Just look at what the Project Charter should cover…

• Project scope
• Project objectives
• Deliverables
• Schedule
• Required resources
• Communications plan
• Risk management
• Project monitoring
• Controlling procedures for the project

Anyway you look at it, that’s a lot to cover in one concise document!

A Few Things the Project Charter Should Accomplish

After reading the project charter there should be no doubt who is in charge of the project. It should be clear who has authority. Just making this fact clear is extremely important if the organization has a matrix environment.

When you’ve read the project charter, you should know:

• The purpose of the project
• It’s benefits and objectives
• What project success will look like
• Name of the project sponsor
• Stakeholders
• Budget
• A description of the product and deliverables

Points Typically Included in a Strong Project Charter

When the charter has been put together, you should be able to look at it and understand why the project was undertaken. You should know any objections and constraints that are on the project. Main stakeholders should be identified along with target benefits of the project. There should be a clear description of in-scope and out-of-scope items along with a high-level risk management plan and high-level communication plan. Finally, there must be a high-level budget and arrangements for spending authority.

How Can We Know We Have a Top-Notch Project Charter?

There are four signs that you’ve crafted a project charter that can heft the weight of your undertaking:

• Project stakeholders not only approve the charter, but also assign the resources you need to begin.
• The project charter can be used, referenced, and evaluated by even a new executive in your organization.
• Clear decisions are made about who owns the budget and who is managing it.
• The executive team has agreed to be accountable for certain measurable and achievable objectives.

With the rise of Agile practices some may question the value of project managers. However, project managers have had to redefine their role to address changing business needs, often moving upstream to the enterprise level. Project charters remain an important tool to ensure the effective coordination of complex projects and work efforts.

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When you begin developing your product roadmap, you start to envision how your product strategy will actually be accomplished. You tangibly define the phases or activities required to reach your aspiration goals. These set of activities will typically cover multiple product development cycles and define high-level deliverables. The form your roadmap takes is largely dependent upon the expectations of your organization. This can range from PowerPoint to more automated tools.

Purpose of the Product Roadmap

So what do you want to accomplish? Are you trying to attain internal and external alignment around a set of envisioned activities? Or are you also attempting to ensure an appropriate allocation of supporting resources so that your team can achieve its goals? Your organization likely has goals of its own. Organizations commonly use roadmap deliverables as a visible measure of how efficient your product team is. Make sure you not only understand what you and your team want to accomplish – but also what the organization’s expectations are. A disconnect between these two sets of expectations can spell trouble.

5 Things Normally Included

Every product roadmap needs to cover these items:

• A timeline aligned with customer purchasing behaviors or business cycles.
• Outline the market drivers that will drive deliverables on the roadmap. For instance, tradeshows, high sales seasons, or expected legislation that could impact the market, etc.
• Define the business objectives or product themes that divide the overarching timeline into phases that align with the overall product strategy and support the long-term product vision.
• Capture the high-level features being targeted for delivery in each phase.
• Optionally, include an aligned technology roadmap that reveals specific technology platforms that will be impacted by each major phase and feature list. This can be a big help in proactively aligning product and technology groups.

Four Characteristics of a Top-Notch Product Roadmap

It should:

• Be crafted in such a way that it can guide each of the planned phases and project priorities.
• Align with your product vision and strategy and provide a plan for delivering on what these documents promise.
• Include a plan around resource requirements that the executive team supports.
• Is not so set in stone that it cannot be updated along the way as market changes occur and progress is made.

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Choosing the Best Product Ideas and Features to Advance

Today, we’re going to look at a tool many organizations find useful in helping them determine how to proceed. This tool, the Prioritization Matrix helps product teams score the various product concept ideas under consideration so they can make well-reasoned decisions.

When myriad product ideas are floating around, this systematic matrix approach will help ideas with the most potential rise to the top so they can receive further study.

You can use this same Matrix approach to consider various features you may want to add to a product. The Prioritization Matrix pulls the cream of the ideas to the top and lets the sludge sink to the bottom and ultimately disappear.

Choosing Matrix Criteria

Your Prioritization Matrix can include any criteria that align with your organization’s goals and objectives. Some commonly used criteria are:

• Is the market attractive?
• Can you be competitive?
• Is it a good time to enter the market?
• What’s the market’s potential value?
• Can you differentiate your product from others out there?
• Is there a strong projected return on investment within a set period?
• Does the proposed product align with your company’s goals and objectives?
• How does the estimated cost of development compare to the size of the
  opportunity?

Here’s a virtual example of what a Prioritization Matrix might look like:

Using the scoring scale, each of the criteria earns a score of 1,2,or 3. For clarity and to avoid individual subjectivity, it’s smart to specifically define each measure. For example for Market Attractiveness high would equal market growth of greater than 5% along with a market size of over 2M potential customers. Once you’ve defined your ranking scale numbers, your team should rate each criteria and total up the scores for each idea under consideration.

Naturally, at this point the scoring will be fairly subjective. That’s ok because you are not at the point of constructing a financial forecast. You are simply considering which ideas are the most deserving of additional consideration.

Building in Automatic Stops

You need to build some automatic stops into your Matrix. For instance, if an idea does not strategically align with your company’s strategy or objectives, it must be dropped from further consideration. Additionally, at the outset you should agree that products that do not garner a predetermined minimum total points will be discarded.

The systematic Prioritization Matrix approach is an excellent way to increase effective use of your resources. Don’t become discouraged if a majority of ideas don’t measure up on the Matrix. This is a common occurrence that can often lead to a positive: your valuable resources not being wasted on lackluster ideas.

Looking Forward

Next week will take a look closer look at Product Concept Investigations, beginning with Personas.

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Opportunities Abound

As you work your way through the product development process, you’ve had lots of opportunities to interact with clients. These occasions are goldmines. Use these encounters to refine your product plans and improve products. As product manager, stay focused on detecting patterns in the feedback you get from different customers. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by individual data points and observations.

Maximize Your Customer Interactions

Making the most of your customer interactions begins with a well-defined plan and an objective. This structured approach buoys your customers’ confidence in you and your company. Plus, it gives you the best chance of getting top quality input from your customers.

Define Your Objective

What do you most want to learn from your customer? Are you seeking frank feedback on your plans? Do you hope to walk the customer through a prototype your team has developed? Perhaps you want to test the waters on various pricing strategies. Your best chance of getting valuable information begins with a solid objective.

Choose the Right Forum

You can plan your customer engagement to take place through a variety of formats. Choose the one that will work best for the type of information to hope to gain.

Format possibilities include:

• Site visits
• Surveys
• Virtual meetings
• Visits to your corporate office
• Regional client meetings
• Client conferences
• Focus groups

Set Yourself Up for Success

Before you undertake your client meeting, create visual aids that will facilitate the conversation. Going in fully prepared reflects well on you and your organization.

Prepare questions that are designed to get at the information you need. Don’t be afraid to fine-tune these questions as you go along. It is likely that as you interact with clients, you’ll need to adjust some of your original assumptions. In the end, this will lead to an improved outcome.

Watch Your Time

Be considerate of the amount of time your customer has to devote to the meeting. Set the parameters at the start and end within your client’s time limits. Don’t go over unless your client extends the meeting’s length.

Thank Your Client

You can create goodwill for yourself and your company by taking the time to thank your client in writing after the meeting. Send a written note or at the very least an email. Doing so can bolster your relationship going forward.

Watch for my next post when I’ll discuss the value of forming a Customer Advisory Council.

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The requirements document is where the rubber meets the road for your product’s development. At this point your high-level observations about market opportunities get translated into capabilities by your engineering team. Many different people will contribute content to your requirements documentation. The contents often vary between companies. The following sections are frequently a part of this important document:

• About this document
• Business analysis
• High-level use cases
• Functional requirements
• Compliance requirements
• Report requirements
• User interface requirements
• Environment requirements

Now let’s take a closer look at what’s included in each section.

About this Document Essentials

This section sets the framework for the entire document.  It is vital that it give the date of the last document revision, the version number, and who made the most recent change. In addition, a description of the revision should be given. These specifics will show who approved the changes and the date of the approval. This section is also a good place to define key terms used in the document.

Business Analysis Section

This section is a high level definition of the business need for the new capability.  Here product managers notate the proposed release date linked to the product roadmap. The section lists high-level business and marketing requirements including release dates. A SWOT analysis could be included indicating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the project. The last item included is a Feature Matrix, which captures product development estimates for a prioritized list of features. This establishes a firm cut-off line for product development, based on the resources, time, and money available.

High-level Use Cases

Here, you’ll highlight detailed business objectives, which will become functional specifications for the new product. A diagram is often included showing the system with which the user is going to integrate. This system will gain value from the new capabilities you’re developing. If more than one group will use your product, this section is a good place to list all the use cases the team has developed.

Functional Requirements Section

The functional requirements you list will likely develop into something of a use case. It will show behavioral elements of how the product will be used. These requirements are where you’ll reveal specifically what your product is supposed to accomplish. This information will inform and guide the product design.

Compliance 

What does the law require of your product? That will be the subject of the Compliance Requirements section. This section could include data use rules, security or contractual considerations, or perhaps even government requirements.

Report Section

Inputs, layout, report fields, headers and footers, and any groupings are all detailed in the report’s requirements section.

User Interface 

How does one engage with the project? That’s what is explained in the User Interface Requirements Section. The information often consists of a conceptual site map, and is frequently presented in a diagram exploring the analysis that’s taken place. If there’s a protosite to model the user interface capabilities, a hyperlink is given.

Environment Section

Architectural standards that relate to system performance and any operational or integration are presented in this final section of the document.

Taking the Next Step

In my next post, I’ll look beyond the development of priorities, roadmaps, and requirements to explore the importance of remaining flexible throughout the process.

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In this post, I would like to list three items that executives should be mindful of if you want to help your teams perform at a higher level.

• Accountability metrics
• Cross-functional hand-offs
• Time spent with customers

A Closer Look at Performance Enhancers

Let’s begin by taking a closer look at accountability metrics for product managers. In most organizations of scale the product manager brings heightened focus to a product or product line. However, our research shows that roughly a third (31.3%) of product managers “are not held accountable” to any performance metric. If executives want to improve performance it is important to have established and clearly understood success criteria. It is also critical to arm your product managers with the necessary tools to measure their progress and performance.

Additionally, our data shows that even when executives articulate clear accountability metrics and empower their product managers they can be undermined by ineffective hand-offs between the cross-functional team members that support overall product development activities. This factor has shown up in each of our five years of statistical research as a potent landmine. Organizations tend to think functionally, set goals functionally rather than cross-functionally, and this often leads to competing priorities and degraded communication. These issues undermine the success of product teams and are the number one reason product teams point to in terms of the factors impeding success. Executives should be paying more attention to cross-functional roles and the critical hand-offs that can determine the success or failure of a product team.

Finally, how well do you empower your product managers or owners to directly engage with clients and prospects? 28.5% of organizations have their product managers spend between 1% to 5% of their time in the field. While roughly 15% (14.8%) of product managers never leave the building! Organizations often say that getting close to customers matters but not all organizations make the necessary cultural or financial investments to ensure that this occurs.

There is Clearly More to This Picture

These are just three factors that executives should be mindful of in order to help empower the success of their product teams but there are many more. You can download our latest research by clicking here.

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What makes a product manager’s job especially challenging in today’s marketplace:

Six Challenges Product Managers Face

1 – Overwhelming Time Constraints

One of the first things many new product managers notice is the multiple demands pulling on their time that never seem to let up. There is a lot you need to learn in a short time to meet management’s and your team’s demands. After all, the expectation is that you will quickly become the definitive expert on your product and market. Be ready to stay your course as people around you pull in different directions. The sooner you learn to balance needs and expectations, identify promising market opportunities and create a strong vision for your product’s future, the more you will enjoy your job.

2 – Temptation to Be a Reactive Instead of Proactive Product Manager

With so many different team members pulling your attention in different directions, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of running from fire to fire, quelling emergencies as they erupt. In order for you to be an effective product manager, you need to keep your eye on your overarching goals and objectives, the things that are going to have a profound impact for your company and your personal future. A good rule of thumb is to devote 80 percent of your time to the 20 percent of activities that will materially impact your product’s success and your organization’s.

3 – Lack of Control in Product Management

To maximize your effectiveness as a product manager it helps to have profit and loss responsibilities. Yet, many companies do not give their product managers this vital tool. Even if your organization gives you P&L responsibility, you are going to need to work through others to accomplish your goals. You’ll need to be able to build consensus and support from others within your organization. Form as many mutually beneficial relationships with others in key positions as possible.

4 – Tension Between Your Short and Long-Term Product Management Objectives

In order to achieve top results with their products, effective product managers operate with both a forward-looking product strategy and a short-term tactical plan for dealing with more immediate concerns. Be aware: with their shorter deadlines and stronger sense of urgency, short-term tactical projects can steal away valuable time from the important larger vision and long-term objective work you need to aggressively pursue. As a fully engaged product manager, you need to learn to balance your time and obligations and develop strong collaborative and conflict resolution skills. These will serve you well when the pressure is high and deadlines loom.

5 – Varying Opinions About the Direction to Take Products

Everyone on your team is going to have an opinion about the best way to develop your product and get it into the market. Many employees feel passionate about their approach and will defend it with pit-bull-like ferocity. As product manager, you need to keep the team and your decisions centered on facts. Facts must always trump opinion in decision-making. Learn to deal graciously with differing ideas and personalities, and always draw the team back to the facts that will ultimately decide your direction.

6 – Changing Market Dynamics Impacting Product Management

The one thing you can count on in product management and in life is change. New competitors emerge. Product advancements appear from new sources. Your customers’ needs change. All these can impact the success of your product and ultimately your company. Efforts you make to understand the market and its trends and identify potential risks and opportunities will help protect your organization. Always be alert for the unexpected so you can quickly adjust course when needed.

In my upcoming posts, watch for the latest and best tips for dealing effectively with these six challenges product managers face and other ways to improve your effectiveness as a product manager. Together, these ideas can be a road map to your success in product management.

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Our continuing market research enjoys the support of a growing list of promotional partners who encourage product team members to take part in the global survey and help us get the word out on our findings.

This year’s promo partners include:

• The Boston Product Management Association (BPMA)
• The Chicago Product Management Association (ChiPMA)
• Orange County Product Managers (OCPM)
• The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA Chicago)
• The American Society for the Advancement of Project Management (asapm/IPMA USA)
• Engineering Leadership Meetup Group in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Silicon Valley Code Camp
• The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)
• Silicon Valley Engineering Leadership Community
• Singapore Product Camp (Ravi Kumar and team)

You are no doubt wondering why so many different groups support this effort. The answer is that our study enables us, collectively, to uncover great data that is meaningful to product executives and product team members. Once the survey is complete we share the data with an independent statistician who conducts regression analysis. The result of this regression analysis are factors that are highly corrolated with high performance on product teams. We also uncover trends.

A Telling Trend

2015 Actuation Consulting, all rights reserved.

This first illustration displays product development methodology adoption rates for the last four years. As you can see, Blended methods (combining Agile and Waterfall) continue to dominate in terms of usage. Popular belief would lead one to believe that Agile methods currently rule but the fact is last year’s data illustrated a decline in Agile adoption for the very first time since we began tracking adoption rates.

What Exactly Is Product Management Accountable For?

Or consider this graphic which illustrates the metrics that product managers are held accountable to. Respondents tell us that the primary metric used by their organizations’ to track a product managers performance is customer satisfaction. We believe that this is due to the fact that previous studies showed only 19% of product managers have profit and loss responsibility. Less in the technology realm. What is most concerning is that the second highest number is actually “our product managers are not held accountable to any metric.” The remainder of the metrics are tied to revenue, profitability, market share and velocity. All hover from the high twenties to the high teens in percentages.

A Trend in the Making?

Finally, we asked respondents to tell us about where user experience professionals functionally report within their organizations. Our findings are illustrated in the pie chart. Engineering, development and technology currently has the edge with product management following closely behind. However, when we asked a follow-on question regarding “where UX professionals should report to be most effective” we got a different answer. Respondents told us, by a wide margin, that ux pros should report into product (either the product management function or the Chief Product Officer (CPO)).

We Want to Hear From You

All of these findings are from our 2015 study and that white paper is still available. If you have 7 minutes to invest we would like to encourage you to take the new survey in which we explore a whole host of topics ranging from product development methods, requirements management, outsourcing trends, user experience and many more.

We not only want to hear from you – but if you choose to fill out the survey – you will be among the first to receive a copy of the 2016 white paper as a thank you! We are also randomly drawing for a $200 gift card as well.

We hope to hear how you and your product team are performing! (Your responses will be kept strictly confidential.)

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Like a majority of product managers, Mr. Geracie found his way into the field in a sort of round about way. Now, with his firm, Actuation Consulting, he works on an annual study that began in 2012 which has produced great insights into the field of product management and provides groundbreaking statistics and analysis for product managers, project managers, and product teams.

The Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge’s Development

Mr. Geracie discussed with Mr. Kumar what a Body of Knowledge is. It’s an attempt by an industry or profession to codify terminology and processes for that profession. Through the collaboration of PMI, Actuation Consulting, and Mr. Geracie in particular, the development of The Guide to Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge, aka ProdBOK has been completed. A Body of Knowledge (BOK) needs several things to work.  It requires:

• Sponsorship by an industry association

• A consensus of professionals working in that industry

• An attempt to detail the industry’s best practices

The ProdBOK project took three years and had 60 different contributors. It was difficult to standardize the writing, but through the dedicated efforts of Mr. Geracie and Professor Steve Eppinger of MIT the task was accomplished with a very high degree of professionalism. They took a best in breed approach which was why they had some thought leaders in different areas of product management like Roman Pilcher and Greg Cohen discussing Agile development.

Mr. Geracie is not a stranger to successful book writing having written Take Charge Product Management over the course of six months. He says he sort of “sequestered” himself to write the book. The process with the ProdBOK was much different, but no less rewarding. The ProdBOK attempts to cross all industries although there are certain areas that are more applicable to some industries than others.

Ongoing Study of High Performance Product Teams

The study that Mr. Geracie and his colleagues have pioneered began in 2012 and researches the factors that differentiate high producing product teams from the rest of the pack. The results were given to statisticians to do regression analysis. Each year the findings bring further insight and clarity to what makes a product team a high producing product team. In 2016, it will be the fifth year that they undertake this study. Surveys have already gone out to selected product teams. They were distributed in late January. The study, in essence, takes a look at statistically valid factors related to product team performance. The authors of the study, including Mr. Geracie, work with a wide variety of industries, associations and sponsors to distribute the study. The study’s aim remains the same ‑ to find out what, statistically, differentiates high producing teams from the rest. It’s the only study of its kind and it is often used as source material in books and industry‑related articles.In 2012, the survey was distributed to about 1,100 companies. In 2015, it was distributed to 1,500. It grows by about 100 companies a year. This year, 2016, they’re on track for 1,600 companies.

Product managers need product teams. They can’t go it alone even with take charge product management. They need data to make effective decisions. Data trumps opinions. It’s not subjective. To be effective with take charge product management, they need accurate information to make better decisions and better products as a result.

In general, the 2015 study showed that there are four factors of high performing product teams. First, high performance teams practice strategic decision making. About 1/3 of organizations are good at making and sticking with decisions. These organizations’ product teams perform better and so do their products. Take charge product management doesn’t end with the product team’s work. It encompasses sales and marketing as well. It’s a cross‑organizational concept.

Second, Mr. Geracie and his team found that stand up frequency matters. Stand ups are effective when conducted at regular intervals. If a product team conducts regular stand ups, they will outperform their peers.  Third, these take charge product teams practice quick problem recovery. If the organization can rally past unforeseen issues when they arise and nimbly move past those problems, they will have higher performance rates.  Fourth, taking into account the user experience helps product teams create better products. Most organizations do take user experience into account and utilize it during various parts of the product development cycle.

A Look Back at Previous Studies

Mr. Geracie was then asked about findings from the 2013 and 2014 studies.  In 2013, the take charge product development study results showcased the importance of an aligned strategy, business‑unit leader engagement, product manager role definition, an expressed importance in the product launch by having a single point of contact and specific onboarding practices for team members. In 2014, product team culture was important as was an understanding of the sales cycle and optimizing the product team relationships with the sales organization.

Regarding take charge product management, the data showed that teams are more likely to perform at a higher level if these five factors exist:

1) A common goal which unites the team. The team passionately pursues the goal as a team. This solidifies the team.

2) Effective line management. The effective line manager can remove obstacles, provide resources, and facilitate communication. This helps the team get to their goal faster.

3) Strong engineers whose importance is openly recognized helps teams succeed. Sometimes, engineers feel underappreciated in their role. Organizations that consistently recognize an engineer’s contribution have product teams that work better together.

4) Inclusion of user‑experience professionals in the product team is critical. Teams with user experience professionals perform better and have a higher overall success rate.

Take Charge Product Management

Take charge product management also requires that the product team communicate with marketing and sales. It works best when each of these teams’ goals are aligned. Competing priorities can poison the well and make the team less effective. Another trend that Mr. Geracie noticed was that Agile is not being adopted nearly as fast as experts had hypothesized. He notes that currently many organizations do not fully support Agile product development. Many organizations are in a hybrid sort of state.

Many product teams see their failures as the result of the product manager. A take charge product manager can’t please everyone at every time. They have to accept that. However, communication is important. Product managers have to work to ease dissatisfaction. Time is always short, but meetings with the product team to address these issues often help. It’s better to find out about problems quickly and not let them fester. Not addressing problems quickly can create bigger problems later and more hard feelings among the group. An effective, take charge product manager will attend stand up meetings and do walk arounds. However, the product manager should realize that not everyone will be on board all the time, and accept that as a given.

Product managers have difficulties when their organizations don’t empower them. It is difficult to implement a take charge product management style without feeling empowered to do so. Mr. Geracie’s book, Take Charge Product Management, can help bridge some of that gap. Mr. Geracie expressed a concern that customer satisfaction is the only metric that most product managers are held accountable to. There isn’t a second metric that has found wide use. However, organizations and product managers should find other ways to measure success so that they can be held accountable in a more comprehensive way.

For more information on take charge product management and Greg Geracie, visit Actuation Consulting’s blog.

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What Exactly is the Technology Stack Fallacy?

The theory attempts to explain why so many firms that should have the resources to build the next “big thing” often fail to do so and fall prey to nimbler competitors. This question gets at the heart of both innovation and disruption, a topic that matters to product managers and product organizations.

Anshu Sharma proposes an answer to this with his technology stack fallacy theory. At its essence the stack fallacy is the “mistaken belief that it is trivial to build the layer above yours.” By way of example Mr. Sharma points to Oracle and Salesforce.com. From Oracle’s perspective Salesforce.com is a “hosted database app” and yet after spending millions of dollars Oracle has been unable to beat Salesforce.com at Saleforce’s core competency customer-relations management.

The stack in the theory is the layer cake of technology. Each layer sitting on top of the other which ultimately delivers a product to the user. E.g. the server through the operating system running on it, through the cloud and then the apps running atop the stack.

In the tech industry companies commonly violate the stack fallacy by attempting to move up the stack with mixed results. Here are three that struggled:

Samsung – started by making components for Apple. Then tried to move up the stack by creating its own cellphones. Initially it has enjoyed great success. However, competitors are challenging it aggressively with the commoditization of Android smartphones.

IBM – moved up the stack from making things that compute to selling computation services. The result? Shrinking revenue over the last 15 quarters.

Google – tried to move up the stack from search to social networking and the result was Google+.

The Technology Stack: Easier to Move Down Than Up

The reason companies fail to move up the stack is simple says Mr. Sharma. They lack first-hand empathy for what customers of one product level above theirs in the stack actually want! For example, database engineers at Oracle don’t fully understand what Fortune 500 supply chain managers want.

Interestingly, while moving up the stack often leads to problems, that is not the case for moving down the stack. Take the case of Apple where product team members know exactly what they want in a mobile chip. Google also moved down the stack very effectively creating its own servers and datacenters. The same can be said of Tesla current move into batteries.

While this theory explains many organizational failures and struggles at the product level it is not 100% predictive. There are ways around it. The key comes down to product managers, teams and organizations having true first-hand empathy for customer needs and means of effectively capturing them.

In other words, it all boils down to who understands the customer better!

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