Agile Product Management, Marketing, and More
Product Management
Where “Product Owner” as “Backlog Manager” fits best
Jul 22nd
In a recent post, Saeed Khan wrote that the Scrum role of “Product Owner” should be redefined to describe a more accurate set of responsibilities: “Backlog Manager.”
Saeed’s argument is that the Product Owner role is really a project-specific role implemented within the Agile movement as a solution to inaccessible product management. Saeed observes that more and more product management responsibility is bleeding into the Product Owner role, which is intended to be the funnel of business input to the development team. This conflicts with the primary responsibility of the role, which is to provide a set of fully groomed user stories representing the next most important features that should be built, and to be available throughout the sprint to answer questions.
After considering this since Saeed’s post, and based on my own experiences on four scrum projects, I’ve come here to propose that there is a “best case” condition under which this arrangement makes sense, and several others under which it doesn’t quite work.
The Case where a Backlog Manager makes sense
The first thing to remember is that Scrum has infiltrated software development from the custom software world. When building custom software, there is a single customer whose wants and needs are primary — and time has shown that having a representative of the customer in the war room at all times can help the development team deliver something meeting the customer’s needs in an efficient manner. In this context, because the Product Owner is often an employee of the client who has broad and wide domain knowledge, it makes sense that a single person bears all the responsibility of the product–and it makes sense that a single person can deliver it! This set of conditions does not demand that we separate the tactical “product owner” responsibilities from the business “product management” responsibilities because they are so intricately tied together–and the product is being built for one customer!
When we look at independent software vendors, however, we encounter the difficulties with balancing the strategic and tactical that many Product Managers express. A product manager must synthesize the needs of a market segment to deliver a compelling offering, and successfully prepare it to be marketed to that segment. If the Product Manager (title) occupies the role of Product Owner, spending much of his/her time on tactical items for upcoming sprints, the pattern seems to be that access to the market is less common.
It is at this point that the notion of “Time” becomes important. I believe the tactial responsibilities of backlog management can be offloaded by a Product Manager to someone filling the role of Product Owner (a Technical Product Manager, a Business Analyst, etc) under one condition: After a product’s initial release to the market.
In my ideal process, before starting construction of a new product, the Product Manager will spend significant time in the market understanding the problem space, developing business case and initial requirements, to the degree that he/she is prepared to spend a number of months focusing on development. It is only with this focus that a clear vision of the product can be brought to the team and shepherded to completion.
Backlog management will take a great deal of time, but the product manager’s command of the entire product is essential to having it built correctly. With a competent team, the Product Manager serving as Product Owner can still find time to make periodic visits to customers to get feedback on early builds and gain the input needed to “inspect and adapt.” But if this feedback only reaches the team second hand, the risk to the cohesiveness of the product is too high.
After version 1.0 of a new product, when the product is in customers’ hands and is being considered by prospects, the vision, business case and purpose of the product is already established. Now that the product is built, the product manager is looking for additional market segments and business opportunities, finding the problems which adding solutions into the product would open up new markets. Additional important and complex features may be added, but the basic nature of the product is already set. Given this stability, the profitability of this product can be managed by one individual, while the tactical implementation of new features can be efficiently offloaded to another. This is the case where separating responsibility between a Product Manager and a Product Owner makes sense.
These three statements summarize my position:
- For custom software vendors, there really is a single “product owner” that fits with Scrum orthodoxy. This “Product Owner” is a representative of the customer.
- For ISVs developing version 1 of an off the shelf product, a single person should own the business and technical sides of the product. That single person learns the market and helps build the right solution.
- For ISVs developing later releases of an off the shelf product, the backlog management responsibilities can be split from P&L / business responsibilities. The boundaries are set, and a “backlog manager” or “technical product manager” can work with the Product Manager to understand the goals of the next release and execute, while the product manager coordinates sales, channels, support, and other arms of the company.
Special Note: During the development of a Version 1.0 release, because it makes sense to have the single person with best understanding of the business case overseeing the development effort, in most cases it does NOT make sense to have one person overseeing the buildout of more than one product! The workload to understand business needs, positioning, usability needs, requirements and user stories, and implementation details is too great to split that person’s time into multiple threads. I can confirm this from personal experience!
Lessons from ‘Crossing the Chasm’
Jul 9th
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore is a classic reference book for marketers of technology products. As a review, there are a couple of key takeaways in the book that serve as reasons everyone marketing technology products should read it.
First, this book’s central thesis is that in the technology adoption life cycle, the most difficult progression is from the visionary innovators to the pragmatic early majority. Contrary to the risk taking innovators, the pragmatic early majority is looking for validation from other buyers in its niche, who can validate a product will solve problems in their business. By ensuring that the “whole product” is marketed to a specific market segment, Moore argues that a company can establish a beachhead from which to expand its presence.
The focus on a single market segment illustrates the second key takeaway: the need for proper segmentation. Moore defines a “market” or “market segment” as a group of buyers with similar problems who reference each other during the buying process. It is this description that helped me remember and internalize the importance of market segmentation: By posing a compelling value proposition to specific segment of the market, a company can “land” in preparation to “land and expand.” ”Landing” requires becoming the market leader in that market. Without market leadership, a company’s offering isn’t seen as credible. Once market leadership exists, the members of that single market segment become referenceable clients who can speak to the company’s leadership to buyers in tangential industries, and this provides a way to get into other corollary markets.
If a company does not focus on a single market, and instead gets a buyer or two in many industries, the product doesn’t assume market leadership in any single area, which prevents it from winning any potential buyers by the power of the market leading position. It is this rationale that helps establish why segmenting the market, and focusing on a single segment, is so important with a product and company struggling to establish itself in the marketplace.
For those learning or reviewing marketing fundamentals, this is a goldmine. There’s a great deal of meat that Moore places around these key concepts, and so Crossing the Chasm is certainly worth reading if you haven’t already.
The Strategy Canvas
May 1st
I recently read a copy of the book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. As many have observed previously, this is a great source of inspiration and food for thought, and well worth the investment of time from product managers.
Blue Ocean strategy, in summary, involves examining the value proposition of a value or service to identify whether every item included is truly valued or could be eliminated, and whether any additional items adjacent to the offering could be included as a way to expand the footprint of the offering to serve additional parts of the market.
The most valuable tool I found in the book is the Strategy Canvas. The strategy canvas is a graphical tool that represents the key value elements included in an offering, and comparing how multiple competitors position themselves to satisfy each of those key elements. By including a “Red line” one can show where the current industry value curve sits, to provide additional perspective. I’ve immediately found the technique useful in visualizing and describing how an already-specified product will compete and keeping focus on where to invest resources. I look forward to applying this visualization technique to new-product development.
Sample Strategy Canvas
One of the book’s frequent criticisms is that the book doesn’t validate that commonly-cited trend-setters like Southwest Airlines or Cirque de Soleil achieved their success as a result of applying Blue-Ocean analysis and strategy, or whether they are simply easily illustrated using the book’s approach and techniques. Scott Sehlhorst has suggested that the way to design a winning product in the Blue Ocean framework is to apply the same type of measurement to personas: measure the value each persona places on each value element, and from there design your offering around the value elements that concern the persona you are building your product for. I recommend reviewing Scott’s post as a primer on how to apply this strategy framework proactively.
The anecdotes that illustrate the book’s key points are memorable and useful–one can easily use the stark contrasts between Cirque and its competitors, for example, as an analogy when discussing competitive strategy. Since I was immediately able to put the book to use in my day-to-day work, before even finishing the last chapter, I can do nothing but recommend this title to other product managers.
ProdMgmtTalk: Product Manager vs. Product Owner
Mar 22nd
Today’s Global Product Management Talk, a weekly realtime Twitter conversation among product management professionals, covered the topic “To Agile or Waterfall…Does it Matter?” featured John Mansour, CEO of Agile Bench. As an agile product manager, I looked forward to this conversation despite that its timing at 6pm Eastern prevented me from participating realtime. The first posted question was “Product Manager, Agile Product Owner, What’s the Difference?” Since this is near and dear to my heart, I’ve composed my response here.
Some of the comments from the host that I found especially helpful included:
- agilebench: “Product Manager and Product Owner are two roles, sometimes occupied by the same person.”
- agilebench – PMs – outward (customer) facing. Channel, brand, price, the whole product. Strategic. POs – inward (project) facing. delivery, detail focused. Tactical.
The Problem: One huge problem is when one person tries to do both roles. From personal experience, I can confirm that especially with large-scope products in multi-national corporations with products in multiple silos, it’s practically and effectively impossible. Brainmates summarized the problem I experienced: “Market focus suffers, because it’s easier to work on tactical development activities.” In companies I’ve been exposed to, it was not only “easier,” but there were so many fires that there was really no choice. Because of the product’s complexity and the complexity of the organization (not to mention infighting and territorial-ism) there simply wasn’t enough time to participate in user story level design discussions, groom the backlog, coordinate sales and support, and simultaneously monitor the competition, research trends and pricing, and the other activities a business leader in the company should perform.
The Team Approach: As an alternative, agilebench suggested “can you find someone with product sympathies who can act as a proxy for you?” This echoes an approach I’ve seen becoming more commonly cited–including last week’s Technology Association of Georgia presentation by Mike Cottmeyer–of having a Product Owner Team. The team consists of a handful of roles that must be addressed: Product Manager handling the outward market-facing strategic functions, product owner acting as the development liason and sitting with the development team and driving home the detail around the user stories, and potentially a user experience analyst and others. Thus as Roger Cauvin proposed, “one model is that product management is more market facing, while product owner is more inward facing.”
NOTE: Another great read about a similar topic was recently posted to On Product Mangement.
The Balancing Act: One major concern about this approach is “too many cooks in the kitchen,” or not having a single point of authority on the product. I think the split approach can work, if and only if the members are diligent about remaining aligned on a daily basis. Another alternative is a balancing act: The PM/PO must be accessible to the team at all times, yet must get in front of customers and the other teams within the company to ensure a successful rollout. This balancing act can work if the team is talented and can work (at times!) without direct input from the product owner. A few calls and meetings spread through the week is one thing, but if the product owner is rarely visible except for the daily scrum, even a seasoned development team may be hard pressed to succeed. Conversely, if the product manager never leaves the scrum room to speak with customers, the team is at serious risk of building the wrong product “successfully”!
Two Pounds In a One Pound Bag: Given more than a full-time job’s worth of responsibilities outside the scrum room, and nearly another within, it should be inherently obvious that a product manager should not be placed in the impossible scenario of performing product manager and product owner responsibilities on two products at once! I can also confirm this from personal experience.
Other Topics: Other topics were discussed, including
- how to gain the respect of the development team
- how to break up deliverables when more than one product manager is on a single product
- when are agile methods not suitable for product management
- How do product managers ensure the vision when agile delivery teams are focused on small pieces of work?
- If it all needs to be done why does it need to be prioritized?
- How do you roll up individual projects into an org-wide roadmap aligned with company strategy?
Plenty of great discussion on all points is archived and available in PDF (start at the bottom!). Enjoy your read!
Thoughts on Agile Product Management
Feb 25th
A couple of thoughts/lessons about Agile product management were brought to my attention this week.
First, a former coworker expressed that he spends time with his developers when possible to get their input when writing requirements. While technical team input is certainly warranted, some of the primary benefits of agile are harvested only when the product owner sits in the “war room” with the development team during construction of the product. My former coworker expressed that he travels, so this arrangement is followed when possible.
In an agile organization, it may be that to account for a traveling, semi-available product manager–one who may be doing exactly what his product needs, spending time in the market–the best solution is to appoint a full-time product owner to the product. The product owner can spend time with the development team to make product decisions on a story-by-story basis, while the product manager is in the market, attending trade shows and visiting customers. If the two are able to stay in concert, the additional investment can pay off with a product that meets two very important goals:
- Being attuned to market needs,
- Constructed to meet the vision of the product’s evangelist.
For additional reading on this topic, start with Rich Mironov’s insightful slide deck entitled “Agile Product Manager, Agile Product Owner.”
Changing gears a bit, Roger Cauvin this week retweeted a link to his classic post titled “Agile is Not Just a Development Methodology.” In it, Roger posits that the benefits a product manager can obtain by working in an iterative, inspect-and-adapt process are perhaps more significant than the benefits a team obtains when developers work in this fashion. A product manager can use the input from customers and the “business at large” when planning each sprint, rather than constructing a complete set of requirements up front and hoping they’re still correct by the time construction has completed.
This is certainly motivation to support an agile development team, and can apply to monthly releases or initial releases. The flip side is that there are (at least) three types of initial product releases:
- Initial releases where a minimum marketable feature set must be constructed before release can occur.
- Initial releases where the marketability is more nebulous, and where realtime input is necessary to identify the point at which the product can be released to market.
- Ongoing releases where customer input is consumed regularly.
When entering a market in which established players exist and where speedy release to market with at worst a comparable product is the order of the day, the product manager may already have identified a minimum feature set that–reminiscent of waterfall processes–must be constructed in order for an offering to be at all viable. Going forward from that initial release, additional features to be added to the product can be vetted against real initial-release customer feedback as well as market needs. During initial construction, the product manager validates the original assumptions and concentrates on the user experience, to ensure the best possible initial release.
When entering other markets, customers can be brought in to evaluate each iteration and can help to determine when the problem is solved “well enough” to bring it to market. This mindset may be hard to achieve in a SaaS environment, where a monthly release schedule dictates that a release will go to market on a schedule. Teams may address this challenge in a couple of ways:
- Conducting work on solving the problem in each iteration and release, but not surfacing the functionality until the team decides it’s ready.
- Skipping a monthly release but still iterating, and releasing only when the feature is “ready for prime time.”
The third category, where a regular release schedule is maintained and customers are regularly consulted, is the most closely aligned with Roger’s position and is where agile product management can truly deliver the highest ROI.
The Value of ProductCamp
Feb 20th
ProductCamps have been around several years now, and plenty of words have been written about the experience from all sorts of perspectives. ProductCamp Austin founder Paul Young wrote a frequently-referenced description of ProductCamp, so I won’t re-invent the wheel here.
What I do want to touch on is the value ProductCamp provides to those attending and participating (preferably everyone there is both!). We just held ProductCamp Atlanta 4 yesterday, and one tweet from presenter Jason Moss really summed everything up:
Just leaving Product Camp. This was one of the most amazing and educational days in my career. THANK YOU ALL! #pcampatl
This is why people volunteer to conduct ProductCamps, present content, and spend a gorgeous Saturday afternoon inside a conference center sharing and learning about product management and marketing topics. Product Managers usually only work with a small team of people that are like them — and work with a business-at-large that thinks quite differently (from Paul Young’s “X-facotr” presentation–see slide 12). A day devoted to topics related to our line of work, with our peers, is hard to come by.
The fact that ProductCamp occurs on weekends demands a degree of self-selection — product managers who aren’t slightly maniacal about their careers and doing their job to the absolute maximum of their capability aren’t going to spend a Saturday in a conference center. As a result, the caliber of people you find at a ProductCamp exceeds that of many other conferences — these aren’t people who are guilted into showing up because their company enrolled them. These are people who made a conscious decision to spend the day advancing their skills and knowledge, and meeting people like them.
In the opening session, Jason Brett asked how many in the audience were at their first ProductCamp — and on this particular day, about 50% of the audience stood up. So i was interested to see what these people thought of ProductCamp. So here are a few other comments that validate the time and effort:
From Eric Martincek: ”Thanks to everyone who made ProductCamp ATL #pcampatl a great success. This was my first & plan on attending the next one.”
From Desiree Peeples: ”Thanks so much for allowing me to be a part of such an amazing event… looking forward to next year!!!”
Also from Desiree: “#pcampatl ROCKED this year!!. If you weren’t there–you missed out!”
From Kellie Jones: “Great day. Awesome people. Good sessions. Sublime donuts and RiRa. #pcampatl”
How does ProductCamp get this kind of reaction? Aside from the self-selection mentioned earlier, people attending ProductCamp vote on session topics — so the democratic process encourages topics that the vast majority of people want to see. This time there were 32 proposals for only 16 slots — no room for sessions people were only marginally interested in.
So to sum up, if you haven’t paid much attention to ProductCamp Atlanta in the past, but you want to see what the fuss is about, check out pcampatl.com!