Based upon this year’s responses only a minority (10.24%) of product development teams report that they “function as a seamless team” with high degrees of trust, collaboration and effective communication. Looked at from another angle this means that approximately 90% of teams lack effective trust, communication and collaboration. This is an eye opening piece of data and the implications are staggering.

Clearly more needs to be done to improve the effectiveness of product teams at the ground level but line management and executive leadership also have to recognize the importance of creating the appropriate environment for these teams to thrive. This is clearly not happening today.

So as you think about your product team ask yourself – is your team part of the 10%? If not, what steps can you take to join the ranks of the high performing? As it turns out our statistical analysis indicates that there are a range of factors that contribute to high performance. You can take a look at a list of the top five factors from the 2012 and 2013 studies here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Additionally, we will be releasing the 2014 results later this month. This year’s study adds to our prior research by looking more closely at the culture of high performance product teams, ROI and its use, the product team’s relationship with Sales and Marketing and the team’s knowledge of their product’s sales cycle.

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.

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Additionally, responses for Blended (a mix of Waterfall and some variation of Agile) have continued to decline as well year-over-year. In 2012, 53% of respondents indicated that they were using Blended methods while only 43% stated that was the case in 2013.

Agile was the greatest beneficiary of these erosion’s in the other product development methodologies. In 2012 only 13% of organizations indicated full Agile adoption but the number increased significantly to 30% in 2013. This is likely due to the fact that some of the Blended responses converted to Agile. In other words, Blended might well have been a transitional point that organizations were passing through to full Agile adoption.

If you find this data interesting, we encourage you to take part in this year’s survey. There are only 23 questions and the average participant spends 11 minutes to complete the online questionnaire. All responses are kept strictly confidential unless you tell us otherwise.

Doing so makes you eligible to receive a free copy of this year’s results prior to general distribution. Consider it our way of saying thank you for your participation!

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 Product Development Methods and Their Adoption Rates appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

When we asked the question “If you were responsible for fixing the product launch process what would you do to correct the situation? (Write in your answer.)” we got the following responses in order of priority. Here are the top five…

1. Improved Ownership and Communication – in other words, a singular person accountable for the launch and responsible for effective cross-functional communication.
2. Hire the “Right” Resources – many product teams feel that they lack the specialized knowledge, specifically marketing expertise, to get the job done right the first time.
3. Better Launch Planning – far too often the product launch planning process is compressed at the end of the product development activities without sufficient time to develop a coherent plan in order to align objectives, strategies and tactics.
4. Increased Budget – many respondents cite a lack of sufficient resources to achieve the launch objectives.
5. More Clarity on Roles and Responsibilities – there is often a lack of understanding of who is doing what which impacts the effectiveness of the product launch.

While all of these are significant issues, many product team members indicate that their teams suffer from more than one of these problems. In addition to the top five listed here, there are five more issues cited by product team members as frequent pain points and areas they would like to change. These include:

• More Frequent Cross-Functional Meetings to Enable Real-Time Changes to the Plan
• Upfront Development of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
• Executives Fully Vested in the Outcomes of the Product Launch
• More Centralized Decision-Making
• Better Launch Strategy

Clearly there is no lack of problems with product launch. Product team members understand the issues that are impeding success. The question is – what are organizational leaders doing to change this paradigm?

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When asked which role they feel is responsible for managing the product launch and go-to-market activities in their organization, product management is the most popular choice by far (40%). All of the other choices rank much lower.

Which role do you feel is responsible for managing the product launch and go to market activities in your organization?

Which Role Do You Feel Is Responsible For Managing the Product Launch and Go-To-Market Activities In Your Organization?

A large majority of our respondents feel that their product launch activities are not properly resourced, brought to market effectively and properly staffed; 64% answered “no” when asked this question.

Respondents list a variety of causes for ineffective launches, including:

• “Poor levels of trust within and across the organization.”
• “We have a very small team to do everything there is in a product launch. Product management has no support resources and must wear many hats and juggle many balls.”
• “We govern by committee so there is no one product owner setting direction. We don’t have one person accountable for the direction or for handling conflicting priorities. Instead the committee sets direction and often everyone below them scrambles to get the work done.”
• “There is no direct ownership of products. Upon launch, it transitions to another department to run with, but there’s a lack of motivation/drive to make sure it’s profitable and communicated effectively to the masses.”
• “Lack of understanding of that part of the product management process (and product management in general).”

Organizations would do well to take heed of the voice of these product team members. An important starting point would be to make sure that there is one person singularly responsible for managing the launch. This can be a product manager, product marketer, marketing manager, or some other role. What matters is that someone is accountable for making sure that the large investments company’s are making in product development don’t get derailed during the launch process.

If organizations paid as much attention to launch as they do to product development it is likely that the high failure rate of product launches would improve.

The post The Most Commonly Cited Reasons for a Failed Product Launch appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Our market research in 2013 illustrates that Blended (one that incorporates some waterfall and some Agile) is chosen most often (43%) by our survey respondents as the methods used for product development to develop products, regardless of company size. The next most popular choice is Agile (30%). Waterfall is a far less popular choice (13%) (see Figure below). In last year’s survey, the Blended methodology was also the most popular choice (52%), but Waterfall came in second (18%) and Agile received only 13%.

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

Most Popular Product Development Methodologies in 2013

Of the respondents that identify using a Lean methodology, a large majority (75%), identify using a startup Lean method, while only 25% said they use another type of Lean methodology.

Of the respondents that identify using a Blended or Agile methodology, a large majority (83%), identify using a Scrum method, while only 7% say they use Extreme programming, and the remaining 10% identified another type of Blended or Agile methodology.

Next week’s post will overlay size of company and illustrates how a company’s size impacts product development method selection.

Stay tuned. 

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Last year’s study illustrated that product managers and product owners are the only parties that stay with a product from its conception until its ultimate retirement. For example, while an organization may have a project manager work in tandem with the product manager, the project manager might lead the project only from the initiation of the project charter until the product or product capabilities become tangible and are ready for launch. This is typically when the project manager rolls off the product development effort to pursue the next project. Meanwhile, the product manager stays the course – continuing with the product throughout the phases of the lifecycle while other functions come and go.

Our regression analysis clearly shows that the more well-defined the product manager’s role is within the organization and the product team, the more likely the team is to be high performing.

How well defined is the product manager role in your organization? The answer may be telling.

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 Well Defined is the Product Manager Role in Your Organization? appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Seventy five percent of responding organizations underestimate the importance of establishing streamlined processes that enable product team members to quickly become contributing members to the product team’s success. The data show that only 4% of organizations onboard product team members well enough to claim best practice. In fact, while most organizations have a process in place to onboard new employees to the organization, they fail to implement the same amount of rigor when onboarding employees or contractors to the product team.

The traditional “sink or swim” mentality clearly shows its limitations in terms of decreased team productivity. As the new product team member comes up to speed, momentum stalls for a time and others are pulled away from their tasks to fill in as a way to try to maintain forward momentum – albeit at a slower rate.

High-performing product teams indicate that they place emphasis on onboarding team members to mitigate these risks and to ensure that only a minimum of momentum is lost by having well thought out processes in place as new members join the team. 

Is your organization part of the 4%? If not, you are probably not getting the most value from your new product team members!

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 Product Team Member Onboarding is Strongly Correlated to High Performance appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Organizations that do separate the product development process from the product launch process acknowledge that planning and implementing a successful product launch is labor intensive. However, only a minority of organizations actually do this well – even though this is one of the most critical and vulnerable elements of the entire product production process.

Last year’s Study of Product Team Performance pointed to the importance of having a single person responsible for product launch. However, our data suggests that only 37% of organizations actually take this step.

High-performing product teams not only have just one person responsible for launch, they also appropriately plan, staff, and resource the activity for success. If managed effectively the chances of success are greatly magnified. If not, the majority of organizations will continue to fumble the ball at the goal line.

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 The Importance of Product Launch appeared first on Actuation Consulting.

Consistent with last year’s findings in the 2012 Study of Product Team Performance, the importance of having a corporate strategy that the product team can link to and align with remains a statistically significant indicator of a product team’s ability to achieve high performance. If the executive team has not constructed, communicated, or deployed the broader company strategy, the product team will have nothing to tether their product development activities to and no way to determine which activities to pursue and – perhaps more importantly – not pursue. In fact, the 2012 study illustrated that approximately 91% of respondents indicated that their daily activities were aligned with the company business strategy. However, a closer look at how this alignment was occurring indicated a heavy reliance on product roadmaps in the absence of product strategy.

This year’s study clearly showed that 37% of organizations have a coherent business strategy they stick to and effectively communicate. The majority of organizations (54%) that have a corporate strategy minimize its effectiveness by not effectively communicating it or changing it so frequently that it is perceived by the product teams of being of little use.

Without a clearly communicated corporate strategy, the product team is often forced to focus on tactical roadmap activities and deliverables. Over time, this can undermine the effectiveness of not only product managers and product owners but the entire product team. With no guiding corporate strategy, the team is unsure how the day-to-day tactical activities link back to the company’s strategic direction. The resulting disconnect negatively impacts performance. Motivation plummets as team members struggle to perceive their contribution to the company and the company’s contribution to the surrounding competitive market place.

As demonstrated by last year’s study, low-performing teams typically lack ability to align day-to-day tactical activities with the company strategy. This linkage is usually created by developing a multi-year product strategy and a parallel multi-year technology roadmap that bridge corporate strategy and tactical day-to-day activities.

High-performing teams benefit from understanding the corporate strategy, tethering tactical activities to the corporate strategy via well-defined multi-year product and technology strategies, and leveraging the connection between day-to-day objectives and product, and between product and company goals and mission, to motivate higher performance. Product and development managers who lack knowledge of the corporate strategy have no grounding from which to effectively develop useful multi-year product and technology strategies, nor tools to motivate their teams. This leads to an inherent market disadvantage, as better aligned organizations capitalize upon clarity of purpose and action.

The difference between reactive product development and effective product management may well lie in product management’s ability to proactively develop a forward-looking product strategy that helps enable the attainment of your company’s business strategy – assuming that your company has one!

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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What Role on the Product Team has the Most Influence with Executives?

53% of respondents indicate that the product manager and owner hold the most influence with the program manager coming in next at about 9.5% narrowly beating out project managers at 9%. It appears that when product management speaks executives listen – or at least that is what the other members of the product team perceive.

What’s been your experience?

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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