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Categories

• Product Management
• Go-to-Market
  
• Managing a Product Management/Marketing Department
• Working with Customers
• Working with Development
• Working with Sales
  

Product Management

Applying Product Management to Services
What is the role of product management within consulting and training services providers? What are the activities of product management should take place in this case according to best practices through the whole product lifecycle from idea to delivered service? Can we consider consulting or training services as a product?

Buy/Build/Partner Evaluation
Have you ever created a visualization that shows the true development cost and lost opportunities compared to (vs) partnering for quick time to market? Put another way, is there an economics based tool that will show that, given a product of equal features and functionality, which is better to do, build or partner/buy?

Competitive Review: Documenting Results
What is the best way to document the results of a competitive review? I have already done a lot of research and am looking for the best way to communicate the results on an ongoing basis.

Consulting and Training Services as a Product
Can we consider consulting or training services as a product? What is the role of Product management within consulting and training services providers? What are the activities of product management should take place in this case according to best practices through the whole product lifecycle from idea to delivered service?

Difference Between a Product Manager and a Pure Marketing Manager
I am trying to understand all the concept and differences between several marketing skills and I was wondering what is the difference between a Product Manager and a pure Marketing Manager?

How Common is it For Product Managers to Work Remotely?
How common is it for Product Managers to work remotely? Despite advances in communication technology, is it effective these days if Product Managers are not located in the same country/ continent as their customers or developers?

Largest Challenge Today and How To Overcome It
Our sales cycles seem to be getting longer and longer. At the same time, I am seeing more and more custom quotes rather than using the standard pricing sheet. Any suggestions on how to help the Sales team reduce their need for custom quoting.

Market Research: B2C Product
I am currently a Product Manager in a start-up company. My experience before this has been in B2B software. I am now faced with a B2C product, brand new from the ground up. The company does not have the budget to do primary consumer research so I've been doing secondary research and my own primary research but I can't reach a statistically significant sample in any reasonable amount of time. Can you recommend any techniques to be the voice of a market of consumers on the cheap?

Market Research: How Many Interviews to Validate a Market Problem
Our team is struggling with a question internally: How many potential end points (prospects/customers) does a enterprise- level, B2B, market-driven product manager need to talk to in order to validate a market problem?

Market Research: Finding Potentials
I've been spending much more time with customers of late and have been gathering lots of valuable information. I'm now interested in expanding my market focus to include "potentials" to better understanding why we're not on their radar, what types of problems they're experiencing and what types of solutions they need. Do you have any ideas on how I can identify these prospects, reach out to them, get responses and work with them in the most effective manner?

Market Research: Surveying Pilot Test Customers
I am just baffled by a response I received from a co-worker regarding surveying the customers on a product. "In my opinion, way too many questions are being asked. I am not sure what we would do with the information we received on most of the questions (i.e. feature specific questions) during our pilot program... Additionally, questions asking for them to rate features we have not delivered should be removed. Until they use the feature, we will not gain any value from their response. Personally, I think you could get the information through a phone conversation with our pilot test customers rather than a lengthy survey." What do you think?

Market Research: Overcoming Resistance to Customer/Prospect Visits
When approaching a prospect or customer for a "visit the market" activity, what's a good way to respond to their question, "How does this benefit my company?" I think it's fair for them to ask what they're going to get out of the meeting, but I have no idea how to answer the question (in a way that will compel them to participate).

Market Research: How To Do Market Sizing
My engineering colleagues think that market size is an easy thing to find. "Just call Gartner." Some times that's easy: they know how many Linux servers or Oracle databases or Microsoft Vista installations because these numbers are available. While Gartner, IDC, and others are good, their numbers may be soft too--only as good as the numbers reported by the vendors. Look also at social organizations. There may be numbers nowadays from associations for handicapped mountain climbers or red- headed bass players.

Measuring Success of a Software Product
How do companies measure the success of a software product after it has been installed on the customer's site? I usually use customer surveys and questionnaires, however they do not provide clear empirical data on which features have been used and how often. Whenever the CEO and VP R&D want me to justify a new requirement or feature, I can never show them how many times the customer has used my previous features.

Naming: When Should You Name a Product?
Can you tell me at what point in the process should an organization name a product and what is your recommended process to accomplish this successfully?

Portfolio Management
I have been a product manager for 3 years and now being asked to move into a portfolio manager position. Can you provide any suggestions on how I should manage a portfolio compared to an individual product?

Positioning: Product (Brand) Extensions
We have a product which is well recognized in the industry. However, it is narrowly associated with a certain type of functionality. We are about to release some new products that are quite a departure from our past products. We are also thinking of unifying all of our products under some kind of umbrella name. My thoughts have been to give a new name to the upcoming products to differentiate them and show a new direction for company and its product line, but others are concerned about dropping an already known brand and having to build up new brands. Do you have any advice on naming new products and creating a product suite with add-ons, especially when an existing product already has name recognition.

Positioning: Product vs. Solution
How would you define the difference between a "product" and a "solution"?

Pricing: Tiered Pricing
I'm trying to develop a new product, which is offered in several tiers. Each tier will have different usage limits. I'm trying to ensure that the limits by tier are meaningful and provide a clear upgrade path. One of the unintended effects of this tiering could be people using the product improperly in order to avoid paying additional fees or moving to another tier.

Prioritizing Investment in New vs. Mature Products
Are you aware of any benchmarking based on product development spend? For example, how much should I invest in mature products vs. mid-life products vs. start-up / incubating businesses to ensure consistent growth?

Product Adoption
What is the best approach to understanding why a released product is experiencing poor adoption and usage?

Recommendations for Engaging with Subject - Matter Experts
We are working on a project to build a new generation of complex, business software (for automotive repair estimating). Do you have any recommendations for engaging with subject-matter experts to validate that our requirements for the new system make sense and don't have any glaring holes?

Roadmap: Providing a Product Roadmap to Customers
When we provide quarterly projections of functionality to customers, it sets their expectations. Internally, there is no way to get a committed delivery date until we are at least half-way through our development cycle. How can we lead the market, conveying a roadmap to our clients without setting expectations?

Retiring a Product
Are there any methodologies or common frameworks used to manage an exit strategy for a product that will no longer be offered? How do I build a business case and identify the significant implications that the stakeholders will need to be aware of?

Retiring a SaaS product?
My company provides SaaS with a twist. Since we serve enterprise customers, we allow them to stay on a previous version of our software until they go through their internal upgrade policy procedures (testing, UAT, communication, training, etc). Now, we are faced with having to support customers who are four or five releases behind. I know that this is not a typical situation for a pure SaaS provider, but how would you handle a sunset policy in this case? Would the policy be written in a format similar to traditional sunset policies, with just shorter time frames? I've got customers with no verbiage in their contracts regarding support for prior versions, and I need communicate our policy to them AND add contract verbiage for future customers.

Success of a Product
How do companies measure the success of a software product after it has been installed on the customer's site? I usually use customer surveys and questionnaires, however they do not provide clear empirical data on which features have been used and how often. Whenever the CEO and VP R&D want me to justify a new requirement or feature, I can never show them how many times the customer has used my previous features. How would you tackle problems like this?

Visionary Product Manager
What are some of the traits and characteristics of a visionary product manager?

What the differences are between an MRD and a PRD?

I am trying to understand what the differences are between an MRD and a PRD. I've looked back through my course notes for Requirements that Work and Practical Product Management, but I can't seem to find a definitive answer. There is a sample MRD, but nothing for a PRD. What are the elements of each? Today, I am creating what I call a PRD - but I am thinking it is really a hybrid of both the MRD and PRD. While I know that the decision to use one or both is ultimately mine and what works best for our organization, I really would like to know what the components of each document are and what belongs in a Functional Spec that is not in either an MRD or PRD?

Win/Loss: Collecting Contacts
What are some best practices for managing the collection of the sales contacts (for either prospects or existing clients) that will be interviewed for win/loss?

Win/Loss: Getting People to Answer Questions
In my win/loss calls, a lot of people just say "I don't know" to an open ended question... how do you get people to really answer the question that will benefit you?

Win/Loss: Questions to Ask
I am working on a win/loss analysis for a few clients who have recently decided to go with our competition. I plan on calling these clients and introducing myself and letting them know that I understand that their decision is final and that I am not trying to win them back. However, I want to make sure that the questions I ask will provide the most value.

Win/Loss: Talking to "Loss" Companies
How honest do you find "loss" companies?

Win/Loss: When to do Interviews?
How long should you wait till after the deal is done to conduct a win/loss interview?

Win/Loss: Who Should Conduct?
Should Sales follow up or is that something the Product Manager should do?

Go-to-Market

Downstream and Upstream Marketing
Can you define Downstream and Upstream Marketing?

Establishing a Product Marketing Process
We are at a phase of establishing a start-up Web 2.0 company and developing our prototype. As I'm in charge of the product management and marketing, I would appreciate an expert's list of topics we should cover in the product marketing discussions.

Lower Response from Email Blasts
We are seeing much lower response rates for eblasts and mailers. This seems to be true for both the opt-in people from our own lists and from rented lists from industry specific categories as well as direct mail. It occurs even when the value prop seems good such as a leading name in the industry. In the past I might expect to see results ranging from 85 basis points to 1.5 percent where they are running half of that now. I wanted to know if other companies might be experiencing the same same?

Messaging to Buyers When They Are Not the Users
We have developed a product that will mostly be used by others than the actual buyers. (Much in the same way that parents buy toys for their kids, or senior citizens are often moved to a retirement home chosen by their children.) How should one best convince the buyer that the product is of such great value to the user that it is worth purchasing?

Soft Launch vs Hard Launch
Any quick tips on a soft launch versus a hard launch and how the should be planned/implemented differently?

Success Metrics for Marketing
I am trying to develop a key dashboard for my marketing team to measure our success. Projects are always qualitative but what quantitative metrics can be used for product management and product marketing.

Targeted Marketing Benchmarks
I'm trying to identify a metric that illustrates the success rate of target marketing vs blanketed marketing to present to our business partner audience at an upcoming conference (e.g. You can increase your response rate by XX% if you target your marketing efforts and lists by buyer persona, title, etc.).

Managing a Product Management/Marketing Department

Budget: Cost Center for Product Management
Where do Product Management costs fall in the corporate budget? I've always seen them as part of the Product Delivery budget (Engineering, etc.), but am being asked to fold them into my Marketing budget.

Career Path for Product Managers
What is the typical career path for someone starting out as product manager? Associate PM, PM, Sr. PM, Dir of PM, VP of PM, President, CEO? What other pathways to CEO are viable once someone has had sufficient experience doing PM work?

How Many Products per Product Manager?
Are there any guidelines on how many products a product manager should be responsible for?

Product Management Calendar
I am being asked to setup a "Product Management calendar" in which I specify "monthly and annual duties of a product manager". This is to include monthly development project forecasting, monthly "product status reports" and annual product roadmap planning and budgeting. I am really struggling with this request as I believe a product manager should continuously analyze and adapt to product changes, whether in the market, available technology or design features. This is not simply a once-a-month or once-a-year exercise. Further, I do not want to create too much structure around daily activities that limits the ability to react to opportunities for meeting with customers.

Roles: Adding a Functional Architect to the Product Team
I work for a large software organization, where there are a team of product managers and a team called product definition who deal with various products. But the products they deal with are so complex and huge that each product can be divided into various sub products/tools. Each tool has a development team of 15-20 developers. Now we see there is a gap here. The product roadmaps, MRD written are not at the granular level of the tool/product which the developers are working with. We want to form a team of functional architects who would fill this gap. I want to know if any theory can support this approach or is there a better way to deal with this problem.

Roles: Role of the Product/Business Analyst
How is a typical product management organization set up? I have product managers and I need to put together a job description for a junior product management position. I am thinking about a Product Analyst that has responsibility for requirements, some competitive analysis, acceptance testing and managing the development cycle.

A related question... What is the difference between Product Manager role and the Business Analyst role? Which organizations do these people TYPICALLY report into?

Roles: Product Manager vs. Business Analyst
How would you define the functional difference between a Product Manager and a Business Analyst (where the PM sits in the business and the BA sits in the Dev group)?

Roles: Responsibilities for Research Specialist
I want to fill the role of "research specialist" to assist with market research, making outbound calls, doing win/loss interviews, etc. I'm the sole product manager at a small company of 100 folks. Any ideas/suggestions you can give me on a)title, b)defined role/responsibilities?

Roles: Should Product Marketing do Sales Support?
We are trying to create a market-driven product marketing team and company, that means we need to get away from being simply sales support. However, the sales support need doesn't simply go away as the sales teams still need support with data sheets, transactional lead generation activity, etc. Should Product Marketing do both?

Reporting: Product Marketing
Where should the Product Marketing Manager role report to in an organization - to the Product Management department or the Marketing department? What are the advantages/disadvantages of either approach?

Reporting: Vertical or Market Segment Managers
Do you see them in Product Marketing or Program Marketing? Are there any best practices in this area?

Staffing: Contract Product Management
What are your thoughts on the prospects for contracting out product management? I have engaged with companies that I have worked with in the past to provide product management services on a project basis. I have been reasonably successful and love working this model. Have you seen any evidence contract product management is a viable option for companies?

Staffing: Metric for New Headcount
I am trying to identify a metric as to the typical revenue or # products that is used to justify a new headcount. I have heard $40M to $50M per product manager. Are there any sources or benchmarking I can use to justify new product managers to support our business.

Working with Customers

Starting a User Community
We have a big focus to start building a user community for users of our products & services. Our future aim is to be in a position within 12-18 months to hold a large international forum where many users can participate in-person, exchange ideas, and directly benefit from the event. However, we also realize that before such a large in-person forum, what we must tackle first is to begin building a cohesive and interested network of users. What are some best-practice techniques to start building communities of users with whom we can engage in a meaningful relationship that will benefit product development, market research and the company overall?

Working with Development

Agile: Inability to Get a Product Launch Date in Scrum Environment
In our SCRUM environment, It is impossible to have an official Product Launch date that the project team can drive towards and deliver. Does SCRUM prevent us from having a product launch date that we can drive towards? My hunch is that this development team (IT and Product Manager) are having problems making the hard functionality inclusion/exclusion decisions and the PM is hiding behind this with Technology.

Agile: Scrum and the Product Owner
I have a question about SCRUM as it applies to the Product Owner role. Can the same person who fills the product owner role also fill the Scrum Master role or do these have to be 2 different people?

Best Process and Technique to Begin Development
We are looking at our current processes to insure that they are effective. My supervisor is interested in adding an evaluation form to be used during the review process to highlight if our requirement document meets our standards and covers all information. This form would be filled out by Development, QA, Documentation, etc. In the past I've found most developers quite reluctant to sign or fill out this type of form which ultimately stopped the whole process. They have expressed to me that they don't want to fill out the form because they feel it will be used against them in the future. Can you describe the best technique you've found to begin the process of sharing the requirements documents with development? What is the best way to evaluate if the requirements are "complete"?

Communicating New Requirements
When and how much do I tell Development about new requirements?

Cost of Language Translation
What is the best way to handle the costs and schedules for language translations? Should it be the responsibility of the Country Manager or Corporate Development to subsidize the translation costs for a new language?

Development Milestones
I’m trying to introduce process around the development and launch of our products. The term “Gating” is one that many people are familiar with but it seems that it has a negative connotation as being too stringent and process driven to the creative and energetic folks here. My desire is to introduce concepts and tools gradually around a gating-type process and product management (letting the value speak for itself through experience), and am seeking an alternate title that would not elicit a negative perception yet is aligned with industry practices.

Functional Specifications: Who Should Write Them?
Product Managers produce market requirements and product development produces the tech specs but we're wrestling with who writes the Functional Spec documents and what level of detail should be included.

Holding Development to Dates
How can product management most effectively hold development groups to dates that are promised?

Major vs. Minor Release
We need to redefine our release schedules and would like to know what makes a major and a minor release.

Requirements: Functionality or User Interface First?
I was recently promoted to VP Product Management in my organization. I have nearly 9 years tenure with the company in a sales and management capacity, so know our product very well and *think* I know our clients too. My question is this; We are about to enter the requirements setting phase for the next version of our product. We have acquired feedback that suggests the primary goal of this release is to be much easier to use and to require less training than current versions - which are very sophisticated (and complex). One area that needs work is relative to our user interface. What order makes the most sense to proceed in: Begin with the end in mind (i.e. design the new interface, then create the functionality behind it, or vice versa?).

Re-Write of our Core Product
We are trying to tackle a re-write of our core product. The re-write is huge and will be the foundation for the next 5-10 years of our growth and development. The product is very complex and disorganized (because of years of implementing one-off requests). I have some general themes that come from my industry and customer research...but I am at a loss as to how to get all the players on the same page AND how to tackle the detailed requirements for the re-write. Any suggestions?

Working with Sales

Impact of Changing Product Packaging on Sales
We sell advertising products to our market for display on our website. We would like to document all of our products and list the features contained in each product. We currently have a spreadsheet plotting products across the top and features down the left column. That's a start but it doesn't tell us enough, nor does it help us to see the impact to the site of making a change to the product packages for the sales team.

Industry Standards: Sales Engineers to Sales People Ratio
I am looking for information or any industry standards for Sales Engineer to Sales People ratios. Is there an industry standard? What would you suggest and why? Our company is evaluating our current ratio and whether we have too many Sales Engineers to Sales People. It's currently a 0.8/1.0 (SE/Sales) ratio. Any thoughts or advice you have is much appreciated.

Sales Engineer Education and Opportunities
I am a chemical engineer, and I was wondering how much a certificate or diploma in Sales and marketing will assist in, 1) getting a job in technical sales, 2) if a certificate/diploma or formal education is really required by companies for the sales engineer and 3) what is the opportunity for a sales engineer with education in the sales field.

Selling Products Already in the Toolbox
I am looking for some innovative ways to push Sales to sell the products already in their toolbox instead of them always focusing on selling new products that are still being planned or proposed. Any suggestions?