Improve Product Success with Focused Product Management

Successful products are the result of bringing together corporate strategy and market understanding, along with clear communication between the product team and its stakeholders. Research shows that products consistently fail because of an unclear understanding of requirements and the constant change that takes place during the development lifecycle. In addition to this lack of understanding of which direction to head, often times when direction is understood, priorities of those requirements are not.

Product Managers are overwhelmed by the tactical activities that consume their day - email, customer support, sales support, requirements clarification, engineering, etc. By automating these tactical activities and providing collaborative tools that allow information to be shared between stakeholders, product managers can focus on the more strategic activities that produce successful products.

Often times, product managers are asked to focus on delivering products on time and in budget, but even products that are delivered on time and in budget can fail - and often do. The key is to make sure the right products are delivered at the right time for the right market at the right cost.

Successful product management includes:

• Market Planning – to capture market needs and the value of the market so that products stay focused on what the market needs, not what may be cool or trendy
• Competitive Analysis – to understand the strengths and weaknesses of competing products in order to exploit your strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses
• Win/Loss Analysis – to understand why you are winning and losing in order to make decisions based on fact rather than emotion
• Requirements Management – to capture enhancement request, product ideas, market needs, and technical needs for product development
• Change Management – to manage the change of product requirements in order to understand the sequence of decisions and clearly communicate the current status
• Prioritization – to communicate the requirements for product development clearly, so scope changes do not eliminate the most critical features
• Release Planning – to focus product releases on key capabilities within the constraints of resource availability and time to complete product requirements
• Roadmap Planning – to give a long-term view to the direction of the product and ensure that is headed in the right direction
• Performance Monitoring – to understand how products are performing once they are released and when to improve or retire a product