280 Insider Newsletter
June 2004
====================================================================
In This Issue:
- The 280 Insider
- The 280 Group Has Moved
- Books: Software Product Management Essentials
- 280 Group in FREE Bull Market Ebook
- Using Themes To Focus Product Releases
- Contact the 280 Group
The 280 Insider
****************************
Dear 280 Group Subscriber,
This issue of the 280 Insider includes a review of SOFTWARE
PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT ESSENTIALS, an article on using themes to focus your
product releases, and details on the 280 Group's inclusion in a
useful new ebook from Seth Godin, author of the NY Times bestsellers
Ideavirus and Purple Cow.
New 280 Group Corporate Offices
****************************
We've just relocated to new offices in Willow Glen.
Please
make a note of our new address:
1562B Meridian Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
Need a Marketing or Product Management consultant or
contractor?
Contact us for a free quote and proposal.
Books: Software Product Management Essentials
****************************
Software Product Management Essentials
By Alyssa S. Dver
Review by Brian Lawley
When I began my career in Product Management years ago there were
few, if any books that taught the art and science to newcomers. Most
of what I learned had to be absorbed by osmosis while working at
multiple different software companies, each with different Product
Management roles, responsibilities and processes. Were there a book
available at the time it would have saved me many headaches and
given me a much better idea of what to expect during each part of
the product lifecycle and how to be more effective.
Software Product Management Essentials solves the need
for a
resource for introductory to mid-level software Product Managers. It
helps them learn how to do their jobs more effectively and covers
the fundamentals of solid Product Management. Targeted primarily at
smaller companies, who oftentimes have little or no process in place
and tend to demand that the Product Manager do the widest variety of
tasks, it is also a great resource for those thinking of getting
into Product Management. I found that it gave a clear and accurate
view of what the life of a Product Manager is like, including all of
the pros and cons.
Topics covered include "What is Product Management?"
(including
interesting and useful industry statistics about Product Management
in case you need to argue with your boss about what a reasonable
number of products for you to be responsible for is), the "Product
Development Process", "Managing Product Requirements",
and the
"Product Delivery Process". Also included are sections on "Running
Beta Test Programs" (this is the only resource I've seen that covers
this), "Product Launches", "Software Pricing Models"
and "Going
International". There is even a section on the basics of outbound
Product Marketing.
The book also includes a variety of useful forms and
samples,
including beta license & test agreements, requirements document,
business plan, nondisclosure agreement and PDT (product delivery
team) checklist. All of these can also be ordered as templates in
electronic form on CD ROM for $25.
Software Product Management also goes a bit beyond the
basics,
including information about how to use the BLIP (Baseline Level
Integration Process) development method and several other more
advanced concepts. But the main value of the book comes from the
author's deep background and experience as a Product Manager. Full
of practical and useful tips for how to do the basic blocking and
tackling of Product Management, Software Product Management
Essentials is a great resource for newer product managers (and even
perhaps for those of us who have been around the block a few times.)
280 Group in FREE Bull Market Ebook
****************************
We're excited to announce that the 280 Group was chosen
by Seth
Godin to be included in his new ebook, the 2004 Bull Market
Directory. The directory is a resource for connecting organizations
with some of the world’s most creative thinkers and resources that
can help them market and launch breakthrough new products.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Seth's work,
he wrote
Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus and Purple Cow (all
well worth reading). Purple Cow was a BusinessWeek bestseller for
five months. It also appeared on the New York Times and Wall Street
Journal bestseller lists
Best of all, Bull Market is FREE! Click here to get a copy.
Using Themes To Focus Product Releases
****************************
Oftentimes a team will have far too many good ideas
to implement in
the next version of the product they are working on. One technique
that can be used to focus your team’s efforts and simplify the
process is to use themes.
This typical product planning process of gathering data
and
delivering an MRD/PRD presents 2 challenges:
1.) How does the Product Manager prioritize, rank and
make sense of
what sometimes amounts to hundreds or thousands of feature requests?
2.) When new features are proposed after the functional
spec and
schedule are frozen, how can they be evaluated to determine whether
it is reasonable to consider risking the schedule to include them?
Using a theme for your product can make both of these
dramatically
easier.
To create a theme take the original list of feature
requests and
begin to classify them into similar categories to see if any trends
emerge. It might be that the majority of requests are for product
stability or for increased performance. There might be a trend
towards better security in the product, or a trend towards
multi-user collaboration. The key is to identify whether there are
one or two high-level categories that have a large number of
features that fall under them.
If you can identify one or two, then you can go to your
team and
propose using a theme for the release. Your theme might be “Security
and Performance”, “Secure Collaboration”, “Extreme
Ease of Use” or
something else in line with what you are trying to accomplish. Come
up with a good name for it and then meet with engineering and other
teams who have a stake in the product and get them to buy into this
as the primary theme for the product.
So why go to this extra work? There are many reasons.
First, writing
the MRD or PRD will be far easier because you’ll have a focal point
around which to make decisions and tradeoffs. You’ll have some
context for making your high-level decisions about what is in and
what is out of the release. Second, when one of your engineers or
salespeople insists on adding a new feature late in the development
process, you can ask whether it falls under the theme of this
release. If it does, maybe it should be considered. If not, it is
much easier to defer it to one of the next releases. (you may even
want some high-level theme names to use as placeholders for upcoming
releases as well so that people can see where their deferred
suggestions might fit into the future product roadmap).
I have used this approach several times as a Product
Manager with
great success. One product that I used themes on was an all-in-one
Internet appliance for small businesses named the Whistle InterJet
(server, router, etc.). The theme for one of the releases was “Total
Control”, which included being able to monitor and control website
usage by employees, perform basic spam blocking, and limit the hours
of usage of the device to business hours. When new feature requests
came in we as a team could immediately ask “Does this fit under the
theme of Total Control?” If so, then we evaluated whether it was
worth risking the schedule and what the resource implications would
be. Oftentimes the team was much more understanding if their feature
wasn’t included because they saw that it didn’t fit in with
the
theme, yet they could see where it would fit in the future.
Of course, not all of the new features will fit cleanly
under the
theme you choose. There will be some required features that have to
be put in even if they have nothing to do with the theme (bug fixes,
must-have requests to close deals, competitive pressure, etc.). But
using this approach will help your products and team to stay more
focused and on track, and will result in a higher likelihood of
meeting the schedule and delivering a great product.
Resources
BLOGS/ARTICLES
White Papers
PM 2.0 Newsletter
Product Management 2.0
Cool
Products Blog
Marketing
Strategy
Opinions
OTHER
SV Marketing
Directory
Seth
Godin Bull Market
Product
Mgmt Assn's
PM Job Description
Companies to
Watch
PM Software Comparison
PM Webinars
BOOKS
Book
Reviews
Product
Mgmt Book
Product
Marketing Books
Best
Marketing Books
FREE
TOOLS
MRD Samples
Feature
Priority Matrix
Dev Program Roadmap
Bug & Feature Database
AdWords
ROI Calculator
Competitive Matrix
Launch Marketing Budget
Adwords Strategies
More Details...
Bundle! (save $75!)
Training & Templates