Given this reality, I want to answer my friends question and differentiate product strategy from product roadmaps. Let’s start by defining product strategy.

Product Strategy

Organizations typically have an aspirational goal or vision for what their product could ultimately become in support of an overarching business objective. This vision is often conceptual, not committed to paper or even fully shaped. Regardless, product strategy is the path that organizations choose to take in order to achieve this idealized future product. In other words, product strategy is intended to describe how the organization, or product team, intends to achieve a desired future state. It provides high-level context for a set of activities or milestones that are to be pursued and strives to be directionally correct.

A product strategy is visually illustrated as a phased timeline or series of future steps starting with the current state to some defined point in the future (E.g. 3 or 5 years or even longer in some instances). This is often necessary as a product team may not have the necessary resources at their disposal to deliver all that they desire in the aspirational future state so parsing the product strategy into clearly defined components helps to structure the work ahead and manage stakeholder expectations.

From a communication standpoint, breaking the product strategy into easy-to-understand components makes the path forward more digestible, particularly for those who are not part of the core product team with inside knowledge of the effort. It is important to note that solid product strategy not only defines the boundaries of the actions you intend to take to achieve the desired future state, perhaps most importantly, it also articulates those activities that lie outside of the scope of the strategy that will not be pursued.

Providing a solid product strategy will help focus activities, establish a direct link between the product and the company strategy, and clearly identify to everyone involved the high-level steps currently being taken to achieve the vision.

Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is common for products that can be delivered incrementally or in an evolutionary fashion, and high-level requirements or epics are their building blocks. Product roadmaps act as the bridge between the product strategy and the actual tactical product development projects that are undertaken in pursuit of attaining the product goals.

While the product strategy outlines a desired future state the product roadmap articulates the necessary tactical steps to take to achieve the vision. As business conditions and priorities change, so should the product roadmap—think of it as a “living document.” The roadmap can be visualized in two distinct time frames.

In the short term, it’s a record of planned releases and may extend two to four release cycles into the future. These activities are often represented by calendar year or on a rolling 12-month basis. Some projects on the product roadmap may be already in active development, or some amount of planning has already occurred, and there is a high degree of confidence that most of the specified deliverables will happen.

The longer-term portion of the roadmap outlines product capabilities that reside outside the organization’s current planning activities and are effectively queued while the current priorities are being developed. This section provides a directional view of where the product might head given current business conditions in the next 12 months or longer. Any major changes in the current projects, the external marketplace, or internally in the business can change these envisioned future releases. For products or platforms with relatively long lives or industries that are relatively slow-moving, the long-term view can project out multiple years or span a predetermined lifecycle. For faster moving industries, such as software or consumer electronics, a multi-year look into the future may be much more difficult to assess with any degree of certainty, given the native rates of change, but it should remain directionally correct.

The primary internal objective of product roadmap activities is to gain organizational alignment so that resource and budget allocations can be planned in advance to enable effective execution. The main components of the product roadmap consist of 1) a defined time frame, 2) a solid understanding of market events or deadlines that will drive deliverables, such as the underlying sales cycle or product seasonality, 3) specific products, product capabilities, or themes phased over a period of time, and 4) associated development activities or resources impacted or required. The internal product roadmap may also be the result of, or heavily influenced by, the product definition and project plan activities for the current release. Very often, the desired scope of envisioned capabilities to be delivered, in the current targeted time frame, far exceeds the team’s human resources or budget, and so a prioritization exercise will be needed for what is delivered now—versus what can be deferred. Requirements prioritization may go so far as to further define a set of phases for future work, which becomes additional short-term and possibly longer term aspects of the roadmap.

For some industries or products, especially those sold business-to-business, an external version of the roadmap may be required for customers. This is often the case where the product impacts a major operational or strategic capability of the purchasing company, or is deployed on a large scale across the organization. As the buyers are making long-term and/or major decisions for the company, they expect to see long-term product plans from the suppliers. Customers typically want to be sure that the organization will continue to invest in the products, and product roadmaps are often used as a means to measure the pace of investment. External versions typically contain much less detail than the internal roadmap and can also be much less committal on specific dates. The most common representation depicts a high-level set of planned release milestones, in presentation slide format, and is often used to support internal or external communication—generally face-to-face.

Conclusion

Product strategy ensures effective alignment between company business goals and defines the path the product is taking to reach an idealized future state. The product roadmap differs from the product strategy as roadmap activities highlight current and near-term tactical development activities that ideally support the product strategy and the overarching business goals. Unfortunately, many organizations lean too heavily upon product roadmaps without setting the product strategy boundary to ensure tactical activities stay between the lines now and well into the envisioned future.

Advancing the Profession of Product Management
website I consulting I training I toolkits I books I blog I twitter

Source: The Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge, Greg Geracie and Steven Eppinger

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For those of you wondering why it took longer to introduce the ProdBOK Guide in ebook format – the answer is that file conversion into ebook format is a bit nuanced. It required additional effort on the part of the editorial team to ensure that the original file format is faithfully reproduced in Epub and mobi.

I would also like to take a moment and say thank you to our first Kindle customer –  in India. 

Thank you for your purchase! 

* Kindle is a registered trademark of Amazon.com

Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the President of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management consulting, training, 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. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on high-tech and digital product management.

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An incredible amount of work has gone into this effort and its a cornerstone that we can continuously build upon. Today the vocabulary and practice of product management is highly variable from one organization to another. The goal of the ProdBOK Guide is to explain WHAT product management is as well as the terms, process steps, and tools that all product managers should know to be successful.

The Guide is not intended to be prescriptive. But it is a valuable resource that you can rely upon in your daily practice to learn new things – I know I did as I led this effort – and expand both your knowledge and skills. I am sure that not everything in the approximately 350 page body of knowledge will be applicable to your organization or your day-to-day. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge contained between the front and back covers.

The book’s contents were supplied using an approach that is different from most BOK’s. We asked contributing writers to develop content that aligned with their areas of expertise. For instance, Roman Pichler and Greg Cohen contributed material on Scrum and Agile respectively. This is in many ways a best-of-breed BOK, drawing on those with the most knowledge of a particular aspect of product management to provide material that all of us can learn from.

Product management is an expansive field ranging from the creation of an idea to managing a product’s end-of-life. Each stage of the product management lifecycle requires a different mix of skills. Every product manager tends to be strong in some areas and weaker in others. The ProdBOK Guide can help you fill in the blanks as you face new challenges.

In the ProdBOK Guide‘s first week of publication the book has been selling off the shelves rapidly. We hope you will check it out and help us to increase the level of understanding about the profession of product management. All of us care deeply about the profession and want to see it thrive going into the future.

Once again I want to take a moment and thank all the dedicated professionals that contributed to this effort!

Editors Note: Many folks have been asking when the book will be available on Kindle. The answer is  – very shortly. We hope to have it in ebook format in the next 7 to 10 days.

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On one hand, it’s a tremendous privilege to collaborate with a wide swath of industry thought leaders inside and outside of the product management community (more on that in a moment). On the other hand, three years is a long time, so you really have to be committed to trying to advance the product management profession.

In a nutshell, today the product management community is a robust, thriving community of very intelligent and talented people that are rarely ever content with the status quo and who strive to change their industry’s and their organization’s for the better. We face significant business challenges every day and develop thick skin and laser-like focus – necessary traits for success.

We do this in the face of those who don’t clearly understand our profession (with good reason!), ever-changing market dynamics, and a whirlwind of internal and external challenges that conspire to upend our best laid plans. Successful product managers have to be smart, flexible, and savvy leaders.

We also are often successful in spite of the fact, that unlike other professions, there is little academic training for product managers, we are forced to learn as we go, and there is no industry consensus on what product management is and does.

So for the last three years approximately sixty of the industry’s leading professionals banded together and contributed to the development of the ProdBOK Guide. The goal? To distill a collaborative cornerstone that can be built upon to ensure that the product management profession better supports the needs of the product community at large.

The roster of contributors is one most folks reading this post will likely recognize. While there is not enough space to name everyone, I would like to list a few of the many contributors so you can get a sense of how deep and wide industry collaboration reached.

The ProdBOK Guide was sponsored by AIPMM, edited by MIT professor Steven Eppinger and myself, and developed with the support of many of the leading voices in the product management community. We also benefited significantly from the contributions of our counterparts in the adjoining professions and academia (e.g. Cambridge University, DePaul University and the University of Calgary).

The various types of contributors can be grouped into the following categories: authors, academics, analysts, associations, bloggers, consultants, industry thought leaders, and practitioners.

You’ll likely recognize many of these contributors. Here’s a sample; John Armstrong (former SVPMA board member), Nick Coster (Brainmates), Greg Cohen (Agile Excellence/280 Group), Linda Gorchels (Author/Faculty UW-Madison), Steve Johnson (Under 10 Consulting), Jeff Lash (How To Be A Good Product Manager),  Linda Merrick (Pivotal Product Management), Rich Mironov (Mironov Consulting), Roman Pichler (Pichler Consulting), Steven Starke (Actuation Consulting), Adrienne Tan (Brainmates), Don Vendetti (Product-Arts), and many more.

The project also enjoyed wide support from the adjoining business analyst, project and program management, and user experience professions as well. Contributors include: Kevin Brennan (IIBA), Jack Duggal, Stacy Goff (IPMA), David Heidt, Rich Gunther(UXPA), Ken Hanley, Gary Heerkens, Lee Lambert, Richard Larson, Johanna Rothman, and Frank Saladis.

So a day after pushing the publication button, as I sit here and reflect upon the journey of the last three years, I want to express my sincere appreciation to ALL of the Contributors to this effort. As Steve Johnson wrote to me a couple days ago – publication is not the end of the journey, but a new beginning.

So as we begin the next leg of the journey, I want to thank each and every contributor to this effort for their commitment and passion to improving our profession. It has been an honor to work with each and every one of you!

Editors Note: The ProdBOK Guide is now entering distribution and will be available within the next three weeks, if not sooner. Check Amazon’s website as it typically shows up most quickly in their distribution channel.

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Obstacles that Undermine the Product Team  Copyright Actuation Consulting. All rights reserved.

The most frequently cited obstacle that product teams report was “not having enough resources to get the job done properly.” These resources could be either human or financial. This should not be too much of a surprise as organizations are still struggling to overcome the macro economic impact of the great recession – particularly upon staffing levels and hiring. However, what is striking about this response is that over a third of organizations report that resources remain their primary challenge in achieving higher levels of performance. This was also the most frequently cited obstacle in last year’s study.

The second most common challenge was “hand-offs between the functions”. Almost 22% of organizations said that cross-functional hand-offs were challenging and leading to performance related issues. Organizations frequently indicate requirements and product launch as particularly troublesome areas.

The third area that product teams point to is a “lack of executive leadership and direction.” Interestingly, only 37% of product teams state that there is a clear and coherent corporate strategy that they can tether to in terms or product development. In fact, 54% of organizations told us that while their organization has a corporate strategy – it is either poorly communicated or changing so frequently that the product team views it as useless. Respondents point to less active involvement by executives as a significant factor contributing to low levels or product team performance.

The final area that product teams call out is “poorly defined roles.” Lack of role definition, particularly in the areas of who does what and when impacts the effectiveness of product teams. This can lead to leadership boundary issues, duplicate efforts, conflicts between different perspectives and functions, and a wide range of other issues that have a meaningful impact on performance.

So how does your product team stack up? Do you see reflections of these issues in your organization and on your product team? If so, you are not alone.

Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the President of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management consulting, training, 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. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on high-tech and digital product management.

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Tell me about what it is like to run the Chicago Product Management Association. What do you find most gratifying and what is the most challenging aspect of the job?

(DR) I really enjoy working on the Chicago Product Management Association, or ChiPMA as we like to call it. It is the only organization in the area that is entirely focused on the Product Management discipline, so I think it is a vital part of keeping innovation rooted in the Chicagoland area. It’s a great way to keep tabs on the Chicagoland Product Management community while also acting as a Product Manager support group. Everyone there understands the unique challenges and frustrations that we face as Product Managers, so it’s a good place to go vent and reset your perspective.

As for the challenges involved, to be honest, I’m not doing nearly as much of the operational work these days. Eric Bingen has taken over the two challenging parts – finding quality speakers and publicizing events – so I get to come to the meetings, say a few words and socialize. It is definitely a challenge to find a variety of good speakers with relevant topics that are willing to speak for free. Luckily, he is doing an excellent job, so I can focus on other areas.

As for the most gratifying aspect, outside of the happy hours we occasionally have, I would have to say it’s when we have speakers at our monthly meetings that encourage so much participation that it’s more of a moderated discussion than a presentation. I feel that the members and the speaker both gain so much knowledge from those meetings and they provide actionable, real world concepts to help Product Managers increase their effectiveness.

How has the Chicago Product Management Association grown over the years? What’s changed?

Interestingly, while the ChiPMA has grown from about 20 members when Bernhard Kappe started this in early 2010 (he and Pathfinder Software are still heavily involved, by the way) to well over 600 now, we still have the same close knit feeling in our monthly meetings. This is probably due to the size of the meetings still being roughly about 20-30 people. People still feel that they can walk right in and join a conversation with their fellow Product Managers.

One aspect that has changed quite a bit is the networking opportunity that the ChiPMA provides.  Now that we’ve established our name a bit, people know that they can come to the event when they’re looking to hire and typically find good candidates or solid leads. I can’t tell you how many times lately I’ve had someone come up to me at a meeting and let me know that they found their new opportunity either at a ChiPMA meeting or via someone that they met at one of the meetings.

As a contributor to the ProdBOK Guide, do you have a vantage on how the book might help industry professionals?

The ProdBOK Guide, I believe, will serve as a roadmap through the many aspects of Product Management. Product Managers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and each has their own idea of what Product Management is and what Product Managers do. Furthermore, most of the people hiring Product Managers don’t have a consistent idea of what the new Product Manager should be producing. So you’ve got inexperience paired with unclear expectations, which is a recipe for disaster. 

The ProdBOK Guide can help Product Management newbies and their executive management plot a course from where they find themselves now to a successful product launch. It provides a structured sampling of methodologies, practices, and concepts that allows the Product team to pick and choose what works for their particular situation, industry, and product.

The ProdBOK also allows the more experienced product manager to refresh their memory on some areas of the discipline that they don’t use regularly or to shore up some weaknesses they may have in their overall execution. It presents a wide variety of topics with enough detail to give a working knowledge of the concepts without burying the reader in examples and edge cases. 

David, why did you choose to participate in the ProdBOK effort?

When I heard who was going to be contributing to the ProdBOK, I jumped at the chance to work with them.  These are the thought leaders and industry experts in Product Management. We follow their blogs, read their books, and beg them to speak at our events. I was honored to be able to collaborate with them. 

Furthermore, Greg, you contribute so much to the local Product Management community here in Chicago, I was happy that I could help you in a small way. You have headlined many ChiPMA events, been an avid participator in ProductCamp Chicago and always been there for the Chicago Product Management Community. It was great to be able to give a little bit back to you.

Any final thoughts?

You have created something amazing which will be on the bookshelf, desktop, or Kindle of every Product Manager in the country and you should all be very proud. I learned a ton when I read it and was able to apply that knowledge to my day-to-day activities immediately. I’m sure that this will be an amazing success and a valued resource for Product Managers in all stages of their careers.

Greg Geracie is the author of Take Charge Product Management©, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge (ProdBOK), and the leader of this initiative. Greg is an Adjunct Professor at DePaul University and the President of Actuation Consulting a global leader in product management training, consulting, and advisory services to some of the world’s most successful organizations.

The post A Chat with David Radzialowski, President of the Chicago Product Management Association appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

I would like to begin by asking about whether you think the role of product manager is becoming more or less strategic? And if less, what should we at the industry level do about it? 

(SJ) For most teams, the product manager role has become more tactical. Development needs real-time access to customer information; so does Sales and so does Marketing. Your recent study of Product Team Performance reveals that almost half of the product manager’s time is spent in firefighting. And I hear this frequently.

The teams that have successfully found the balance between tactical and strategic are the ones who staff it with that objective. You can’t ask a tactical person to also be strategic in their extra time; there is no extra time! (Just think about what happens when sales people also try to do marketing.) So the successful model seems to be a strategic product manager or director, paired with a technical product manager or product owner, plus a product marketing manager for all the go-to-market stuff.

I know it sounds like a lot, but here’s the scary part: The strategic stuff is being done today in your organization but you just don’t know who is doing it. I wrote about this in my free ebook, Product Management Expertise at http://www.under10consulting.com/writing/expert

Every year Actuation Consulting conducts a global Study of Product Team Performance©. There is no question that Agile methodologies have been ascendant for the last several years. What are your thoughts on the impact of Agile on the product manager and the evolution of the product owner role?

(SJ) I’m seeing many companies struggle with integrating traditional product management with the new demands of Agile development. It’s the whole strategic versus tactical thing again. If nothing else, Agile reveals how understaffed product management teams are today. One VP of product management told me how the new demands resulted in doubling his staff.

Agile methods have impacted almost all organizations. And the most common challenge they encounter is whether product owner is the same as product manager or if it’s the same as business analyst. I think the leaders of the Agile movement want a strategic product owner, more like a product manager, but most teams seem to have relegated the product owner to business analyst.

Rather than one role replacing another, I’m working with teams now to define both the product manager role and the product owner with clear lines of responsibilities and hand-offs. Who has responsibility for the portfolio roadmap? Who owns the release backlog? These are questions that the industry hasn’t really addressed.

There are clearly challenges today for product managers ranging from strategic bandwidth to the high resource consumption rates triggered by the increased use of Agile methods. How will the ProdBOK Guide help to address these challenges?

(SJ) There are many great training resources for product managers, product owners, and product marketing managers but each takes a slightly different view of roles and responsibilities. My hope for the ProdBOK Guide is that it will help standardize the product management profession so that we all mean the same thing when we’re talking about ownership and artifacts.

What do senior company leaders need to know about product management and Agile?

(SJ) The Agile community seems to be “selling” Agile as a faster time-to-market solution but most teams are finding that Agile increases quality. There are fewer bugs, fewer surprises, and less feature-bloat. Yes, you can change your priorities quickly but Agile doesn’t mean execs can change their minds continually.

And Agile methods want a single voice of priority. Who is that in your organization? It should be the strategic product manager — the one who understands the market and its challenges. Senior executives need to know that product managers are trying to implement the leadership’s strategies. Give your team direction and let them figure out how to get there.

Any final thoughts Steve? 

(SJ) I want product management to earn the respect of senior leadership, development and sales teams, and others in the organization. If product managers want credibility, they have to earn it —they need to act more like product executives and less like servants to others.

Steve Johnson is a recognized thought leader on product marketing and management processes. Under 10 Consulting is based on the belief that minimal process and simple templates result in a nimble world-class product marketing and management team. Learn more at http://www.under10consulting.com/about

Greg Geracie is the author of Take Charge Product Management©, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge (ProdBOK), and the leader of this initiative. ProdBOK is an industry-wide effort to standardize the practice of product management sponsored by the Association of International Product Management and Marketing (AIPMM).

The ProdBOK mark is a registered trademark of AIPMM.

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What aspect of the product marketing management profession is most under appreciated by today’s organizations?

Product Marketing Management is a strategic position ultimately responsible for providing value to all of the departments that contribute to the product during the entire product management lifecycle and beyond product development. The product marketing management function is responsible for listening, empathizing, facilitating collaboration and communicating the product value, product narrative, and product context across all touch points internally and creating the tools that enable that product value to be successfully experienced aligned with the product marketing business case through-out the product’s lifecycle – ultimately to increase, generate or maintain product revenue (or demand generation, engagement and retention) in the sales pipeline.

As a distinct profession, product marketing management is not distinguished as a career choice in smaller or technology driven companies and often is not distinguished as a separate role from product management. Product marketing management certainly is a function required for product success, but may only be recognized and funded at the front end of new product discovery or at launch of new products into the market. This is a mistake, as the role of product marketing management is to focus on identifying what’s important at any given stage in the product’s lifecycle, in terms of market conditions, competitive landscape, future threats, product versioning, innovation, channel and portfolio considerations, as well as customer demands, and guarantee that the business case, customer experience, design thinking and unique product value is communicated across all aspects of the product lifecycle, across all functions touching, developing, selling, and incorporating the product, to achieve the intended goals of the product business case.

If you had to share a couple key tips about what makes for a successful product marketing manager, what would they be?

My key tips to be a successful and sought after product marketing management leader, are to master the following:

1. Step away from the product. In order to remain objective, you have to be able to see the truth about the problems, mistakes, negative feedback, threats and losses in the marketplace in order to communicate to enable the product team to effectively address those issues. You must recognize the best actions needed to propel the product towards success. Being too in love with the product may cloud your ability to see what’s best, listen and recognize the dangers in the competitive landscape, and operate proactively.

2. Schedule regular meetings to listen to different perspectives on the product needs from outside the direct product team. Talk to customer service, community management, tech support, quality assurance, documentation, operations, and all of the internal functions responsible for servicing, maintaining the product, and interfacing with customers and the marketplace. Everyone in the company cares about the success of the product and will provide different insights, understandings and viewpoints. This is in addition to having regularly scheduled meetings with customers, non-customers, and observing customers in the wild. (There are various ways to meet – including telephone conversations – although human to human interactions are desired and provide the biggest wealth of information and return on time invested.)

3. Create a visual product health chart – this is distinct from the product road map which shows the plan for the product development process.  The product marketing management health chart ideally provides the current picture of the product in the market based on data points and feedback, on where the product is falling off-course of the prescribed goals, measures  alignment against the product business case, and tracks responses to the various strategies, programs and actions put in place to enable review, changing course and preventing tragic consequences. Sharing the visual product health chart (appropriately) will encourage further communication, collaboration and contribution to the success of the product as well as your product marketing management leadership.

(To learn more about Cindy or to listen to Global Product Management Talk’s weekly broadcast click here.)

Greg Geracie is the author of Take Charge Product Management©, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge (ProdBOK), and the leader of this initiative. ProdBOK is an industry-wide effort to standardize the practice of product management sponsored by the Association of International Product Management and Marketing (AIPMM).

The post Cindy F. Solomon on the Art of Product Marketing Management (and 3 Tips) appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

As you look across the product marketing profession what do you see?

(Cindy Solomon) I see that what may have previously fallen under the umbrella of the product marketing function, is gaining attention in the blogosphere with sexier names, such as Agile marketing, growth hacking, or customer experience management. These may be new approaches, but they are grounded in the product marketing managment function to increase current product ROI, identify opportunities for new product iterations, manage the value proposition via positioning of the product, and create the business case for remaining competitive in the current market conditions and future trends.

Product marketing management has always been charged with concerns about how to squeeze additional value out of products already in the market, align the goals of the product with the business case KPIs, translate the value of the company brand into every experience, extract information from non-customers, identify patterns from data collected across various inputs, increase efficiency across the entire product management lifecycle, attach ROI to every program attached to the product in the marketplace, streamline sales and marketing procedures, facilitate new partnership, co-marketing, and strategic channel opportunities, track the market opportunities, threats and trends, and make the case for new products and innovation.

Given your unique perspectives, how do you think the ProdBOK Guide will help address the challenges of being a product management or product marketing management professional?

(Cindy Solomon) Having a product management body of knowledge will clarify the skills, knowledge, language and perspective for the product management professional. The ProdBOK will provide an orientation for people being thrown into product management roles without any foundation and open the door to understanding all of the elements that comprise the knowledge necessary, the procedures available, and how to identify appropriate tools to apply at various points in the product management lifecycle.

For those seeking product management positions, and for those identifying product management functions within their companies, it will define the requirements, orientation and basic foundation which is desperately sought after by individual product management professionals, product teams, decision makers, HR departments, and organizations of all sizes seeking to increase market share and product success.

The ProdBOK seven phase product lifecycle framework provides the visual representation to enable conversations across functions for everyone in the organization to be on the same page to identify what needs to happen based on the maturity of the product externally in the marketplace and internally within the organization culture.

(This concludes the first part of our two part interview with Cindy. More on product marketing management next week…To learn more about Cindy or to listen to Global Product Management Talk’s weekly broadcast click here.)

Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the President of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management consulting, training, 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. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on high-tech and digital product management.

The ProdBOK mark is a registered trademark of AIPMM.

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Results are an important measure of performance. However, I understand that an evolution in the thinking about results is currently taking place within the project management community. What’s your take on this?

(Stacy Goff) Yes, for some we are seeing an evolution in thinking. And I assert that some long ago evolved to the insight you speak of. Some people in the project management discipline think that project success is all they are after. And the most unfortunate among these otherwise savvy people focus on the easy-to-measure, but often lagging indicators of the “triple constraint” or other triangle schemes. Others have always demonstrated the “bigger picture;” these practitioners actually deliver business success. This is often very different than merely showing project success.

So this can become an entire article by itself, but the evolution is that there are some, including entire professional associations, that have long-advocated the easy to memorize, easy to test factors of project management. These people and groups have recently realized that those factors, while important foundations, do not add value by themselves. They are now pivoting to embrace the elements and competences of project and program management that do add value.

As a representative of several professional associations that have demonstrated this understanding for many years, I predict another looming insight: The realization that knowledge, skill, and even true competence, across the full suite of Project Management elements, do not automatically add value. These are merely inputs. They need to be correctly applied, with the right leadership and interpersonal skills, and well-managed within the business context, to reach the needed result: Improved business performance. Only then are we adding value.

The winner is not just the project teams that in the past worked their hearts out to little acclaim; and not the organizations that will begin to receive what they have all-along been paying for. The winner should be thriving nations and a global economy that benefits from the elimination of the huge waste of failed project initiatives and broken promises—and the realization of the originally intended 3:1 return on project investment that we were often promised and never saw. That is a results-oriented performance measure.

Over the last several years I have had the pleasure of collaborating with you on a variety of different efforts. I know how passionate you are about creating effective collaborations across the distinct professional disciplines. What is the driver behind your passionate belief that professional silos need to be overcome?

(Stacy Goff) Maybe it is because I came to this discipline in a different time, and in a different way. I was a practicing Project Manager in the 1970s. Next I moved to Program Manager (end-to-end complex, multi-organization, multi-project initiatives, including the ongoing operation of the result). Then I moved to Manager roles. In my managerial roles I was very much involved in Strategic Planning. My time horizon moved from 6-36 months to 6-36 years, so to speak.

It was through this series of roles that I learned the need for all disciplines and all stakeholders to have the same business success objectives, and to understand the clear delineation of roles of each in reaching those objectives. When I moved to project management/strategic planning consulting in 1982, I thought everyone understood the insights that I took for granted.

In my consulting engagements with major Consultancies, and with Aerospace & Defense contractors in the mid 1980s, I was able to bring together the different disciplines throughout the life cycle to eliminate a then-common problem: Big bid wins, but poor handoffs between the players; no profit, and few follow-on opportunities. We brought together Business Development Managers, Contract Managers, Proposal Managers, Program Managers, Change Managers (for internal initiatives) and Operations Managers in one team, and then allowed primary responsibility for each initiative segment to shift with the timing.

Whether we called it Four-Square or Integrated Product Teams, Integrated Leadership Teams, or Concurrent Engineering, it was difficult to begin but incredibly powerful once working. A typical Executive argument before-hand was that it would be too expensive. Afterwards, it became a consistently-demanded approach, that became their competitive advantage; they won more bids, and made more profit on bids won. They couldn’t believe that anyone could operate the old way.

I have a blog post at my Change Agents blog series that focuses on the disciplines working in parallel. See: http://asapm.org/chgagent/project-managers-playing-nice-with-others/.

Do you think the new ProdBOK Guide will help span some of these divides at the professional level? 

(Stacy Goff) I think it can; from the project manager’s perspective, the participation you have achieved, with some of the best Project Management thinkers and writers helps. Of course, we need to encourage project managers to get access to it, then to actually read and understand it. Unfortunately, I have seen too many PM practitioners who took a class, took a test, and then thought their mastery was complete—when all they have done is to build a good foundation. They may not be interested in the insights your writers and editors have shared.

Of course, there are also many incredibly competent, high-performing Project Managers, Senior Project Managers and Program Managers at work today—many of them already understand your key points. Ironically, although they already grasp much of what you will share, they will be more likely to benefit by learning more. I think it would be interesting to track this hypothesis in your next survey: The ones who could benefit most will be least likely to read it.

Or said another way: Only the savvy Project Managers will make the effort to read it.

Why did you decide to contribute to the ProdBOK Guide effort Stacy?

(Stacy Goff) Several reasons, including the fact that I was urged to by people whose work I respect, and whom I trust. Thanks to Gary Heerkens, for example, who originally suggested that I participate. Next, once in contact with you, you answered my questions with responses that revealed a passion for doing what was right. And because I believe that the efforts of your teams can result in more successful projects and programs that more-effectively cooperate with other disciplines in product management initiatives. The result will be perceived by all stakeholders as successful.

Any final thoughts or comments?

(Stacy Goff) Those who know me well understand the risk of that question. We have barely scratched the surface in this discussion. But we have established some parameters for more dialogue between the disciplines we have discussed.

Thank you Greg!

Greg Geracie is a recognized thought leader in the field of product management and the President of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management consulting, training, 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. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on high-tech and digital product management.

The ProdBOK mark is a registered trademark of AIPMM.

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