Agile Product Management, Marketing, and More
Posts tagged strategy
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.
Simplicity
Aug 23rd
I started reading a book about Simplicity titled Simplicity: The New competitive Advantage by Bill Jensen, and immediately one of the author’s assertions struck a chord. One of the book’s hypotheses (simplified) is that knowledge workers spend too much time figuring out what to do, leading primarily to diminished productivity and frustration. For large companies, much of this is laid at the feet of upper management, who may craft a concise strategy at the top but fail to disseminate that strategy appropriately within the organization.
In the case of product companies, whose effectiveness is related to how well they can develop new products and bring them to market, this is one function of product management. Product managers are responsible with becoming intimately familiar with the market’s needs in order to identify opportunities to build solutions the market will pay for, and documenting those problems and needs as requirements. (as opposed to building something we think is cool, and then struggling to find buyers)
With this role as market spokesperson, the product manager guides designers to craft a solution that will satisfy the needs so completely that buyers will be lining up to pay. In some organizations, the product manager serves as the designer as well. Either way, when that design is delivered to development, the vision, goals and solution must be clear enough that the developers can craft an accurate plan and execute without getting mired in confusion and endless analysis paralysis. Certainly the feasibility of the design must be validated before the project team is ankle-deep, but much of the programmer-as-knowledge-worker’s confusion can be alleviated by a clear vision of the solution.
Note: Modern design patterns tell us the product should also be simple and focused, but that is a topic for another post.
Jensen cites his research to assert that the 4 primary causes of confusion among knowledge workers are:
- lack of integration of change
- unclear goals and objectives
- ineffective communication
- knowledge management experience
Certainly the integration of change is a big problem during merger and acquisition activity, forcing disparate systems to be blended. Knowledge management is the problem of finding knowledge already present within the organization. But the other two–unclear goals and ineffective communication–can be addressed within a software development organization by product management.