Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy

What a product manager needs to succeed is momentum. Momentum in product development, in product sales, in customer adoption, …. – you name it. Lack of momentum is akin to death. If your company is not willing to make necessary investments in your product, it will die. If enough engineering resources are not dedicated to your product, it will die. If there is not enough marketing muscle put behind your product to create awareness and interest, it will likely fail. So what can you as a software product manager do, to get this “momentum”?

1. Earn customer capital: If you can show that you talked to real customers who are likely to buy your product as opposed to holding on to internal opinions, you stand a chance to gain momentum. Even if you don’t talk to customers, but instead have data that proves user behavior (for example web analytics data), you are likely to gain momentum.
2. Political capital: If you can make a business case on why the company cannot ignore the opportunity you have identified based on the “customer capital” you have earned, you are likely to gain momentum. If you can get buy-ins from individual stakeholders and get their backing, you are likely to gain momentum.
3. Early market success: If you can build a minimum viable product, launch it into the market and get early market success, you will likely win over the last standing doubters and build momentum.

If all you have are your opinions, you will lose to the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s opinion). Instead if you have data to back up what you are saying, you are likely to gain momentum that will make you successful.

And in spite of all this, if you don’t, it may be time for you to move on. Trust me, I have been in this situation, where no matter how much data I brought in to prove my case, it fell on deaf ears and the organization was more concerned addressing what appeared as the “next big deal” that the product which was bringing in the bacon was left to languish. All you can do then, is know that you put the best foot forward and hope for the best.

What do you think? Do you agree?

It has been a while since I have been in blogging and a lot has happened in the world during that timeframe. My idol Steve Jobs has passed, iPhone 4S is out, Gaddafi is dead, Greece has been in turmoil sending the financial markets on a dizzing roller coaster and the list could go on.

After Steve Jobs death, I have gone through many of his well known presentations of introducing the iPhone and the iPad and many other videos available on Youtube. There have been two videos that are my favorites – one of them is where he speaks about “Focus is about saying NO”. 3 minutes of your life spent watching it would be worthwhile. Watch it once, watch it twice, watch it until you keep repeating “Focus is about saying NO”.

As software product managers, every one of us is faced with the hundreds of things we could do and what others in the company want to do. But what will allow us to succeed is not by building something that does a half assed job for everyone (you will hear this being argued for under the name of flexibility) but by focusing on building something that does a kick ass job doing a few things very well. To do this however, you need organizational support – it needs to come all the way from the top – the CEO.

Thoughts? Do you agree? What have your experiences been?

In an organization, where should product management report to? Sales? Marketing? Engineering? CEO? Customer Support? All of this is possible but where can it be the most effective?

Before we answer this question, let us make sure we are aligned on the role of a product manager.

In my opinion, the best spot for product management is to have it report directly to the CEO. Product is one of the most important functions in an organization because getting the right product/market fit is what brings in the revenues. So I would argue that this needs to be have a direct line to the CEO so that it is not only looked upon as a strategic function but also that it is held accountable for the company results.

Is there a second best place for product management? Every successful organization that I have worked for (B2B or B2C) has had product management report to Marketing. Marketing naturally is an external facing function that is responsible for identifying the target market, figuring out the product positioning and figuring out what will make prospects buy. There is a slight danger here of product management becoming “marketing” driven than “market” driven, but I think with the right leadership this can be avoided.

The slides shown below are my opinions on why it should not report into sales or engineering or customer support.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this via comments. Do you agree?

On Friday, I had to complete my self evaluation of my Q2 performance review. As I was reviewing myself, I noticed that I had to continously mention how “I” got this and that done. Too many “I’s” were making me uncomfortable that I had to pause and think about it, but was soon to realize that it was appropriate because this was my self evaluation – a self reflection on my performance/accomplishments/mistakes and not the group performance.

However, in the normal working life as a software product manager, there is typically no “I”, there is no “they”, it is always “We”. I get quite irritated when I meet such “I” specialists for whom everything is “I said this”, “I did this”. As a software product manager, there is very little that you can do which is not a group effort. Whether it is working with your development team, your marketing team or your finance team or your product management team, your accomplishments are primarily achieved by working with others. Hence, it is typically “We” did this or “We” should do this or “I” recommend that “we” do this.

Then there are the “they” specialists – folks who refer to their employers as “they”. For example, “I” recommended this, but “they” don’t want to do it. You are far better off pitching this as – “I” am recommending this because “we” can get to X,Y and Z. You come across as a true team player in your internal and external conversations. If you do this well and if you had a primary lead on some of these accomplishments, the right people should notice the leadership role you had to play. That recognition is far better than having to promote oneselves at every possible opportunity.

This is especially important when it comes to job interviews. You want to come across as a team player and “we” is the way to go. If all you do is become an “I” specialist or “they” specialist, it does not come across well. Of course, there are instances where you have to talk about what you have accomplished, but you will still be better off if you refer to some of these with a “We”. “They” when referring to an employer is best avoided.

Agree? Let me know.

Last week, Gazelle moved its office from Allston to downtown Boston. No move is easy – new desk, new neighborhood, new commute, everything to get adapted to. My commute to the new office is now 1 hour 45 minutes each way. I have to drive to the train station for 20 minutes, take the train that takes an hour and then walk to the office. Sounds like an awful lot and it is – 15% of my day is now spend commuting. My previous commute was anywhere from 50 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes. But I enjoy my new commute a whole lot more even though it takes a whole lot longer. For a very simple reason – predictability! I now know that as long as I get to the train station on time, my commute time is going to be 1 hour 45 minutes (barring any train breakdowns of course). Of this time, the 1 hour of the time on the train is actually spent relaxing – whether it is typing this blog post or taking a nap or reading. I enjoy the 10 minute walk from South Station to the office – free exercise. It is 2 hours that I get for myself everyday. Humans crave predictability and are likely to give up things for it.

The same applies for products. Some choose to

1. Work in larger companies instead of startups because of the predictable hours and also job safety.
2. Become full time employees than being consultants because of the predictable income.
3. Buy products from established vendors than fledging startups because it is a safer bet.
4. Have caps on pay-as-you-go software packages so that they can have predictable expenses for budgetary purposes.
5. Buy software packages that have more features than they want now, because it is a safer bet to make now.
6. Buy extended product warranties because it adds predictability that if anything goes wrong during this time, they do not have to spend money.
7. Pay bills on the same day every month because it allows one to have a predictable cash flow.

In most cases, products are expected to have predictable outputs to given inputs. So, in our lives as software product managers, adding predictability to our customer’s business or personal lives could be a dimension used to enhance our products. And once you do, make sure that this is pitched to your customers – because they may not tell you that they are looking for more predictability, but I will bet you that unknowingly they do.

Makes sense? Let me know.

When does a startup stop being one? Is it when:

• It gets funded – no, can’t be because vast majority of them get seed funding.
• It gets customers – no, that can’t be it either
• It gets revenues – no, because customers could be paying for the service
• It becomes profitable – no, because even profitable companies are sometimes called startups.

1. It is a millions game – Victory is declared when you have million+ customers, not hundreds or thousands (if your goal is to become the “brand” in the space you are in) unless you are in a niche market.
2. There is one buyer most of the time – no technical buyer, no economical buyer, no user. The consumer is coming to your website with intention to buy something for themselves with their money. (exceptions do exist – for example, if I am buying something for my wife or kids or my mom – though this is not the mainstream use case).
3. Short sales cycles – Ideally you want every customer to buy from you on your first visit (never happens, but the goal is to get as many to do this). There are no RFPs, no demos, no data sheets, no whitepapers, no lunches with prospects to convince them to buy. Your website is the demo – if they don’t like or understand something, they will leave and may never come back.
4. Show me the money  – It is harder to monetize consumer products. A lot of apps, services are available for free, and consumers are used to getting products and services for free online. Consider a limited-feature free product or limited-time free trial offer, setting the stage and expectations that they will need to pay. Make sure that the value proposition is crystal clear to the customer.  Remember, they are spending their hard earned money and not their employer’s.
   
5. Short attention span – KISS (Keep it simple stupid) principle applies so much in B2C. Use middle-school reading level language on your site – short, simple, easy to digest. None of the gobbledygook you can get away in the B2B world with (the reliable, scalable, innovative, high performance, architecture marketing BS) works.
6. Details matter even more – Given the short attention span and the high propensity to go elsewhere (one mouse click away), everything from page load times count. If your page takes long to load (read that as more than 2 sec), chances of your prospect leaving go up exponentially, unless you are an established brand (read Amazon or Google).
7. Product experience rules – Site usability matters a whole lot. There is no consulting, no professional services in the B2C world. Either the customer gets it the first time or by quickly looking through your FAQs or they just leave.  If your product is not easy to use, expect it to be returned (or if it’s a website, abandoned). Consumers rarely RTFM.
8. Customer experience rules – You need to deliver a “crazy awesome” customer experience to every customer.  Over and above the product experience, you need to deliver an awesome experience at every touch point – whether it is customer care, online content, surveys, newsletters – you need to aspire to beat your customer’s ever rising expectations. Why? See #9.
9. Social proof is mandatory – Consumers look for social proof – who else is using it, what do other think about it? Is this site real and trustworthy? Again, remember, they are spending their money and not their employer’s. And by social proof, I don’t just mean canned testimonials (which by the way lot of buyers do not trust), but instead they expect to read both positive and negative reviews about your service on the web, Facebook, Twitter etc. If you deliver an excellent experience, they will tell others. And if you deliver an awful experience, they will tell even more people and you will not even know. However, they do not expect you to deliver an awesome experience to everyone – some customers can just not be pleased and no company is perfect – you are bound to screw up at least in some cases. So if all they see are positive reviews, it could be a cause for concern (trustworthy?). So, instrumenting your product to allow your customers to easily share their experiences (good and bad) is important.
10. Building brand equity matters – You need to appeal to the masses right from the word “go”, but it will take time. There is no fast way to get there. But once you have built and earned good brand equity, you will retain the consumer mindshare for a long time. For example, when it comes to buying books, do you think of Amazon or Borders? When you think about mp3 player – do you think of ipod or zune? When you think about search, do you think Google or Microsoft? When you think social media, do you think Facebook or Orkut? It took a lot of work for all these companies to get to where they are now. Why? Read #1 again.
    
11. Web analytics – In the B2C world, you live and breathe “web analytics” – unique visitors, bounce rates, traffic sources, conversion rates, conversion lifts, funnels etc. become part of your everyday terminology. It is all about getting more customer traffic to your website and getting them to buy or do whatever that helps you make money. If you are running an eCommerce site, you want to make sure they find the thing they want and then buy it from you.
12. Test, test, test – Getting ready for continuous A/B testing and multi-variate testing becomes part of your DNA. Consumers are fickle, they change their mind all the time. Hence, no matter how many usability tests you have done before you release changes to your site, it can never guarantee success. You need a lot of data points to declare a winner. The only way to find out is to release changes to production and then conduct A/B or multi-variate testing before you declare a winner. Be prepared for surprises, because what you think will win could turn out to be a sore loser.
13. SEO, SEO, SEO – every page you create on your website needs to be SEO (search engine optimization) friendly. Why? Your highly qualified prospective customers will find you primarily via two mechanisms – 1) search engines when they are about to buy what you are trying to sell or 2) by word of mouth. So as a B2C product manager, you need to have a decent knowledge of how SEO works.
14. Keep them loyal – As I have mentioned before, word of mouth is huge in the consumer world. Because it is not one person telling another, it is one person telling 10 of his/her family or friends. Consumers love loyalty programs – it is your way of thanking them and keep coming back. I still fly American Airlines because that is where I have the most miles. (I hate their customer experience, but I still remain loyal because of the miles).
15. Respect their privacy – Ask only for personal information that is absolutely needed. If sensitive personal information is asked, explain how you would use it. If a consumer opts out of receiving marketing material from you, respect that.  Do not require them to “register” with your site to use your product/service unless required. Allow for “guest checkout”.
    
16. Stay in touch – via newsletters, Facebook. Get them to “like” your FB page – use your page for periodic product updates, contests, relevant news, etc. Remarket to them with relevant content, coupons etc. But never, ever spam your customers.

In the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to sit through three product demos that were all done using web conference (Goto Meeting and WebEx). Two of these demos went very well, we understood everything we wanted to know and we figured out whether the products will meet our business needs. More on that later.

The third one was an outright disaster. This particular  demo was in an area that not many of us knew enough about and we were looking to educate ourselves with not only on the product but also get a better understanding of the underlying methodology. When the demo was set up, we had clearly communicated to the vendor (at least we thought we had) on what we were looking to get. We had also indicated that time was tight and that we probably had 45 minutes max. To make the whole situation tricky, there was the software vendor, a potential professional services partner and an internal consultant who was introducing us to the software vendor.

Here is how the demo went (remember the 45 minutes equates to about 20 min of demo time if you account for the time needed to answer questions during the demo):

1. 15 minutes were spent on the corporate slides – here is who we are, when we were founded, we do blah blah blah (nothing I remember right now), here is how much profits we made last year, here are the complex equations that are underpinnings of the technology (I am not joking, there were equations on slides), here are the Fortune 500 clients that use us etc.
2. Another 15 minutes of the admin console where everything can be looked at etc.

When I have done customer interviews to better understand customer pain points and ways to enhance the product, often times I have been asked one of two questions:

1. Are you really interested in solving this or listening to my problem? I only have 2 licenses of your software. Don’t you only listen to customers who have 50 licenses or more?
2. But this is a simple issue, will this ever make it into your list of things to improve on?

I remember giving the same answer each time for question 1) – my job as a product manager is not to worry about how many licenses (“size”) you have, but to understand your pain point and then extrapolate to see how many other customers will benefit from solving the problem (“frequency”). Innovative ideas typically come from one individual (think about all the great inventors – many of them invented things in their basements individually) and not from organizations. So before you ignore your small customers, think twice. Instead worry more about the “frequency” of the issue.

The second concern has some validity. Companies under the false pretext of being innovative are looking for problems that are big news – the one that will make a splash. Agreed!  Product managers should always look for differentiated ways to solve “common” problems to stay ahead of the competition. But this should not be at the cost of ignoring simple issues with your current product. Here is a simple formula I have used to prioritize all of the issues.

Determine:

1. How many times a typical user encounters the said issue? (Once a day? many times a day? once a week, once a month, once a year etc.) = A
2. How much time in minutes do they waste each time they encounter this issue to find a workaround? = B
3. How many users will encounter the same issue? = C

Importance of the issue (priority) = A x B x C

For example, if the user encounters an issue with every 3rd mouse click (because of the delay the software responds to the click) and if a large number of users encounter it, it will be amplified a whole lot even if the delay is only a few milli seconds. Compare that to an issue which occurs once a year for a very few users. It maybe something you could easily de-prioritize because it could very well be a niche problem.

Don’t get me wrong, lot of emotions do get involved in whose issues get fixed – one with executive mandate, one from a vociferous customer, one for the customer that will make a huge purchase etc. But as a product manager having the above data will help you justify the prioritization you are making and then if someone wants to override your decision for valid/invalid reasons, that is perfectly fine. At least you should be able to sleep in peace that you did your homework.

Thoughts? Do you agree? How do you do prioritization?

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Image: Courtesy of fiscalgeek.com

I am currently enjoying my week long vacation in my hometown of Ernakulam after a week of software product management seminars and workshops in Bangalore and Hyderabad. As a bonus, my host Pinkesh Shah, CEO of Adaptive Marketing and I were invited to the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad by the students who were keen to learn more about product management.

So what did I actually observe and learn from the 125 product professionals I interacted with? What is the real state of software product management in India? What are the software product managers doing now and what are they looking for? Though I did not get to meet with software product managers from large MNC’s such as Google, eBay, IBM, Cisco etc. that have large operations in India, my numerous conversations with Pinkesh indicate that the picture there is not that different from what I learnt from the product managers I met with.

So here are the top 5 things I learnt about software product management in  India.

1) Current focus is on requirements management and software delivery: Software Product Managers in India currently are playing the role of requirements managers or product owners (in the world of Agile). They are responsible for defining the product functionality and working very closely with engineering teams co-located here in India to ensure the iterations/releases get delivered on time.

2) They manage products sold in the United States: The products they work on are primarily (if not all) for the US market. Hence, the amount of direct customer facing activities they take part in is very limited at this time. They do not seem to have many opportunities to travel to the US to meet with their customers. They understand this as a major pain point. In most of the cases, the Indian product managers (I got to speak with) do not have a product management counterpart in the US. Input for the product enhancements were coming directly from marketing, sales or the executive management, as opposed to someone who was spending time listening to the customers in a non-sales situation. This is very worrying because those of us who are experienced product managers know how frustrating listening to just sales to drive future product direction could be.

3) Titles are one too many – Just like in the US, there are too many titles for product managers in India. Technical product manager, product owner, product manager, product professional, the list goes on.

4) Engineering talent is itching to find new career opportunities: Folks who have spend a lot of time in engineering and project management are now starting to ask – what next? I heard this during my seminars and it is also a common question I get from the readers of this blog – how to transition into product management. Training demand and opportunities for vendors who provide training on software product management are bound to increase.

5) They are confident, fearless and hungry: What impressed me the most was the talent and the confidence of the software product managers in India. There are some that work on very successful products in the marketplace – for example, the product managers Mukesh Marodia and Ramesh at OpenText were working on a very successful portal product used by a number of Fortune 500 (apparently 1 out of 3 pages on the internet is powered by Open Text web cms). The product managers at Nokia were working on the different software components such as messaging and video capture used in all of the Nokia mobile phones. Then there was Chaithanya from Inmage Systems, the lone product manager in the company responsible for his company’s data recovery solution sold in the US. I could go on, but all in the all I was so impressed by the budding product management talent in India.

So what is the future? I am convinced that the talent in India has a bright future ahead. I am making a bold prediction here, not based on facts but based on the trend that I have been reading about. Given the size of the Indian market in terms of number of consumers and their total purchasing power, every company on this planet will be looking at building new software products for the Indian market. Software products that are not watered down versions of products build for the western markets and then adapted to the Indian market, but instead software products that are designed from the ground up in India for the Indian market. We already read about this trend in companies such as GE and automotive markets, but I am predicting that this trend will heat up in the next 5 years. When this happens, the current software product management talent in India would have matured enough to play a significant role. They will soon find themselves in an enviable position where they will no longer be concerned about lack of opportunities to meet with their end customers because they will be living right amongst them. These software product managers are hungry, smart and more importantly they are confident. I am so happy to have met these budding product managers and their future cannot be any brighter. Product Managers in the western world (including myself) take note, I treat the talent here in India as competition for sure.

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