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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Question: Select the top three things you believe would improve the effectiveness of your product team. (Choose three.)

What the Answers Reveal About Product Team Effectiveness

Two solutions stood out as having the potential to improve the product team’s effectiveness. These were: Improve cross-department communication (45.3%) and bring on highly skilled engineering staff (40.2%). Also receiving significant levels of response were:

• Provide training (34.6%)
• Bring on additional user experience staff (33.5%)
• Embrace more tools and automation (32.4%)
• Change product development methodology (29.9%)
• Bring in additional testing/QA staff (29.1%).

Question: Which of the following methodologies best describes the way your organization develops products?

A Closer Look at Responses

Organizations relying on the Agile/Scrum methodology for product development continued to rise dramatically, a trend line we have seen since 2012. Nearly half (48.0%) of organizations now rely on it. A Blended approach combining some Waterfall and some Agile practices came in a distant second at 31.9%. This is a great decrease from previous years’ responses. But falling off even faster is Waterfall at 8.7%. Waterfall is 25% below the response it received just two years ago.  It is 36% below last year’s tally. Kanban, at 4.3% continues to rise in use, but remains small overall. It is interesting that 6.3% if respondents were not sure what methodology was used in their organization.

Looking Ahead

In my post next week I’ll share further results for the latest Global Study Product Team Performance Survey. We’ll continue considering what these results tell us about the state of product management and development today.

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My last post concluded our exploration of the impact an organization’s stage of growth has on the skills needed by a product manager. This week we’ll delve into three different approaches to product management and take a deep dive into the first of these three types:

1 ­– Capturing the voice of the customer

2­ – Workflow analysis

3 – Outcome-driven innovation

Central Differences in the Three Different Approaches to Product Management 

The Capturing the Voice of the Customer approach relies heavily on what your customers tell you they want. The Workflow Analysis approach is focused on what you observe about how your customers work. Finally, the Outcome-driven approach is centered squarely on what your customers want most to accomplish and how they measure success.

The best approach for you may well be a combination of two approaches. In deciding on the approach to use in your organization, it is wise to revisit your organization’s business plan and review your company’s objectives. Then, overlay that information with what you know about your company’s orientation toward augmenting current products vs. innovating.

Drilling Down on the First Product Management Approach

Let’s take a closer look at the first of the three approaches: Capturing the Voice of the Customer. This approach supports the idea that if you listen to your customers they will make clear what you need to do.

How Product Managers Hear the Voice of the Customer

How the Voice of the Customer is collected varies from organization to organization. Customer insights can come from:

• One-on-one conversations
• Online communities
• Sales organizations
• Customer service databases
• Site visits
• Client conferences
• User meetings
• Other sources

It can be a real challenge to collect and organize the customer’s input into something that is useful. Once you’ve figured out a system for collecting and organizing information so that the priorities rise to the top, you need to establish a framework for prioritizing the various inputs. It is vital that information be proactively collected and processed through your framework.

As challenging as the process of collecting and filtering is, the results are well worth the effort. They will reveal how your existing products can be enhanced for maximum benefit. Another side benefit of your process is that it will provide a logical rationale for why your company has invested in one product enhancement over another.

More Benefits of the Capturing Voice of the Customer Approach

If you are new to your current product management position, the Voice of the Customer approach will give you a way to accumulate market information. This information will either confirms your company’s actions or help you decide how best to adjust the direction you are heading.

It takes time to collect enough data to make major changes. In the meantime, you’ll collect information you can use to make positive tweaks to products without slowing down your company’s momentum.

Limitations to the Capturing the Voice of the Customer Approach

When product manages follow the Voice of the Customer approach they have to accept several assumptions. These include assuming the customers know what they want, can express those needs clearly and ultimately will be willing to pay for the enhancement you create. Unfortunately, customers often fall short in one or more of these areas.

You also need to keep in mind that the customer is only seeing things from their limited perspective. Customers may not be able to adequately speak for your entire market. Gaining the broader perspective requires you to employ other means of data collection.

You, as product manager, are in a better position to see the global needs of your market. It is wise to reserve part of your development budget for innovation that specifically addresses the latent needs in the market.

The Capturing the Voice of the Customer approach is an excellent tool to use in augmenting existing products, but it is much less useful in the development of new ones.

In my next post, we will continue our exploration of different product management approaches. Next up? An in depth exploration of the second product management approach: Workflow Analysis.

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Business Plan 101 for Product Managers: Breaking Down the Business Plan 

Following the Executive Summary, product managers can expect a business plan to include a section that is an overview of the company and its primary industry. This section often covers a history of the company and where it stands in relation to the industry. Your products and services – the lifeblood of the product manager’s daily life – are also put forward along with what senior management believes gives the company an edge in the marketplace.

Market Dynamics – Rich Value for the Product Manager

The Market Dynamics section reveals how your company views its market in terms of size, make up, growth potential and market share. Product managers will find this section useful because it gives insights into the company’s marketing strategy and how the organization plans to leverage opportunities. There’s often also a discussion of product pricing and the logic behind it. It may also describe competitors and their tactics. You’ll also gain insights into your company’s distribution channels and how they impact your product. Projected sales revenues over a 3-5 year period are often divulged in this section of the plan too.

The Technology/ Manufacturing/Operations Section and the Product Manager

The Technology/Manufacturing and Operations section discloses your company’s product designs and the budget in place to help ensure financial goals are met. Company manufacturing processes and specialized employee skills are also covered. This section will also detail many other aspects of the internal workings. For instance, manufacturing target dates for product delivery and resources committed to product development.

The Business Plan’s Discussion of Administration, Organization and Human Resources

In the Administration section you will learn how your business is organized. This section describes how management plans to retain people who are vital to the company’s success. Policies, control, organizational structure and management philosophy are all covered in this portion of the business plan.

The Key Milestones Section Can Help Focus a Product Manager’s Work

The key milestones section will provide the key dates of profound achievement in your company’s history. It will also outline anticipated future milestones – assuming the organization stays on course with its marketing goals.

Risks Section: Where the Threats Lie

If the leadership knows there are areas of the business that could potentially derail plans, they will be disclosed in the Risks section. Regulatory gray areas, perceived market changes, legal pitfalls and new competitors will all be disclosed in this section. The Risks section should also outline the steps the company’s taking to address each.

The Grand Finale: Financial Data and Analysis

Last, but certainly not least important, is the financial data that the business plan presents. Product managers can expect to find a cash flow statement, income statement and balance sheet among these pages. Each statement presents a different perspective on your company’s health.

Through the Eyes of Your Company Leader

After reviewing the basics of what you’ll find in the business plan, it’s easy to see why it is such a valuable tool for the product manager. It will also become clear why the business plan is a good place to start understanding your company’s objectives. The business plan is a true 360-degree look at your company as seen through your CEO’s or general manager’s eyes. Collecting this information on your own would take weeks of conversation with senior leadership to gain the insights at your disposal in the business plan. If you are fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to study the business plan, treat the document with the confidentiality warranted.

Conclusion

There is no question that access to the business plan can help jump start a product manager down the path to success. Assuming your company is willing and able to share the business plan our crash course in business plan 101 for product managers should come in handy.

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Hard and Soft Product Management Skills

A range of skills is required if you are to succeed as a product manager, including both hard skills and soft skills. By hard skills I’m referring to those technical skills you need. These skills include things like you ability to work with spreadsheet software and manage your time to maximum advantage. Many of the hard skills you probably gained while acquiring your education and past job experience.

Soft skills are just as important to your success. They include such thing as your ability to develop relationships with others in your organization, your communication ability, friendliness and attitude. Hard and soft skills combine to make you well qualified to take on the role of product manager. Being short in either category of skills can make your job difficult and, in some cases, nearly impossible to do.

Essential Product Management Skills 

A product manager needs to possess or develop 20 different functional skills, including both soft and hard skills, in order to fully assume the mantle of responsibility in your job that is so vital to your organization’s success. Skills are listed below and many will be discussed in greater depth in upcoming blog posts:

• Computer skills
• Time management
• Product development process knowledge
• Ability to identify new product capabilities and/or markets
• Budgeting
• Profit and Loss
• Behavioral competencies of a product manager
• Strategic skill
• Conceptual ability
• Entrepreneurial attitude
• Creative thinking
• Analytic skills
• Political astuteness
• Customer service skills
• Results orientation
• Interpersonal skills
• Leadership skills
• Ability to collaborate cross-functionally
• Influence skills
• Ability to stay calm under pressure

Be sure to watch for next week’s post when I will write about the critical skills of managing competing priorities, something that vexes almost every product manager.

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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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There are many ways to become a successful leader. Great leaders, regardless of their roots or path in life have a common attribute – they are trustworthy and honest. Integrity is particularly important for those who rely heavily upon influence to achieve their objectives. A great example of this type of role is that of a product manager. Our data shows that only 19% of product managers have profit and loss responsibility, as such, almost all product managers are heavily dependent upon trust and influence.

There is more to integrity than honesty and trustworthiness. The signs of integrity manifest themselves in a range of additional attributes including; open communication, transparency, and ethical decision-making.

Personal accountability is a key component of integrity as well. When a leader, regardless of position in the organization, exemplifies these qualities and holds themselves accountable to practicing honesty and ethical decision-making it often triggers positive organizational karma.

The Characteristics of Integrity

• Humility: Titles don’t guarantee respect. What counts is a leader’s ability to show commitment every day through sincere collaboration, visible dedication to common efforts, effective interpersonal skills and team play.
• Help Others Succeed: Great product managers and leaders help their teams shine! They encourage others to share the spotlight. When leaders attempt to promote themselves by taking credit for their subordinates work unjustly others see through it. Fostering a culture of modesty and demonstrating intolerance for bullying or nastiness helps set the stage for success.
• Nurture Trust: Hire people smarter than yourself and get out of their way. Great leaders build strong teams and know their own developmental areas. Supplementing your team with complimentary people and skills shows maturity. This also requires the right mix of delegation and hands-on control. Striking the improper balance signifies a lack of trust.
• Encourage Calculated Risk Taking: Great leaders encourage risk taking and ensure that the organization learns from failures or mistakes. This includes fully vetting a wide range of ideas while suspending judgement. Punitive leadership and cultures erode trust and a willingness to take chances and innovate. These can be toxic to success.
• Demonstrate Continuous Learning: Change is the one constant. Exemplify continuous learning and share your knowledge. Encourage others to reach broadly and to bring that knowledge back into the organization. It helps to remember that markets are dynamic, they live and breathe. Standing still means you are likely to be left behind.
• Practice What You Preach: Integrity should not stop in your workplace it should be your mantra in all aspects of your life.

Inspired by an article written by Adelia Cellini Linecker in IBD, Feb. 2016

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One of Four Key Regression Analysis Findings

This year’s regression analysis uncovered four factors that further our knowledge about what differentiates high performing product teams from the pack.

All teams experience unforeseen problems, but organizations respond to them quite differently. Almost two-thirds of product teams struggle to get past unforeseen issues. While only 35% of product teams are able to quickly rally and nimbly handle unforeseen issues, our analysis shows that it’s these product teams that consistently overachieve.

Problem recovery is an essential skill for product teams that draws from the fabric of the company’s culture, talent pool, leadership, and creative thinking. Teams that take unforeseen problems in stride produce better results.

A Closer Look at the Data

How a company’s culture prepares its employees to handle and move past inevitable, unforeseen organizational issues is vital to staying competitive. According to our survey respondents, more than a third (35.4%) of their companies are able to respond quickly to difficulties and move past them.

Nearly half of respondents (48.7%) indicate that they eventually do move past unforeseen difficulties, but that it can take time. While 13.1% of respondents admit that their companies can get hung up on unforeseen issues and struggle to get past them, only 2.8% feel their organizations are ill equipped to face unforeseen issues and can rarely move past them to get on with the job at hand.

Conclusion: How Teams Handle Unforeseen Issues Matters

Our data clearly illustrates that product teams that have an aptitude for quickly addressing unforeseen issues perform at a higher level. However, most organizations are not aware of the impact of this single regression analysis factor. Executives who manage product development teams should keep an eye on this aspect of performance as it is a statistically significant indicator of how a particular team is likely to perform now and in the future.

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In our previous market research we have identified that effective onboarding, or the absence of a disciplined onboarding process, has a significant impact on whether a team is able to maintain momentum. So this year we decided to take a closer look at job satisfaction and the impact that turnover is actually having on product teams.

How Would You Characterize Your Job Satisfaction?

Overall, those responding to the survey are satisfied with their positions. More than 63% indicate that they are either satisfied (48.3%) or extremely satisfied (14.8%) in their work. An additional 24.6% experience some level of satisfaction with their positions. Only 12.3% responded that they are dissatisfied with their jobs, including 5.1% who are actively looking for employment in another organization.

Having established a job satisfaction baseline let’s take a closer look at the impact that turnover is actually having.

How Would You Characterize The Impact That Personnel Turnover Is Having On Delivering Products To Market?

54% of respondents believe that team turnover has had a moderate to significant impact on their team’s ability to meet commitments and deliver products on time. This percentage includes 16.3% who believe turnover has had a damaging effect on the ability to deliver a quality product on time and 37.7% who feel turnover has moderately affected the team’s ability to deliver expected results.

Conclusion

While the actual rate of turnover is relatively low the impact that turnover has on the product team is disproportionately high. 54% of product teams are experiencing moderate to significant impact to their performance even though only 5% of product team members are actively looking to exit with another 7% passively awaiting their opportunity.

It is clear that maintaining stability on the product team is additive to performance, and as we have demonstrated in earlier research, few organizations (4%) indicate that they have a disciplined way of onboarding new product team members. Sink or swim being the dominant onboarding approach.

Is your product team experiencing turnover, and if so, what has been its impact on your team’s performance?

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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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