What Is a Persona?

A Persona is a representation of a group of customers with similar characteristics. Personas help your team make decisions about the product during development. You gather data to create the Personas through primary research and also through Voice-of-the-Customer activities.

Personas can be minimal or fully blown out, giving an elaborate description of behaviors, activities, and motivations. They vary based on whether they are for a business-to-consumer or a business-to-business product or service.

What’s Included in a Persona?

Personas include information such as:

• A fabricated descriptive name and optional photo or caricature
• Demographic information such as age, gender, marital status, location
• Level of education, work, income
• Lifestyle or work factors and goals
• Experience with the product category
• A quote or slogan that captures personality or personal drivers
• Activities that may influence the use of the product, particularly pain points
• Other related products or solutions currently used
• Values, attitudes, and motivators that influence the decision process
• Other collaborators related to reaching goals
• Frequency of activity toward goals

Buyer Personas

A Buyer Persona hones in on a specific type of buyer targeted by the sales channels. An end user or a purchasing manager is an example. The Buyer Persona informs the development of the components, functionality, and benefits of the value proposition.  They can also impact sales messages.

User Personas

A User Persona represents a specific type of buyer who will have a very specific use for your product or service. A good example is a manager who will set up a computer program for a team. This person is not an end user, but has interests and goals for the product that are different from the end user who is the employee who will actually use the product.

The main goal of developing Personas is to understand typical customers for your product. Personas that achieve the results intended share three characteristics:

1. They provide information that gives insight into the customer’s world including their challenges and goals as related to the new product.
2. They hone in on the primary buyers, something that is accomplished with only a few Personas.
3. Persona development is driven by market research or Voice-of-the-Customer activities. A large enough number of customers are included to be able to spot trends and common tendencies.

Not a License for Creative Writing

It is unfortunately fairly common for a product team to build elaborate Personas out of thin air, with no research to back them up. This is not valid nor is it appropriate for a vital business document. Take the time and make the effort to actually do the background work.

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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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A Closer Look at Our Survey Findings

This year’s data clearly illustrates the roles actively involved in innovation leadership. It is interesting to note that there tend to be three brackets of leadership, each playing a role at various points of a company’s growth and evolution. Let’s begin by taking a closer look at the actual survey data.

Who is responsible for incubating and leading the definition and development of innovative or disruptive products in your organization?

Product Management’s Role in Innovation

Nearly half of respondents (48.1%) said the responsibility for incubating and defining innovative or disruptive product ideas falls to a member of executive management. This ranges from the company founder (8.2%), CEO (11.8%) or CTO (5.9%) to the VP of Engineering (7.6%) or another thoughtleading executive team member (14.6%). Nearly a fourth of respondents (21.3%) indicate that product management holds responsibility for this important activity. Surprisingly, more than 8% said no one in their organization is responsible for the incubation of innovative or disruptive product ideas.

The Leadership Continuum

When size of a company’s revenue stream is overlaid on top of the innovation leadership data a clearer picture begins to emerge. In company’s of less than $50 M in annual revenue C-level executives typically drive innovation activities. As the $50 M threshold is breached, and continuing up to approximately $2 B in annual revenues, product management is expected to take the lead. Once the $2B threshold is attained cross-functional teams take the lead.

Product Management’s Leadership Role in Innovation Activities

Our data shows that product management is being held accountable in the majority of organizations (between $50 M to $2B in annual revenues) for driving innovation. There is a clear hand-off from executive leadership in the startup/scaleup phase to product management as organizations achieve mid-sized scale. This makes a large degree of intuitive sense as organizational revenue rises executives can afford specialization and need to rely upon others to lead these critical activities. Finally, as organizational size and complexity scale over $2B in annual revenue the baton is frequently handed-off to a cross-functional team rather than relying upon product managers.

In order for product management teams to successfully assume these responsibilities organizations need to ensure they have the right talent in place to smoothly transition these responsibilities and structure the team appropriately. Too often this hand-off is done in a manner that does not ensure continuity and, overtime, these issues can mushroom into problems that impede successful scaling.

How well is prepared is your organization to handle the innovation leadership transitions?

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First a Refresher

Last week I shared this graphic illustrating the feedback from product team members in answer to the following question “How Much Time Do Product Managers Spend in the Field in Your Organization?”

I went on to detail some additional specifics. “Respondents surveyed indicate that more than 40% of their product managers spend at least 15% of their time in the field and 12.5% of this group believe their product managers devote more than 30% of their time to fieldwork where they talk to customers, conduct market research, attend tradeshows and interact with others in the field. On the other hand, more than 43% of respondents – a slightly larger group – see product managers (43.3%) spending 15% or less of their time in the field, a good portion of this group (14.8%) seeing their product managers rarely leaving the building at all.”

What Product Managers and Owners Actually Say

However, when you hone in on product manager and owner responses a more nuanced picture emerges. 44% of product managers and owners indicate that they spend between 1% and 15% of their time engaging with customers. The clear majority.

Additionally, 25% of product managers and owners spend 15% to 30% in the field. This is closely followed by those “who rarely leave the building” at 21%. Finally, a minority of product managers, 10%, actually spend more time engaging with customers.

Conclusion

While not earth shattering the difference between these two sets of responses points to the fact that product manager and owner responses skew toward the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to the amount of time they actually spend with customers. It is disheartening to see that 21% of product managers and owners are only rarely able to engage with clients and prospects.

How much time do you spend with customers?

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In anticipation of our latest white paper’s launch in July I want to share some data on the size of core product teams. By core we mean the roles that lie at the center of a product teams activities. For instance, the product manager or owner, the engineer, a project manager or scrum master, etc. The titles vary by organization and vertical. However, definite patterns appear in the data.

Findings: Size of Core Product Teams

In companies with less than $50 M in revenue 42% of organizations have between one to four team members. Another 38% have five to nine core team members. So while smaller teams dominate it is only by a few percentage points.

When a company moves up to more than $50 M in annual revenue but less than $500 M the size of teams shows a dramatic jump with 37% of survey respondents indicating that there are between ten to thirty members on their core team! We attribute this to rapid scaling taking place inside the business and increased levels of specialization that did not exist in the preceeding stage of growth.

As one might expect when a company grows larger than $500 M the size of teams gets whittled down again. Thirty-nine percent of companies with over $500 M up to $2 B in annualized revenues state that they have five to nine core team members with ten to thirty the next most popular category with twenty-six percent of responses.

Finally, the majority of companies with over $2B in annual revenues also state their core product teams are primarily made up of five to nine team members (35%). However, ten to thirty is close behind at thirty-one percent.

In Conclusion

Companies with less than $50 M in annualized revenues have the smallest core teams as one would expect. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, the next tier from $50 M to $499 M shows the largest team size with between ten to thirty team members being dominant. This appears to be a temporary phase brought on by rapid scaling and increased levels of specialization that tends to get sorted out as companies cross the $500 M mark in annualized revenues. Team size tends to contract to between five to nine core product team members. This five to nine number is the most consistent size of core team configuration.

How large is your core product team?

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Product Roadmap Defined

Product roadmaps are a visual representation of a series of planned product development activities which depict future product releases on either a calendar or rolling-year basis. Given the long duration product roadmaps often span across several future development cycles. The planned work efforts, commonly called releases or epics, typically reflect high-level deliverables.

How Are Product Roadmaps Used?

Roadmaps can be used many ways but most organizations utilize product roadmaps in order to ensure internal alignment between the product manager and/or product owner, internal stakeholders and team members. Product roadmaps are also used to ensure appropriate resource planning and performance measurement. Externally product roadmaps can be used to manage customer and key external stakeholder expectations.

Is There Only One Type of Product Roadmap?

As a result of these many possible uses organizations often create two product roadmap variants; internal and external. Internal roadmaps address the needs of key constituents inside the organization while external roadmaps tend to be less aggressive and are intended to effectively manage the communication process with the sales organization, partners, suppliers and the customer-base.

Additionally, company’s frequently create technology roadmaps which illustrate specific technology platforms that might be impacted by planned market-facing or internal activities. These types of roadmaps help all parties involved gain insight into resource allocation requirements and are often used to align the market-facing product teams with technology teams to ensure appropriate synchronization in both team’s activities.

What Does A Good Product Roadmap Do?

A robust product roadmap does several things well:

• Outlines a clear plan – with well-understood resource requirements – which have been agreed to with the executive team
• Serves as a visual guide to the planned releases in order to improve communication and coordination with internal stakeholders and the market
• Ensures appropriate alignment with an existing product strategy
• Sets an expectation that changes to the plan “might” occur as a product roadmap is inherently future-facing and therefore subject to this risk

Why Do Customers Value Product Roadmaps?

Customers value roadmaps because they want to make sure that a company is continually investing in their products. Roadmaps serve as a tangible way for customers to understand the level of investment in your product’s development. As such, they view roadmaps as concrete and immutable commitments.

Failure to effectively execute undermines the trust that customers (individually and collectively) have in you and your company. This is a common mistake that may organizations make – not effectively managing customer expectations and being too overly aggressive in telling customers what they want to hear and not backing these perceived commitments up with successful execution.

Back To Where We Started

So this brings us back to where we started. Do we really need product roadmaps? Arguments can be made on both sides. However, ultimately it all boils down to customers. While organizations may want to eliminate roadmaps – customers will continue to insist upon them as they remain the best way clients have to understand what your company is investing in, the level of your financial commitment to your product’s evolution, and how effective your organization is at addressing customer needs.

Roadmaps are not a perfect solution and product development organizations are often their own worst enemies by putting in place product roadmaps that are poorly resourced and not effectively calibrated to what the organization can truly accomplish. This sets the stage for customer disappointment.

As long as customers continue to clamor for them market-facing product roadmaps will continue to be produced. Can you blame them?

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We then took a closer look at the organizations that indicate that they are predominately hit or miss. As it turns out roughly half of the organizations that report hit or miss performance are technology companies. This is strikingly disproportionate. Service companies garnered the next largest concentration of hit or miss responses followed in descending volume by consumer products, government and education. In fact, all these other verticals combined make up approximately the same amount of hit or miss responses as the technology segment.

So what is it about technology companies that increases the probability that product team members will indicate that they are executing less consistently and disproportionately so? The jury is still out but the data reflects that there is more variability in technology company execution than in all the other segments.

From a purely speculative point of view it is possible that factors such as the inability to hire qualified staff, poor team cohesion, the lack of strong leadership, lack of clarity in requirements, weak line of sight to clear market goals and a host of other possible factors contribute to technology companies having a disproportionate amount of hit or miss responses.

To be fair, the majority of tech companies report the ability to deliver value even if they execute inconsistently. But it is striking that so many of the “hit or miss” responses are concentrated in the tech sector.

What do you think drives this level of inequity?

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As a product management consulting and training organization we have seen the balance tilted in every conceivable direction. From product management holding sway through the informed use of objective data to sales teams driving the process based upon their perceptions of market needs guided by first-hand customer interactions. And everything in-between.

A Personal Disclaimer

Before I wade too deeply into this subject I need to share a bit of my own personal history. I began in sales and carried “a bag” for years. I have also run a sales team. I hit my plan every year and I could have stayed on that career track forever. However, for reasons I don’t need to get into here I decided to alter my career trajectory. Now that I have framed a bit of my history let’s get back to the question at hand.

How strong of a voice should sales have in the product development process? The conclusion that I have come to, having stood on both sides of this line, is that product management needs to collect objective data from a variety of sources, including sales, and look at the information dispassionately against the needs of the market and the organization. In the majority of instances the data will point the way toward the appropriate decisions but sometimes these decisions are situational. When situational decisions arise the call needs to be made by executive stakeholders and framed, whenever possible, with a data supported recommendation from product management that balances the best interests of all parties.

Trust is a big factor. Product managers that have an effective working relationship with the sales organization often get the benefit of the doubt. Having a sales history prior to becoming a product manager also lends a modicum of credibility (if fleeting). The sales team knows you understand the pressure they are under and their pains. In sales, if you don’t perform you don’t typically last too long. Organizations are not hesitant to upgrade the talent pool. There are plenty of sales professionals around.

From the Sales Perspective

Unlike product management things in sales feel much more immediate. You are planning for calls weekly if not daily. You have monthly goals that are closely tracked and often shared publicly to spur competition which roll up to your annual target. Effective sales leaders know how to spread the sales plan and typically build their annual plan knowing that a certain number of individuals are not going to make it. So they hedge their bets by increasing the individual allocations accounting for this under-performance. You can understand why sales professionals are often insistent – they often have a lot at stake both personally and professionally.

Product managers often lament the sales people that continuously ask for “one-offs” that are outside their thoughtfully constructed plans. After all, product professionals are asked to think longer-term and to focus on aggregate market needs. At the end of the day, the short-term needs of individual sales professionals don’t always neatly align with product management’s plans.

This is where executive arbitration matters. If the requested individual enhancement makes the plan for the company at the end of the quarter or year it may make sense to deviate from the well-crafted longer-term plan. If the “one-off” doesn’t have a material impact on the business another call will have to be made.

Like all relationships in life, the product management and sales relationship needs to be built on a foundation of trust. However, our data shows only 9% of product development teams are fully aligned with their sales organizations! Most organizations are dealing with a relationship that is not fully optimized. Sales is certainly not an adversary. They are under a lot of pressure and often coddled but they have a lot to add to the product development process. On the flip side, it is important to note that one customer does not represent a market need and that the quality of information degrades each time it is exchanged.

Conclusion

So in the end, sales is an important partner in the process. One voice mind you, but one that needs to be paid attention to. Executives at the end of the day set the tone on the balance. Will it tilt in the direction of the needs of the market or the needs of individual customers? Based upon this decision, conscious or otherwise, senior leadership holds the key to the resulting culture of collaboration or conflict that results.

What has been your experience?

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Setting the Innovation Context

Innovation is a frequently discussed topic which ranks highly with senior executives. Most believe that innovation is a critical area of investment in order to remain relevant in the marketplace and to continuously nurture a healthy product portfolio. While innovation and disruptive product development rank highly, the actual implementation of innovation processes and the development of disruptive products tends to be a combination of both art and science.

In order to increase the science and decrease the art many senior leaders strive to infuse innovative thinking into the DNA of their organizations. This is not easy to accomplish as a wide variety of factors can adversely impact successful implementation. Size of company, culture, skills and talent levels and a host of other factors all contribute to the long list of risks.

As part of our ongoing research into high performance product teams we have been investigating who is responsible for leading the definition and development of innovative or disruptive products within organizations from the perspective of actual product team members. The survey is ongoing but we have already identified a pattern – a continuum of leadership that is reflected in the data.

I would argue that the data is not rocket science although I am sure it will stir up some controversy as there are many opinions on the subject of who should lead the development of disruptive products and innovation processes. Since our research is not complete the preliminary findings may change before all is said and done but it is pretty clear at this point that size of company impacts who leads.

Preliminary Findings

In companies of less than $50 M in annual revenue the CEO and/or company founder are perceived by product team members as having ownership of these processes and activities. Once a company crosses this annual revenue threshold team members tell us that leadership shifts. Respondents indicate that product managers lead, or should lead, the incubation and development of disruptive products for companies with annual revenues above $50 M and up to approximately $2 B. The closer you get to the $2 B in annual revenue line leadership tilts in the direction of a “special cross-functional team” appointed by senior executives.

The preliminary data clearly illustrate a continuum of leadership. Once the study concludes we will publish our findings. We believe the data will spur discussion as individuals and organizations tend to have strong views of who should lead these critical activities given the associated high risks and rewards.

Tell Us What You Think

We would like to hear your point of view! Who is responsible for leading the incubation and development of disruptive products in your organization? And just how big is your company?

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Actuation Consulting has been conducting a worldwide study of product teams for three years and respondents continually tell us that only a minority of product teams are performing at a high level. There are many factors that contribute to lower levels of performance and we have statistically analyzed them for years. So this year we incorporated the following question into our global survey.

“How Effective is Your Product Team in Identifying and Incorporating Industry Best Practices?”

As it turns out the answer is a bit shocking. Only 21.83%  of respondents report that their organizations invest significant resources in keeping in tune with industry best practices and that their culture allows the product team to experiment with new ideas.

In other words, an overwhelming 78.17% of respondents are not committed to actively identifying ways to be more effective. This data illustrates that continuous improvement is not a central part of the majority of product teams’ DNA. Organizational resources, focus and culture all contribute to this startling finding.

Passive Monitoring to Completely Ignoring Best Practices

According to the responses, over half of the teams surveyed passively keep an eye on what is going on in their industry and occasionally introduce innovative new ideas into team activities. Nearly one quarter of those surveyed feel they are too busy managing their workload to devote any time to keeping up with new developments in their industry let alone incorporate new practices into their workflow.

Barely a fifth of respondents indicated their organizations actively monitor emerging best practices in their industries and encourage experimentation with new ideas. Just over 2% of respondents hold that best practices are too far afield from their day-to-day challenges and pay no attention to new ways of approaching challenges in their industry.

The Catch 22 Paradigm for Product Teams

Product team members have made it exceptionally clear that only a fifth of product teams aggressively seek continuous improvement and are allowed to do so with the support of their organization. It is no wonder then that the majority of product teams continue to operate at sub-optimal performance levels. In many ways this seems like a catch 22. Organizations that are not investing in their product teams improvement actively or passively will continue to wallow and wonder why their teams are struggling while those that empower their teams to take risks and continuously seek improvement will continue to thrive.

Where does your organization stand?

Greg Geracie is the President of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management training, consulting, and advisory services to some of the world’s most well-known organizations. Greg is also the author of the global best seller Take Charge Product Management©and the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge© (ProdBOK).

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