by Lee Boon Kee, Lecturer, Project Management Practice, NUS-ISS
Which comes first, product or customer? ISS lecturer Lee Boon Kee weighs in with some thoughts on product management for commercial success.
How do we build products that people want to buy? Should these be products that fulfil a need or solve a pain point (e.g. Dropbox, which helps the average user to overcome the technical challenge of synchronising files across devices, sharing them with friends, or backing them up to the cloud), or should they be revolutionary (e.g. the next iPhone or iPad, or the upcoming iWallet which is Apple's virtual equivalent of a credit card swipe on an iDevice GUI, etc) for which sometimes the need is not yet identified?
Solution-focused vs. customer-focused
When you think of innovation in business, there is no better example than Apple. We all know that Apple has built the world’s most valuable company by developing game-changing products and simplifying solutions.
Steve Jobs himself famously said that “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”. In fact, Jobs truly believed that "you‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around."
Undoubtedly, the people at Apple have an intimate understanding of customers and their needs. As product designers and developers, Apple innovators are also heavy users of their own products. It is by getting a huge amount of customer feedback through unconventional means that Apple has found a way to consistently build the right products, which are based on customer needs.
The changing face of product management
Unlike other professions with established methodologies, the key challenge for product management practitioners is the lack of formalised approaches or established work tools. This is exacerbated by a complex array of tasks and processes that the typical product manager has to handle, including managing relationships with Sales, Marketing, Product Development and Executive Management teams within the organisation. There is also very little awareness about product management as a strategic role. Not surprisingly, the role is easily misunderstood, undervalued and incorrectly implemented at many companies.
Although not impossible, it is usually difficult to excel in both disciplines without losing professional focus. To attain occupational focus that helps build professional expertise, two key roles should be clearly defined and ideally assigned to separate individuals: Product Planner and Product Marketer. The Product Planner is deemed as the product and market expert, and hence expected to be good at identifying and articulating market requirements, a.k.a. business or user needs. The Product Marketer, on the other hand, is focused on becoming the marketing expert, building competency in using tools and techniques to generate awareness, differentiation and demand for the product in the target market. It is the collaborative nature of these two disciplines that leads companies to achieve marketplace success.
Collaboration with Blackblot
To keep Singapore’s technology industry future-ready and globally competitive in the practice of product management tools and methodologies, ISS has tied up with Blackblot - Product Management Expertise™ (Blackblot) to deliver technology product management training, certification, tools and consulting services in Singapore according to the Blackblot Product Manager’s Toolkit (PMTK) Methodology™.
The collaboration allows ISS to tap into Blackblot's methodology and global expertise to deliver crucial product management competencies to practitioners and businesses in Singapore. We are also working closely with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and Singapore Workforce Development Agency to align Blackblot's Strategic Product Management™ training curriculum to the National Infocomm Competency Framework (NICF), so as to equip attendees with a practical and interactive learning experience and the necessary knowledge, skills and tools to manage advanced products at technology and high-tech companies.
For more information on product management training, and how it reshapes business models for innovation and productivity growth, click
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This article is first published in NUS-ISS quarterly e-newsletter, Issue 4 (Oct-Dec 2013). It was re-published in The Straits Times, 1 Nov 2013.