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How Engineering Can Work Better with Product

Management

Rich MironovApril 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 Management Experiences

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5

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

www.mironov.com6

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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Development Mktg & Sales

Executives

ProductManagement

What Does a Product Manager Do?

market information, priorities,requirements, roadmaps, MRDs,personas, user stories…

software

strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence

budgets, staff,targets

Field input,Market feedback

Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing, qualification, demos…

Markets & Customers

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Product Mgmt Planning Horizons

Daily

Sprint

Strategy

Portfolio

Product

Release

Exec

PM

DevTeam

2 wk

2-9 mon

many mons

years

many years

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Pragmatic Marketing® Framework

Pricing

Buy, Build or Partner

BusinessPlan

Product Profitability

Win/Loss Analysis

Distinctive Competence

Market Problems

MarketingPlan

Customer Acquisition

Customer Retention

Program Effectiveness

BuyingProcess

Buyer Personas

UserPersonas

Positioning

Product Portfolio

Market Definition

Distribution Strategy

InnovationCompetitive Landscape

Technology Assessment

Lead Generation

Thought Leadership

Referrals & References

LaunchPlan

UseScenarios

Require- ments

Status Dashboard

Product Roadmap

Presentations & Demos

EventSupport

“Special”Calls

ChannelSupport

Channel Training

SalesProcess

Collateral

SalesTools

BusinessMarket ProgramsPlanningStrategy SupportReadinessBusinessMarket ProgramsPlanningStrategy SupportReadiness

Dir, Prod Strategy Prod Mktg Mgr

Tech Prod Mgr

© 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved

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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?

Requirements and estimates

Coding and unit test

System integration & QA

Operation and maintenance

Design

Waterfall projects rarely deliver

according to plan

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Agile’s Inner Loop (Development)

After: Mike Cohn

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Agile’s Strategic Outer Loop (PM)

•Markets•Customer

s•Biz

Models•Strategy•Portfolios•Funding

•Customers•Sales•Marketin

g•Support•Upgrade

s•EOL/

EOS

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Product Owner’s Calendar

Borrowed from Catherine Connor, Rally

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DevelopmentMarketing/Sales

Customers

Executives

productowner

“small p” product owner

priorities, requirements,personas, user stories…

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

rich@mironov.com

www.mironov.com/articles/

@RichMironov

www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov

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How Engineering Can Work Better with Product

Management

Rich MironovApril 21, 2011