portfolio strategy

Distribution Strategy

Pricing strategy

Product positioning, Market message (Positioning) - Documents 13, 14

The positioning process

Positioning document

Product name

Communication strategy

Product roadmaps

Strategic roadmap:

Internal roadmap:

External roadmap:

Open Product Management Workflow

TM

as software

Free download, license and example included

Product Management Dashboard® - Produktmanagement Software Plugin for JIRA®

Further support for you

Contact our trainers

Open Product Management Workflow

TM

Licence

PREFACE

This book is designed to help you understand your everyday work as a Product Manager, to show you the individual work steps, the need for them and their relationships with each other so that you become a professional manager of your product.

In order for you and your colleagues to have a common understanding and ensure that you as a team also speak the same language, we would be very happy for you to hand this book around free of charge.

This book will be used as a textbook within the framework of our Product Management training, in which we teach you in accordance with the Open Product Management Workflow TM method and according to the teaching principles of the Flipped Classroom.

The following textbooks are available:

Strategic Product Management

Technical Product Management

Successful Go-To-Market

DOWNLOAD OPEN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT WORKFLOW TM

So that you are always able to understand all the steps, it is recommended that you download Open Product Management Workflow TM, print it out and add it to your learning materials.

You can download Open Product Management Workflow TM here:

www.pro-productmanagement.com/opmw

DOWNLOAD FREE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT DASHBOARD FOR JIRA - SOFTWARE

As an additional teaching aid, you can use the Product Management Dashboard for JIRA, the software for Product Managers, free of charge. The software provides you with an even simpler, step-by-step, practice-oriented traceability of the course material, as it is also based on the Open Product Management Workflow TM and contains a complete sample product. A full license for you as product manager is already included in the software, so that you can continue to use the software for your daily work after learning.

You can find out more about the free download and the Product Management Dashboard for JIRA at the end of the book or on the website:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217916

THE COURSE TEACHING METHODS - FLIPPED CLASSROOM

“The course has taught me a lot, I’m impressed by the Open Product Management Workflow method and I now really have to have more interviews with customers to practise this and much more.” This is what participants have said again and again over the last few years upon finishing our training course.

Since Product Managers are pulled straight back into normal working life after the training, from experience there is little time for them to practise and expand on what they have learned. We have therefore considered how we can help participants to spend the time we have together during the course to help them to get even more practice.

The solution is the Flipped Classroom teaching method.

FLIPPED CLASSROOM, INSTEAD OF TEACHER-CENTRED TEACHING

Instead of teacher-centred teaching, the theory is to learn things yourself in peace and quiet and then to practise their practical implementation during the time you are all together on the course - that’s the idea behind the Flipped Classroom teaching method and how we convey our teaching content.

Trainees work at home and assimilate the theoretical principles at their own pace. They then get to practise them in the classroom using different methods and tasks and the trainees receive individual support. The trainees move from a passive role into an active one. As such, the trainees reach the highest level of the teaching methods as the learning content is optimally consolidated and the participants are immediately capable of implementing them in their daily work.

BENEFITS FOR YOU AS A PARTICIPANT

For you as a participant, Product Management training based on the Flipped Classroom teaching method offers the following benefits:

You as a trainee can learn the theory at your own speed and in peace and quiet, since you can read our textbooks long in advance of attending the course because there are freely available copies.

During the course, as a participant you will not be bombarded with new ideas, but rather your questions will be answered and you will strengthen and deepen the knowledge you have previously acquired.

The use of the tools needed for Product Management is learned during your time on the course.

The implementation of the Product Management activities will be carried out jointly and under professional guidance.

As a participant, you are immediately able to incorporate the new things you have learned into your daily work, since your confidence in your own actions will be strengthened.

You save time on time-consuming, expensive reworking.

BENEFITS FOR YOUR COMPANY

The following benefits for your business result from Product Management training based on the Flipped Classroom teaching method:

You save time and money because you don’t have to free up time for your employees to learn the theoretical material, nor pay for their study time.

You save money because you pay only for the time in which we work with the participants.

With your investment, you will get colleagues who are both trained in the theory and practice, who use their Product Management tools and who have achieved results which are necessary for the manufacture and marketing of successful products.

You benefit immediately from your Product Manager’s modified working methods as your colleagues can get started immediately after the course without them having to carry out time-consuming subsequent work on the teaching content.

What can you expect before the course and during the course?

Before the course:

You can download our textbooks which are available free of charge and accessible on our website

We will provide you with a schedule

You can acquire the theory in peace and quiet and according to your own schedule

Write down any questions that we will then answer in the course

Prepare yourself beforehand for the tasks and familiarise yourself with the material

During the course:

Questions about the understanding of the theoretical knowledge are answered

Products are developed together

Situations from the everyday working life in Product Management are implemented using practical exercises

Product Management tools and their uses are learned

Participants are supported right away and will get direct feedback

LEARNING OBJECTIVES TO MAKE THE VERY BEST OF YOURSELF

For each course and for each topic there are defined learning objectives, i.e. it is clearly defined exactly what the participants should have mastered by the end of the course. This is the only way that it can be individually determined for each participant where potential for their own optimisation lies.

The learning objective that stands above everything is:

The participants are familiar with all the steps and can use the corresponding tools that are needed to produce a market-driven product, as well as market this product and control its success.

Examples of learning objectives for individual topics from Strategic Product Management:

Participants can explain the importance of market orientation

Participants can identify the tasks of the PMs and compare them with the current state

Participants can identify interfaces with which they work and show who they have to pass which information to and in what form

INTRODUCTION

Even when I, Frank Lemser, was studying Business Information Technology, I always had the feeling that there was a conflict within me. On one side, there was this business administration specialist who was all about business management with its wonderful tools; On the other side, there was this computer scientist who liked information technology, where everything is logically structured and interconnected.

The business management professors were not able to get across to us students how the results, which were obtained with the help of business management tools, could be transported into everyday working life. They told us just as little about how the results related to each other and what dependencies and interactions there were - something which didn’t sit well with the computer scientist in me.

Over the course of the years, I have repeatedly and intensively grappled with this problem. In the course of this, I have come to the realisation from experiences from my working life that many of the problems that exist in Product Management, as well as because of it, result from the unstructured recording and transfer of information.

Consequently, the image of an assembly line came to me, on which you place ordered information at the front and the individual departments receive the relevant pre-assembled information. All other departments could then use the pre-assembled information at their work station and install their part in the product. At the end, a clearly arranged product would exist which customers need and which has generated few discussions and little pain within the business.

In addition to the image of the assembly line, I developed the idea of a funnel into which all information on the product is collected at the beginning, and then prioritised in line with market requirements to then be sorted to land on the appropriate part of the assembly line.

From the images of the funnel and the assembly line, we have now created numerous tools, the Open Product Management Workflow, these textbooks and our software for Product Management to simplify the daily work for you and all other Product Managers, so that you save time and a lot of hassle and create products that other people want to buy.

When I began in Product Management at SUSE Linux in 2000, I was really lucky that some of my colleagues were able to explain to me what Product Management actually is. Most Product Managers who I meet tell me that their responsibilities are not really clear and that they see themselves as a “Jack of all trades”. There is often just one position created in a company which is then called Product Management. When you start working there and ask what you should actually be doing, everybody around you just shrugs their shoulders around and says: “Just get on with it.” So you start to improvise and feel your way around.

In practice, colleagues can have a wide variety of job titles on their business cards, but in the end all activities which come under the topic of Product Management are usually given to those with job titles such as:

Product Manager

Product Marketing Manager

Technical Product Manager

Business Development Manager

Portfolio Manager

Product Line Manager

etc.

People try to get to the bottom of the responsibilities that these employees have because there is so much confusion.

Most Product Managers come from other areas, usually from Sales or Marketing or Technical. Initially, they are thrown in at the deep end with nobody telling them what they should be doing, because no one really knows. And when you consider that Product Managers often make decisions involving hundreds of thousands, or even millions of euros or have an influence on how the money is invested in the future....

An example:

A large German turbine manufacturer laid off a huge number of employees some time ago and even entire plants were closed. As the message got through to the news, the public railed against the company’s upper management. But what had really happened?

The manufacturer had developed the largest and most powerful turbine ever built, which took around 10 years.

As the turbine came onto the market, it didn’t sell. But why?

In order to understand this, it’s necessary to know about the purchasing process for turbines.

From a customer point of view, it’s always sensible to have more than one vendor for a product so that there is an advantage for the buyer in a competitive environment. In the case of public invitations to tender, it is even mandatory to have several quotes. Because our manufacturer now always offered the most powerful turbine, there was therefore no comparable offer from the competition. Thus, the unique feature became the problem. Consequently, significantly fewer machines were sold, there were therefore no testimonials to convince new customers, the investment costs were not paid off and the capacity utilisation of the plants was too low. Ultimately, it ended with employees being dismissed and plants closed because the development of a new turbine would take at least 10 more years and a short-term course correction was not possible.

Upper management made the decision to dismiss employees, the cause of which was the lack of knowledge about the purchasing process. Had they known how the purchasing process is specified at the customer, i.e. that there have to be comparable quotes, it would never have come to redundancies and closures.

What do you think, who is responsible for knowing the decision-making criteria for the purchasing and the entire procurement process?

It is the responsibility of Product Management to know the purchasing process and the decision-making criteria of the people involved in the purchase. As such, Product Management is also responsible for everything that happened at the turbine manufacturer.

In this example, it is easy to illustrate that we as Product Managers have a large influence on the future of the company, but also implications for our colleagues. It is therefore all the more surprising that there is no professional training for Product Managers.

That there is a lack of training for Product Managers is also confirmed by the results of the "Challenge Olympics". Their results show which challenges currently exist for Product Managers:

Lack of training

Lack of understanding of roles

Poor knowledge of how to get to information

Micro-management by top management

Lack of common understanding of Product Management tasks

The "Challenge Olympics” was, among other things, something held at ProductCamp 2014 in Nuremberg. ProductCamp is an event which is organised by Product Managers for Product Managers. You can find more information about ProductCamp in Germany at www.productcamp.de.

Product Management works with almost all departments in a company. It should therefore know and speak the special language used in the various departments and groups such as Marketing, Sales and Engineering, as well as be able to understand their function and responsibilities. It is also essential for the success of any Product Manager to be aware of the Senior Management’s objectives, as well as the criteria that these are based on.

Only then can the information and resources be made available to achieve this.

The customer, the market player, should always take centre stage. Because only if Product Management regularly listens to them and recognises and understands the problems will the product team deliver 100% market-oriented products.

What we are experiencing today is something else. We see that Product Management often speaks with the Engineers from Development and Production. If Marketing then asks about the new developments and the unique added values of the product, they are simply only given technical information. Product Management sometimes attempts to somehow translate what the Engineers are saying, but often no added value line of reasoning materialises. In the end, Marketing cannot present any added values, which means that Sales also doesn’t know what argument they can use to convince the customer and therefore ends up only selling based on price.

Senior Management also doesn’t understand what it is that Product Management actually wants and how to justify their claims. The cause of the dilemma lies in the fact that Product Management is too often busy at their place of work in the company and hardly brings in any market information from outside into the company.

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES

As already described at the beginning, it is often not clear in practice what the responsibilities of Product Management are. In this case, we recommend that you find out what the responsibilities of the neighbouring departments in the company are in order to ensure a better distinction for your own activities.

What is the task of Senior Management?

And what are the respective tasks of the Technical department, Marketing, Sales, Controlling and the Legal department?

Listen, ask your colleagues in Product Management or speak directly to the staff from the relevant departments.

If you have been provided with an overview of the responsibilities, it comes to the question of who in the company is actually responsible for creating business proposals, and therefore for:

Product strategy

Portfolio strategy

Pricing strategy

Market segmentation

We have already heard various answers for this in our course.

In order to understand who is responsible for deriving the strategies in the business plan and to better understand which tasks are the responsibility of Product Management, we’ll take a short trip back in time.

In 1927, the Procter & Gamble (USA) developed a new care product and brought it to market. The targets set for sales and market shares were missed. After the internal analysis, it was recognised that there had been difficulties with the prioritisation of tasks and in the processes. Furthermore, there was an inconsistent implementation of market requirements.

Consequently, it was decided to define one person who was responsible for the collection as well as the coordination of the market requirements, and for all further activities for the product.