By Daniel Boey, Chief, Product & Project Management
There are many situations in which product management principles and best practices can be used in understanding what your stakeholders are looking for, as well as in marketing and managing your IT systems and products to both internal and external customers.
One of these practices is productisation, in which each system or application is treated as something to be rolled out as a product. Here are some tips on how to apply this product-thinking to IT system and stakeholder management.
1. Treating internal users as your customers
The customer is undoubtedly the central figure to the business when we talk about products, because you cannot have a product or service without a customer. Therefore, there is a need to also treat your internal users as customers.
A customer-centric approach, in simple terms, is an approach that is aimed at making your customer’s life easy. Co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, once said, “it’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.” Most of the time, people notoriously don’t know what they want. Perhaps they don’t even know how their lives can be made easier. It is the job of a project manager to understand the users well enough to be able to define the services’ productisation clearly to resonate with user requirements.
Therefore, it is important that you know the nature of the real work that your users do, the kind of pressures they face. Doing a market research on the needs and demands is also helpful. If you take a look at what competitors in the same industry are doing, you can get an idea of what are the alternative solutions being offered.
2. Measuring the value instead of the price
Every successful business creates something of value. Some create little value for many people, others create lots of value to few people. It all goes back to knowing what your customers need, so that you value-add to what they already have.
Paul Graham, the co-founder of seed capital firm Y Combinator, emphasised that, “there is nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. If you find something broken that you can fix for a lot of people, you have found a gold mine.”
But how do we justify this value to the customer or the stakeholder? Oftentimes, when people talk about a product or service, they use cost as a measure. But these two cannot be used interchangeably, simply because the most value-for-money option is not necessarily the one that will create the most value for your customer.
Take for example the Wenger Giant Swiss Army knife. It includes 87 implements, from a cigar cutter to a fish scaler to a wood saw – it basically has almost everything. But it weighs three pounds, so it can hardly be carried around handily. This defeats the purpose of a pocket knife.
So now that we know our value-adding quality, we need to promote it – and this is where marketing comes in.
3. Marketing the value a product can bring
First of all, whom do we market it to? The answer is everybody – and this includes not just your users, but also your own bosses, project team, partners and stakeholders. We not assume that just because there is value, everyone would know or remember the values. It’s also about communication. This engagement, constantly discussion and exchange of ideas will keep the stakeholders excited. Moreover, it’s a way to obtain continual executive support.
One example of how good marketing can work wonders, is the phenomenon of crowdfunding. It shows that you don’t actually to have a product in order to market it. Instead, what you need to market is the valuable experience that the product can bring to the users.
Take for instance the Pebble Watch, which was the first commercially successful smartwatch. Pledged from a Kickstarter campaign, the founders posted a video of their idea on Kickstarter, initially aiming for a funding target of US$100,000. The campaign turned out to be massively successful, collecting around US$10.3 million in just 37 days.
There are a few benefits to the “sell it before you build it” concept that is at the core of crowdfunding. It is first and foremost a validation of the product idea – and a safer way to test the waters. You also get valuable comments and feedback, which will help you with fine-tuning of the product. Moreover, early adopters will help you spread the word, and you get additional marketing!
4. Managing stakeholders' expectations with product roadmaps
A product roadmap describes the product’s evolution over time. It gives the stakeholders a visual overview of a product’s releases and its main components. The roadmap acts as a communication tool to provide stakeholders with a quick view of the primary release points and intended functionality. This gives them a sense of involvement in the process of the product development, and enables you to manage their expectations.
However, remember that your roadmap will change over time, due to changes in market, technology, development challenges and so on. For instance, product release dates can change. Instead of setting exact dates as releases, set a series of ‘time horizons’ such as quarterly goals, or in terms of “Current, Near Term, and Future”.
Outline ‘areas of focus’ and provide details of the problem you intend to solve as part of that deliverable. For example, instead of promising Facebook Connect in Q4, outline it as ‘Social Connect’. By Q4, it might turn out that LinkedIn is more important to the business, or MySpace made a comeback. You’re still solving the same problem, allowing people to connect via the social networks they use the most, but you’re not stuck breaking old promises.
5. Using product launches and end-of-life strategies
A product launch strategy will help you create a great first impression on your new users. The focus here is about how best to help your new users see and learn the value of your product. This can be done through activities like demonstrations, hands-on training, and dry runs, for example.
But before getting caught up in the new product, do plan ahead on how to gracefully retire the old systems. A smooth migration to a new system can be facilitated by parallel runs, withdrawal of support, and proper planning of phases. This will help to mentally prepare the users; the smoother the transition, the better their impression of the new system.
Communication is key in change management. It needs to be in the form of a conversation, so that you can understand what the users really need for this transition.
Convergence of product-thinking and IT
Product and project management plays a pivotal business role in a technology organisation, because it brings together the different operations, departments and stakeholders.
The NUS-ISS training roadmap for Project & Product Management is designed to equip business executives, IT and non-IT professionals involved in project and product delivery with the skills to execute their role more effectively. Best practice frameworks from Programme, Project and Product Management will be complemented with resurgent practices such as Agile and Lean. This will help product and project managers deliver better products in shorter cycles. At the same time, continuous engagement with stakeholders and customers will help to validate and assure the value of the products and services developed.
For more information on the NUS-ISS Project & Product Management courses, click here