Transcript How Engineering Can Work Better with Product Management Rich Mironov April 21, 2011 www.mironov.com.

How Engineering Can Work Better
with Product Management
Rich Mironov
April 21, 2011
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About Rich Mironov
 CEO of a stealth startup
 Veteran product manager/strategist/exec
 Business models, pricing, agile
 Organizing product organizations
 “What do customers want?”
 Author of “The Art of Product
Management” and Product Bytes blog
 Founded Product Camp, chaired
product stage at annual Agile conferences
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Agenda
 Sharing: your good and bad product
management experiences
 What does a product manager do, anyway?
 Agile product managers, agile product owners
 7 ways to help your product manager
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Sharing Your Good And Bad Product
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Management Experiences
Agenda
 Sharing: your good and bad product
management experiences
 What does a product manager do, anyway?
 Agile product managers, agile product owners
 7 ways to help your product manager
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What Does a Product Manager Do?
 For commercial / revenue software…
 PM drives delivery and market acceptance
of whole products
 PM targets market segments, not
individual customers
 For strategic internal development…
 PM resolves competing priorities
 PM drives acceptance and adoption
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What Does a Product Manager Do?
strategy, forecasts,
commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence
budgets, staff,
targets
Executives
market information, priorities,
requirements, roadmaps, MRDs,
personas, user stories…
Product
Management
Development
Field input,
Market feedback
Mktg & Markets &
Sales Customers
software
Segmentation, messages,
benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
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Product Mgmt Planning Horizons
Strategy
Exec
Portfolio
Product
PM
Dev
Team
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Release
Sprint
Daily
many years
years
many mons
2-9 mon
2 wk
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Pragmatic Marketing® Framework
Dir, Prod Strategy
Prod Mktg Mgr
Business
Plan
Positioning
Marketing
Plan
Market
Problems
Market
Definition
Pricing
Buying
Process
Customer
Acquisition
Win/Loss
Analysis
Distribution
Strategy
Buy, Build
or Partner
Buyer
Personas
Customer
Retention
Distinctive
Competence
Product
Portfolio
Product
Profitability
User
Personas
Program
Effectiveness
Market
Strategy
Business
Planning
Programs
Readiness
Support
Competitive
Landscape
Product
Roadmap
Innovation
Requirements
Launch
Plan
Sales
Process
Presentations
& Demos
Use
Scenarios
Thought
Leadership
Collateral
“Special”
Calls
Status
Dashboard
Lead
Generation
Sales
Tools
Event
Support
Referrals &
References
Channel
Training
Channel
Support
Technology
Assessment
Tech Prod Mgr
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© 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved
Nature of PM Role
 No natural sequence for PM
 Must work all aspects in parallel
 Entire planning onion
 Intensely interrupt-driven
 Bottoms-up shapes top-down,
top-down shapes bottoms-up
 Product Management must provide
strategy, judgment and integration
as well as execution
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Good product managers
drive decisions despite
uncertainty and
contradictory goals
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“How Hard Could It Be?”
 Imagine that I create a two-day seminar for
“Senior Enterprise Software Architects”
 Anyone can enroll
 We talk about enterprise architecture
 All attendees get a “Senior Enterprise
Software Architect” certificate
 Are they senior architects?
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Agenda
 Participants: good and bad product
management experiences
 What does a product manager do, anyway?
 Agile product managers, product owners
 7 ways to help your product manager
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Disjoint Communities
Product
Managers
Agile Community
Nearly empty, very lonely
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Discussions about Agile…
 Part philosophy and religion
 Part process, tools, techniques, methods
 Part organizational design
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Why Not Waterfall?
Waterfall projects
rarely deliver
according to plan
Requirements
and estimates
Design
Coding and
unit test
System
integration & QA
Operation and
maintenance
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Agile’s Inner Loop (Development)
After: Mike Cohn
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Agile’s Strategic Outer Loop (PM)
•Markets
•Customers
•Biz Models
•Strategy
•Portfolios
•Funding
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•Customers
•Sales
•Marketing
•Support
•Upgrades
•EOL/EOS
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Product Owner’s Calendar
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Borrowed from Catherine Connor, Rally
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“small p” product owner
Executives
priorities, requirements,
personas, user stories…
product
owner
Marketing/Sales
Customers
Development
software
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Product Manager Failure Modes
Solo Product Manager fails the agile team if…
 Part-timer, not fully engaged in team
 Lack of detail on stories,
acceptance tests
 Stale items in backlog
 Handwaving and bluster
 Best of intentions, but pulled in
too many directions
 “Build what I meant”
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Product Owner Failure Modes
Solo Product Owner fails the market if…
 Weak on real-world value: pricing,
packaging, upgrades, service models,
discounting, competitive dynamics
 Disconnected from cross-functional teams
(Marketing, Sales, Support…)
 Belief in rational users and accurate ROI
 Trading off company-wide product strategy for
product-level features
 Assuming that a few customers at showcase (demo)
represent the market
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Agenda
 Participants: good and bad product
management experiences
 What does a product manager do, anyway?
 Agile product managers, product owners
 7 ways to help your product manager
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7 Good Ways to Help Your PM
1. Ask about use cases and customer problems
2. Don’t demand PMs as technical as you are
3. Not every user story gets its own ROI
4. Expect PMs to translate features into
customer-relevant benefits
5. Ask about forecasts, shipments and revenue
6. QUIETLY sit in on some customer meetings
7. Channel your inner Product Manager
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Contact Information
+1-650-315-7394
[email protected]
www.mironov.com/articles/
@RichMironov
www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov
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How Engineering Can Work Better
with Product Management
Rich Mironov
April 21, 2011
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