The GE-McKinsey Matrix

The GE-McKinsey Matrix simply gives your organization more nuanced options for how products are categorized. Instead of just four boxes, the grid now includes nine. By replacing Market Growth (used on the BCG Growth-Share Matrix) with Industry Attractiveness, you have the option of weighting your decision based on such factors as:

• Size of the Market
  • Intensity of the Competition
  • Market Growth

The result often is a clearer view at your product mix and opportunities.

The GE-McKinsey Matrix Horizontal Axis

As with the vertical axis, the relabeling of the horizontal axis from Market Share to Competitive Position opens up new ways to examine your market. Now, you can factor in other corporate strengths such as:

• Brand Equity
• Your Company’s Core Competencies
• Distribution Strength

Nine Boxes Vs Four

With the GE-McKinsey grid, you have nine possible options of how to view products. Your alternatives now range from clear winners to invest and grow to products you need to phase out and cut loose.

Elements of a Good Product Portfolio Management Process

No matter which analysis method you choose, you need to be sure it includes the following:

• Allocation of resources that aligns with your corporate goals across multiple product activities
• A balance of product activities with diversity across products you currently have and what you’ll need to develop as tomorrow’s winners; current and future markets; and short-term versus long-term revenue sources

Upcoming Post

Next week my post will take a look at the SWOT Analysis and how it will help you gain a clearer view of your product’s current and prospective standing.

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

The post The Value of the GE-McKinsey Matrix appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Managing the Product Portfolio

Your product portfolio links your specific product strategy to the overall company strategy. Within the product portfolio you should find the complete suite of products, including those that currently exist and those that are planned for the future. By actively managing the product portfolio, you help ensure that your company meets its goals.

The product portfolio management process links your company’s high-level resource/budget allocation to the strategic initiatives or the product roadmap(s). The process of managing the product portfolio is also linked to what is a more tactical project portfolio management regimen. This discipline manages the approval and tracking of specific projects tagged as being supportive of the overall product portfolio initiatives.

Analyzing the Product Suite

Successful product leaders know not only where to invest, but just as important, where not to put their resources.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) devised a simple way to communicate how to handle market analysis. It revolves around a dog, a cow, a star, and a question mark.

BCG’s Growth-Share Matrix

Using this approach, market growth rate is shown on the vertical axis and relative market share on the horizontal. Products that fall in the lower right box are those with low growth potential and low market share in your company. In other words, these are the dogs. Anything that falls in this quadrant is definitely on its way out. By pulling investment from the dogs, you free up resources to use in more productive quadrants.

The upper right quadrant displays a question mark. This represents products that usually will require your company to invest in order to improve your share of the market. However, since the prospect for market growth is high, the products represented here have high potential for the future.

Now let’s move to the upper left quadrant where you find the star products. These are the products where your company has a high share of the market and there is high potential for growth.

Finally, in the lower left quadrant are the cows – the CASH Cows. These are successful mature products. Your company has a high share of the market, but growth potential is pretty low. These are the products that produce profit you can invest in your stars and question marks hopefully to turn them into stars.

Looking at the Matrix Over Time

As time passes, things change. You will see your cash cows gradually morph into dogs as new and better products come into the market. You’ll also see today’s question marks evolve into tomorrow’s stars as the current stars replace the cash cows or rotate out of the 2-by-2 matrix entirely.

This visual clearly shows the importance of keeping a pipeline full of emerging products you can grow into robust winners for your company.

Next Week

Through my next post we’ll take a look at other product management tools starting with the GE-McKinsey Matrix, another tool that can be very helpful in your product portfolio management.

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

The post What are Useful Product Management Tools? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

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.

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

The post Business Plan 101 For Product Managers appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

The Product Manager Is Pulled in Many Directions

As a product manager it is vital that you interface with people in different positions throughout your company. As a result, you will regularly find yourself at the epicenter of different departments’ competing priorities.

Demands on your time are many and diverse. Some will directly move your objectives forward while others will help only marginally, or not at all. You’ll likely face demands as varied as a customer service representative asking you to answer a call-in client’s specific questions to the CEO wanting you to provide further insights into your department’s quarterly report.

These requests come to you for a specific reason: the product manager position is responsible for being the main repository of knowledge about your product and market. Expect to have regular, two-way interactions with marketing, sales, finance, customer service, operations, engineering/manufacturing, research & development and legal.

For example, you may go to sales for information on customer needs and your competition, which they have picked up in the field. They, in turn, will come to you for information about how your product is being modified to address the market’s direction.

Never forget that each functional area in your organization is a valuable partner that you want as an ally. On the other hand, it is easy to see how these interactions, not properly managed, can eat up your time.

Product Management Tools – Two Key Questions Product Managers Should Ask

The next time a department comes to you with a request, ask yourself two important questions:

1. Does this request help us reach the company’s product objectives more quickly?

2. Will fulfilling this request help me be more efficient in the future by eliminating redundant requests on this topic from others?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to both of these questions, put the request near the top of your To Do list.

The 80/20 Rule applies to competing priorities. Eighty percent of a product manager’s time should be focused on tasks that promote the achievement of the company’s key objectives. That being said, it is important not to completely ignore requests that don’t fall in the 80 percent. Others in your company depend on you for information and you want to keep your support lines open. With that in mind, even though their requests aren’t top priority, they should be handled in a timely manner.

Second Valuable Tool for Product Managers: The Influence Map

A second important product management tool to help product managers manage competing priorities is the Influence Map. This product management tool is easy to create. Start with a blank piece of paper and draw three concentric circles in it. The smallest should be in the center and the other two should increase in size. Using a pencil, write YOUR PRODUCT in the center circle, CRITICAL TO SUCCESS in the next largest circle and IMPORTANT TO SUCCESS in the outer circle.

Now take a few minutes to think about the people you feel are most vital to your success and write the initials of these people in the CRITICAL TO SUCCESS circle. You could include your CEO, your boss, perhaps a sales support specialist – literally anyone.

Now, put the initials of those you feel are also important at some lesser level to your product’s success in the outer circle.

Ask a couple of your most trusted colleagues to separately look at your chart. Do they feel like someone should be added or removed from a circle?

Once complete, use this tool as another filter to help you evaluate the urgency of requests from other departments.

Using these simple product management tools, the questions and the Influence Map, you will be better prepared to advantageously prioritize competing requests that arise each day.

Next week check back for my post coaching you on how to build consensus among your colleagues.

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

The post Product Management Tools To Help With Competing Priorities appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Product Management Toolkit – Why Recreate the Wheel?

Each product management toolkit that we offer consists of worksheets, matrices, and templates that are adaptable to nearly every product management project that you may face. Our toolkits are produced in-house by the members of our highly experienced team of product management consultants. The Actuation Consulting team has several decades of combined professional experience in the field of product management and our founders and partners are highly respected thought leaders of the product management industry who regularly consult, speak, and write on the topic of product management. A product management toolkit is the perfect way for anyone interested in becoming a better product manager to establish a strong foundation of tools and techniques from which winning product management projects can be launched.

One product management toolkit that we offer is the Multi-Year Product Strategy toolkit, which features seven templates aimed at helping you capture the strategy for a product management initiative and at communicating the strategic direction that would benefit your product the most. Another toolkit offered is the Clarifying Roles and Hands-Off toolkit, which was designed to help you clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the members of your team and to develop cross-functional hand-offs to promote efficiency throughout the product management process. We also offer a Project Management Essentials toolkit and a Project Survival toolkit – both of which include some of the most important and helpful information for product professionals.

Most of the toolkits that we offer include 30 minutes of personal consulting with a member of the Actuation Consulting team. This personal consultation is designed to help you understand how to best apply the toolkit. Toolkits are designed to be highly focused so you may apply them to specific aspects of product management – more toolkits are planned for release in the future and current toolkits will be updated as changes become necessary.

For more information on a product management toolkit that we offer, or on any of our other product management consulting services, get in touch with Actuation Consulting today.

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

The post Product Management Toolkit appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

The Most Common Positioning Statement Format

There are multiple formats to choose from when drafting a positioning statement. For instance, the simile format or the user-story style which we will discuss in a moment. However, I tend to favor the format introduced by Geoffrey Moore in his book Crossing the Chasm.

Moore, G. (2002). Crossing the Chasm. New York, NY: HarperCollins

Alternative Positioning Statement Formats

As mentioned earlier there are alternatives to this format. The simile format is quite possibly the quickest way to communicate the message. This approach explains the product by utilizing a concept that is familiar in order to provide a context that is easily understood. “It is like <reference another product here> but for <new use>. An example of this format might be the hover board: It is like a skateboard but without wheels.

Alternatively, many teams utilizing Agile methodologies are increasingly using the user-story format. Here’s an example; As a <persona> I want to <solve a problem> so that <professional benefit statement> plus <personal benefit statement>.

Ultimately the style you choose to use should resonate with your customers and stakeholders and help focus the development and marketing of the product.

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

The post What is a Positioning Statement? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

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

The post Product Roadmap and Product Strategy – What’s the Difference? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

We have been tracking adoption rates for a variety of product development processes since 2012. This is the first year that we have trended the information in our recently published white paper.

Survey respondents indicate that by far the most popular methodology used in product development is a blended approach combining some aspects of Waterfall and some of Agile. The blended approach accounted for nearly half of all survey responses (45.41%). The second most popular methodology is Agile/Scrum, which is used in companies employing 33.16% of our respondents. Nearly 11% of responders indicated their companies utilize Kanban (2.55%) or another methodology (8.68%). Only a tenth (10.20%) are utilizing Waterfall.

A Trend Line is Worth a Thousand Words

Product Development Adoption Rate Trend Lines

Our illustration clearly shows product methodology trends which we began tracking in 2012. What is most striking is the rate of growth in Agile methods from 2012 to 2013: adoption rates rose from 12.83% in 2012 to 30.25% in 2014. While Agile continues to gain share, the rate of growth increased less than 3% from 2013 to 2014. It is also interesting to note that blended methodologies are showing a similar pattern of change, though in the opposite direction. From its highpoint in 2012 of 52.50% our latest data shows slightly more than 45% of organizations continue to combine Agile and Waterfall methodologies. Waterfall continues its steady decline year after year, now accounting for just 10.20% of responses (2014). Lean was dropped from this year’s survey as there was confusion between the lean methodology and “lean startup”. In its place, we added Kanban. Time will tell what Kanban’s adoption rate will be in 2015.

Conclusion

Overall, though, the data illustrates that Waterfall has yet to hit its floor and both Agile and blended adoption rates appear to be flattening out.

What do you think the future portends?

The post Product Development Process Adoption: Can the Past Predict the Future? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

This industry-wide problem presents a unique challenge to those who aspire to become product managers. So here are some tips that can tilt the odds in your favor…

Consider Jumping into the Shallow End of the Pool – Look to enter the product management profession in a domain you have deep industry experience in – the bar is lowest there. Trying to get your first break as a product manager in a domain that you don’t thoroughly understand will make the task more difficult. Remember, the bigger the domain, example healthcare, the more likely it is that you can swim in it for your entire career. Picking a smaller domain will mean that you will likely have to change domains later in your career – which can be just as hard as getting your first chance! Choose wisely.

Develop Connections in the Field by Contributing to a Product Management Association – Join a local product management association and actively participate. This will give you some product management cred to point to on a resume and it will also provide you with opportunities to establish professional connections while increasing your knowledge. Additionally, many product management associations are places that recruiters and companies search for product management candidates.

Take Product Management Training Courses to Enrich Your Knowledge of the Profession – Because of the lack of commonly agreed upon industry standards for the practice of product management each training course is unique. Regardless, this should not dissuade you from taking one or more training courses in an effort to enhance your knowledge of the field and to learn the language of product management.

Read Product Management Books to Enhance Your Knowledge and Increase Your Functional Vocabulary – Organizations are tribal by nature so make sure that you speak the language of those who are familiar with product management. This can raise the odds in your favor. A casual reference to a well-known author and their approach to solving a particular problem can to help establish both credibility and a connection during the interview process.

Call Out the Achievements In Your Profile and Resume That Align to Your Product Management Goals – Product management is about creating and maintaining value throughout all stages of the product management lifecycle. So make sure to demonstrate that you understand the value of the role and reinforce it by pointing to the things you have done in your previous positions that align to your aspirations.

The good news is that very few people begin their careers as a product manager. The majority start in another function (e.g. engineering, sales, marketing, etc.). If you make the necessary investments to build out your skills, master the terminology, and make the right connections while relentlessly pursuing your objective things should ultimately break your way.

The ball is in your court.

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 post Want To Be A Product Manager? Here Are Five Tips To Help You Succeed appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Most of these opportunities result from the success of our books. In fact, I’m pleased to say my book is number one in the UK and Canada and number two in the US on Amazon.com as of this writing (in the field of product management).

Almost every week someone asks what led me to write Take Charge Product Management? The truth is, I never had a grand plan to write a book.

I actually started in sales a number of years ago and made my way into the product management profession over time. I honestly believe that most people eventually end up doing what they enjoy – even if they start out somewhere else. You tend to be good at what you enjoy doing.

My path included running product management for three separate organizations before the opportunity presented itself to form Actuation Consulting and write my first book. I was contacted on a crisp winters afternoon by an editor associated with McGraw Hill and asked if I would be interested in putting my thoughts and experiences down on paper. I had never contemplated doing this, so I had to give it some thought before agreeing to submit a sample chapter.

The rest is history and a lot of hard work. Writing a book, at least for me, requires singular focus. Something that is harder to do today with all of life’s complexities and interruptions.

What drove me to write the book? I had witnessed firsthand the struggles organizations have in effectively implementing product management. I realized that, as a three-time leader of Product Management, I was continuously stepping into organizations that were struggling to effectively implement product management and that each time I was asked to run product management I had to reteach the continuously evolving material to my team of product managers.

I started to wonder if perhaps there was a way to reach a broader audience, share what I had learned, and help individuals to acquire skills and knowledge that would make them ultimately more successful.

That was the impetus for the book.

Product managers come from almost every function and we all end up learning as we go. This won’t always be the case – but those are today’s realities. My book was intended to help new product managers effectively step into the role and not have to recreate the wheel.

Speaking of which, a friend of ours Hakan Kilic is sharing his thoughts about some new product management toolkits we recently introduced based upon our books and popular demand. If you’re interested in reading his review click here.

Steve picks up the Agile enterprise-wide transformation trail again in our next post. Stay tuned…

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 post How Take Charge Product Management Came to Be appeared first on Actuation Consulting.