Category Archives: Lean

Don Vendetti on the State of Product Management and ProdBOK

Bringing Needed Definition to the Product Management Profession

Part of the ProdBOK© Series

Don, thanks for joining me today.

I know that you’re very active doing product management consulting in the Seattle area. What are your observations about the evolution of product management?

(Don Vendetti) Greg, thanks for the opportunity. I started my career on the engineering side (eons ago), and was fortunate to get into a company with a strong development process that included product managers who managed the entire product lifecycle, and with a high level of collaboration. What was odd to experience – as I moved on – was how narrowly defined the product management role was in other companies. It was frequently reduced to a support role for either Development or Sales, or both. Over time as I evolved to leading the product management function, I was getting hired into organizations to “fix” the department, as the function wasn’t doing what the organization needed or expected. This is also often the case for why I’m hired as a consultant.

The success of product management in any organization is highly dependent on three key foundations. First, the executive team needs to view the function as strategic and realize the importance of linking the company strategy to the product strategy. Without this driver, the product managers will inherently be relegated to a tactical function. Next, clear roles and responsibilities need to be defined for the how the team works with the rest of the organization. Other complementary functions also need to also be appropriately defined and staffed, such as project managers, technical sales support, and technical architecture or planning resources. Without them, the product manager will be forced to pick up the roles and get spread thin or there will be a large gap that’s addressed in an ad-hoc manner. Finally, the product managers themselves need to have a broad skill base, both strategic and tactical, to span all of the needed tasks.

Unfortunately, while there are bright spots here and there where all these elements are in place and product managers are really making a difference, the overall industry situation has lots of room for improvement.

As you look back on the last five years what do you think the most significant changes to the product management profession have been?

(Don Vendetti) One thing that is clear is the need for product management is as strong as it’s ever been, and is continually misunderstood as to the value it can provide. As far as changes go, the two biggest that I’ve seen are both in the software branch of the product management tree.

Agile is the first and has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, the role of product owner that many product managers perform has enabled them to engage more with the Development team on a regular basis. What I hear from Development managers is they finally feel like the product managers are adding value to their organization more than in the past. However, on the flip side, this has often resulted in less ability for the product managers to focus on the longer term product strategy and also ensure proper delivery of the product to the rest of the organization. I’ve seen this work the best when a product manager is partnered with a dedicated product owner who’s more of a requirements specialist, like a business analyst. This allows the day-to-day interaction with the Development team while also ensuring the more strategic and broader cross-functional activities are being effectively covered.

The second change is in the user experience (UX) and design side, and I’ve seen the responsibility increasingly moving from the Development team to the Product Management team. While this is a positive change in my view, since the user interface (UI) is such a major part of a software product, it has created the unfortunate situation that many product managers are doing UI design with no formal training and without the help of qualified UX professionals. There is clearly a shortage of UX professionals to go around, so product managers that find themselves in this position would benefit greatly with some formal training in UX, and it would absolutely raise their value to any software organization.

Do you think the new ProdBOK will help to address any of the challenges we have discussed so far? If so, how?

(Don Vendetti) I do believe the ProdBOK can help create awareness about the importance and the potential of the role, and how it can deliver higher value to a company than just short term tactical deliverables. If you’ve never been in an organization with a fully functioning product management group well aligned with the other functions, then you probably don’t even know what the possibilities could be.

In writing sections of the ProdBOK, I tried to clearly identify where and how the product manager creates the most value, while acknowledging that they often also have to wear many tactical hats. I’ve also tried to point out the areas where others need to take the lead in the process so that the product manager can stay focused on the market need/problem and delivery of the whole product across the organization.

At this point of the profession’s continuing evolution, getting a consistent view of the role is probably the number one opportunity for the ProdBOK to achieve, even if the role is customized in various ways to meet the unique needs of each company. And, of course, executives and other functional leaders need to be exposed to it to understand the opportunity available to them.

Don, why did you choose to participate in the development of ProdBOK?

(Don Vendetti) As part of my consulting practice, I’ve also done a fair amount of product management teaching in a university extension program, and through formal training courses within my consulting practice. This has given me the opportunity to look at the entire product management lifecycle process, and especially the upfront product strategy piece, while experimenting with different ways of implementing it. I also enjoy writing and have written several articles which are available on my website. The opportunity to help on the project seemed like something that leveraged my background and could have a bigger impact than I could make directly through consulting.

I also thought I could get it done in a few months. Hah! Here we are a year later finally getting this industry-wide collaborative effort to publication. The whole project was very much like creating a new product, including the twists and turns you have to make along the way as you encounter trade-offs.

Any final thoughts?

(Don Vendetti) Just a couple of last comments. First, I’m certain this is just the beginning of a journey for product management to establish a strong footing and I expect the ProdBOK to evolve significantly over time. This is a first attempt and there is plenty of room to expand it and fill in the blanks going forward as product management is a dynamic profession. Of course it helps to have someone like you driving the vision and deliverables, and I enjoyed working with you Greg.

Second, in some ways, contributing to this publication has helped me realize that I do miss being actively engaged in the development of products, as consulting usually only gets me limited playing time in a part of the game. So, moving forward, I’ll be heading back into the product world to be an active participant running a marketing and product management function and attempting to apply the concepts described in the ProdBOK.

Onward!

Editors Note: Thanks Don. On behalf of the ProdBOK editorial team I want to express our appreciation for your significant contributions to the effort. I also want to offer my personal thanks as you’re great to work with as well! I look forward to future collaborations and best of luck with your new position!

Greg Geracie is the author of Take Charge Product Management©, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge (ProdBOK), and the leader of this initiative. ProdBOK is an industry-wide effort to standardize the practice of product management sponsored by the Association of International Product Management and Marketing (AIPMM).

ProdBOK is a registered trademark of AIPMM.

A Conversation with Roman Pichler on Scrum and ProdBOK

Rich Mironov on Steve Blank and Product Management in Early Stage Companies

1 Reply

Product Management and Startups

Part Two of my Interview with Rich Mironov on Product Management and Entrepreneurship

You can read part one by clicking here.

Steve Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany is a fantastic book that many early stage companies refer to as they begin the journey to a successful company. As I read the book I took a lot from it and it’s helped shape my thinking as a product management professional. I’m assuming you’re quite familiar with it as well. My sense in reading the book is that Steve is luke-warm on the product manager concept in early stage companies yet I think it should be a mandatory product manager read. What product management lessons, if any, did you walk away with after reading the book?

(Rich Mironov) Lesson number one: Get out of the building! Even though this is fundamental to every start-up’s success, I spend time every week with companies (or entrepreneurs) who have not talked with a single member of their intended audience. Not one. They whiteboard and theorize, but don’t get out of their chairs to ask prospects for candid, serious reactions to product concepts. I’ve made this mistake myself – after decades of lecturing others about real market input. At one of my recent start-ups, I spent too much time listening to my technical team and very little time validating with customers. (Steve’s advice is easy to hear, but hard to follow.)

I learned another valuable lesson, not from Steve’s book, but from a 2010 Silicon Valley Product Management presentation. See http://steveblank.com/2010/09/02/why-product-managers-wear-sneakers/. Steve made the point that founders will never believe product managers who bring back contrary results from the market. If a product manager at a start-up wants the founders to believe what’s happening in the market – which is different from what the founders already believe – the product manager must bring a founder along to hear it directly. Otherwise, founders will always have a reason why the (newly arrived) product manager asked the wrong questions, or misunderstood the product, or talked with non-prospects. Steve is obviously right, and I had lived through this several times, but had never identified the pattern.

What qualities should a successful start-up product manager or owner have?

a) Boundless enthusiasm. A start-up is a lifestyle, not just a job. Expect late nights, rollercoaster mood swings, obsessive IM’ing, family members tired of hearing about it. Be young, or young-at-heart.

b) Flexibility. Start-ups are necessarily chaotic. Product managers who truly believe in an orderly universe find this extremely uncomfortable/frustrating. Successful start-up product managers crave the next bit of market learning, don’t get emotionally committed to any one approach, and are adept at contingency planning. They embrace daily change.

c) Cheerful but accurate memory. Founders approach each day fresh, so they often forget what was decided at the weekly staff meeting – or forget the rationale for decisions. A start-up product manager is the one to (gently, cheerfully, non-judgmentally, personably) remind the team of why bringing on another new integration partner means abandoning some other partners, or we chose not to change our pricing model and penalize our beta customers.

d) Judgment: Picking the right battles. Almost everything at a start-up can be improved, replaced, tuned or streamlined. Your job is to identify the very few decisions or processes that matter – that “move the needle” on revenue or product development. Consistent product numbering doesn’t matter, but avoiding priority bugs that horrify early customers does. You can only fix a few things at a time.

Rich, can product managers that excel at start-up companies easily transition to mid-sized or large scale companies? What challenges do they face?

(Rich Mironov) I think start-up product managers (and start-up employees in general) have a hard time transitioning to larger companies. They’re used to broad decision-making scope, single-product focus, lack of cross-departmental politics, and the adrenaline rush of seeing your personal contribution convert immediately into revenue.

Challenges include: sitting through HR meetings about the 401(k) plan, believing that the annual budget’s meaningful, not being able to walk into the CEO’s office when you need something, realizing that co-workers keep regular hours and “have a life.” Presenting to your first strategy committee or internal advisory board.

My own threshold is at about 95 employees. Around that size, I realize that I don’t know every single employee by name. At 120 employees, processes feel rigid – time for me to replace myself with a mid-sized-company person.

This concludes the second part of my interview with Rich.

One-on-One with Rich Mironov on Product Management and Entrepreneurship

2 Replies

Rich Mironov on Product Management and Entrepreneurship

This is the first part of a two part interview with Rich.

Rich, thanks for getting together today.

Let’s start by focusing in on your experience in entrepreneurship and product management. Many folks think that startups don’t necessarily require a product manager. However, I have seen organizations successfully include a product owner or manager from the very beginning. What’s your perspective on this? Should startups incorporate a product manager from the very beginning?

(Rich Mironov) I think this depends heavily on the size and stage of a technology startup:

If this is truly “at the very beginning,” then there are probably two to four founding employees and no formal, full-time product role yet. Most likely, there’s a CEO (who covers investors and fundraising, customer cevelopment/sales, HR, finance, marketing, legal/contracts and office manager as well as bits of product management), a CTO (who builds prototypes and mockups and less-than-MVPs) and perhaps a couple more technical contributors. There’s no room for someone who just wears a product management badge.

It would be great if one of them has some product management experience, especially if they’re following somewhat-by-the-book Lean startup, since defining minimal products and trial-closing prospects are skills that technical founders often lack – and product managers already have. But what founders lack in experience they replace with youth, manic energy, relentless work ethic, and belief in their own infallibility. Somehow, they brute-force through this early phase or close their doors. (I expect that bare-metal startups with product management expertise should survive at higher rates, but can’t prove it.)

Decision-making with 2 or 4 or 7 people is based on the swarm model: everyone sits together, everyone hears everything, and important discussions and decisions are shared in real time. When an urgent task pops up, it may go to whoever’s free, rather than to the most experienced. Product plans happen on the white board.

When a startup hits 12 (or 15 or perhaps 20 employees), it outgrows its free-wheeling communication- and decision-making structure. Suddenly, there is an engineering department of 6-10, and someone formally in charge of development. Likewise someones assigned to customer support, and a sales and marketing function with a couple of people. There’s an urgent, overwhelming need for a product manager to coordinate and drive decisions:

• Gather, sift, and interpret customer inputs from several places

• Decide (in consultation with the founders) what’s next in the backlog

• Build a complete pricing model and price list and blocking “one-off” pricing gaffes

• Make sure stories / features are spec’d enough to build

• Post a roadmap and track commitments made to customers

• Buffer the developers from the founders’ off-strategy “good ideas”

• Protect current customers from unintended feature drops

Single-digit-employee startups place a high value on completely transparent processes and group decision-making, which is exactly right for them. That model inevitably breaks down, though, as soon as the organization starts to specialize and break into departments.

I’ve parachuted into nine startups at this stage, as either the first marketing/product employee or as interim head of product management. These startups need the mechanics of product management, but also a clear set of priorities that’s stable enough to last for a few days. (E.g. enough time to get something small done before the founders change their minds.) In my opinion, my most valuable contribution includes some behavioral training to slow things down just enough to sort “urgent” from “strategic” and “after a moment’s reflection, we can ignore that.”

Finally, startups with 60 or 80 or 120 employees start to look like BIG companies. They may have a Vice President of Product Management and five product managers, or product managers may be scattered one-each in five development teams. Now we’re in the organizational world of budgets and formal resource allocation and “strategic synergy.” Welcome to formal reward systems, portfolio planning, and ops reviews.

This concludes part one of our interview. Next week we’ll pick up with Rich’s thoughts on Steve Blanks material and how it does or doesn’t fit into the world of product management. You can learn more about Rich by clicking here.

One-on-One with Greg Cohen Author of Agile Excellence for Product Managers

Let Your Voice Be Heard! Participate in The Study of Product Team Performance, 2013