Baby Steps and Step Back
Cauvin has a great series going on positioning. He started out the set of posts by focusing in on what a PM should do when they first arrive at a company, from what I could gather. I think it’s a good list, and well thought out. I wanted to add a first step that I think is important as well:
Take a deep breath, and a huge step back.
Realize that you have no freaking clue what is going on in that organization. No sense of culture, no sense of what’s been done in the past. You should not put the pressure on yourself to start, and then 1-2 weeks later present how to better position the product.
From where I am, it makes more sense to spend time taking the first task with which you are charged, and burying yourself in it. Don’t worry about talking to marcom about sell sheets. Worry about the fact your are climbing Mt. Everest in your underwear, and you have a ton of things to see and learn and figure out. And it’s going to be cold.
Other than that, Cauvin’s first post and his set of questions are a great foundation for a service or a product analysis. Obviously (as he mentioned), there are tons more in detail, and I would include on mine:
- What’s the vision as it currently stands for the product?
- What is the price / ROI model, and who owns it?
- Does a marketing plan exist, and who owns it?
- Is there a product dev plan, and who owns it?
Again, this list goes on and on. HMMM — I just had an idea. More to come on that.
Good work, Cauvin - I love these types of things. Keep it up!
Strap in Tight
Who moves to California? Well, a lot of people. But, young folk from Toronto, Canada — I don’t know what the numbers are like on that one.
I’m strapping in, because the next few weeks are going to be crazy & pretty surreal (starting with today) — and that’s what’s so cool about blogs; I’ll be writing about it as possible.
Away we go!
Driving with Customers
How different are the management tactics and strategies between managing a lower-price product for a mass market, and managing one for a higher-price “Enterprise” market?
I’ve been thinking about this, because I have experience with a high-price Enterprise-product company. I get curious how it would be without customers having a ton of weight to throw behind enhancement requests. I don’t know which I would prefer more, to be honest.
With Enterprise, there is that certain pressure to make sure the customers who are paying are getting their stuff in the product, relatively quickly. This isn’t a bad thing, because queue jumping can serve as a quality stream of revenue for the business. However, unless managed with care, the product could get out of control and become jagged with custom enhancements just for those clients willing to pay more than others, or have a more widespread brand reach.
Now, with consumer-based products, I’ve tried to think out how this could work. There are many different avenues from which requests and ideas could come in. For example, I could see a message board system working well, which creates a communicative relationship between the product team and the customers. A feature “form” on a website may also work well, as could having a yearly gathering of customers to come together and talk about the tech your shop is producing.
I suppose at the end of the day, you are dealing with a larger base of customers, which demands an incresed level of aggregation for the requests to make sure the good one’s don’t fall through the cracks, and with Enterprise, the requests are more focused, so the risk is making sure the product works well for everyone.
There are a few common joins between both scenarios, however (not necessarily in order of anything).
1. Making sure the product stays in line with corporate vision and strategy. If this doesn’t happen and the two become disjointed, you may be looking at either EOL’ing the product, or attempting to right the ship as fast as possible.
2. Focusing the product, knowing your market, and listening to it. Regardless of how well you think you may know what your customers want, unless you are listening to them, you can’t know for sure. The vision of the product needs to come from the business overall, and yes, some of the cool things the product does will be based on ideas internally. But, don’t leave out the customers — they pay for and use the product regularly (hopefully), so they do know it well also.
3. Gathering and managing the data. In either scenario, market data (enhancement requests, usage statistics, etc…) need to be gathered accordingly. This could come from multiple sources (customers, internally, comeptitors, etc…) but it can’t be left out there to float. It’s too easy for a PM to get buried in the “cool” stuff or putting out fires on a day-to-day. They need to spend time making sure this data is factored out and handled appropriately.
There is a ton to write on this subject, but I wanted to get some thoughts down, and today was a good day for it. I’m always curious about the steps taken / avenues travelled down for this taking place at other compaines, regardless of their focus (hardcore tech to more brand management style).
So cool — so, so cool.
FeedDemon Rocks
I love FeedDemon. I would not be able to get by day to day without it. They have just released 2.0 beta 4 and it is awesome — I recommend checking it out, and making the purchase if necessary. It’s insanely faster than some of the other betas, and adds some really nice features and changes to the look and feel of the feed layouts, which make them easier to read.
Great job, Nick. This coupled with my trusty Newsgator subscription kicks major ass.
Very Inspiring
I love this stuff. I find it really inspiring, and makes me think that I’ll be there someday. Call me crazy, but in all honesty, I can’t work at my best unless I’ve got a ton of things on the go at once, and there is pressure to get them all out the door. I could see myself thriving in any of these scenarios.
I don’t know why, but that’s when I’m most excited, and pumping out the best stuff I can.
Take a read through the article — my favorite is what Marissa Mayer wrote. She seems really cool, and obviously on the ball.
700-800 e-mails a day? I don’t get that many in 6 months, but I say bring it on. I can’t wait.
