How to dramatically reduce risk in your product organization
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I’ve always thought of product management and product market management as as superset of project management. I believe it is one of the foundational skills of a competent product manager. There is a direct correlation of risk reduction to the organization by the increased project management skill level of product managers.
What are the primary responsibilities of a product manager at the most basic level?
- Ensure that the organization is delivering the appropriate value to the customer for the product
- Marshall new feature requests through the delivery organizations based on ranking of customer value and available resources
- Coordination of all of the moving parts of the product, from delivery to customer service to marketing/advertising to sales to channels and any other organizational group
- Research new areas of opportunity that exist in the adjacent space between current product offerings and potential markets
In larger companies, the product manager is responsible for all of the touch points in the organization to approve funding, build, ship, market and advertise the product. This includes keeping key stakeholders in the organization in sales, support and delivery informed at the appropriate times. The PM/PMM can’t be reactive in this role, or they will experience many 12-16 hour days. They need to plan a rough product launch schedule when it looks like the product will be approved. Finance will want to know when they can expect to start a return on their investment along with any risk factors. In larger organizations, this is typically split out between an individual product manager and a product marketing manager. Smaller organizations or new products in larger organizations may consolidate this role into one person.
The PM/PMM needs to find answers to the following questions for tasks and length of time:
- Complete product timeline, including final acceptance testing. External vendor for Usability?
- Complete marketing package timeline. Advertising package. Are the two dependent? Using external vendors?
- Update and regression test the marketing channels (web, mobile, etc.) prior to launch? (dependent on marketing?)
- Develop the materials for help desk and sales kits
The PM/PMM needs to assemble these answers into a product launch plan and seek refinement from the key stakeholders until a consensus is met that it is a reasonable plan with a reasonable set of assumptions. The art then lies in managing the plan through to completion and managing all of the inevitable course corrections. The PM/PMM can hand some of this off to a project manager to execute, but they must develop the initial plan with all of the key stakeholders, dependencies and tasks. The product manager and product marketing manager are the key project management architects to a successful product launch plan. The greater their skills and experience in project management, the more successful the organization will be in delivering a successful product.
How strong are the project management skills in your product organization? Call me to set up a time to discuss.
© Mark Travis – All Rights Reserved http://www.travis-company.com
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