MITPS PGP19 Meeting

12
Agenda:
1. Discussing 4+1 SW Product Management of Christof Ebert
2. Discussing Product Management with Rahul Vaidya, Cisco systems
3. How to manage a Software Product Line via Vaulting

Marketing Requirements Document

Customers wants and needs for a product
MRD is made with aid of research, MarCom, engineering, sales &
Fin
Target market and Customer
Competition
Features and Schedules (based on market needs, and prioritized)
Sales channels
SWOT
conceptual views representing the external characteristics of
the product multiple conceptual views, e.g. system installer

Product Requirements Document

Use cases
Functional Requirements
Usability Requirements
Technical Requirements
Interaction (Compatibility) Requirements
Support requirements
High-level workflow and milestones
Evaluation Plan and Performance metrics

Discussion on Eberts SPM article

Sometimes, it is only Scope that distinguishes Product
from Project
Build/Release cycle (or Develop/Delivery cycle) are
Evolution
The contract view of all projects in the SPM cycle
Separation of roles, yet constitution of a core team
that is owner
Eberts 4+1 method of focusing on 4 basic and 1
learning step:
Effective Core Team
An organization-wide Software Product Lifecycle process

Core Team
Group of Product, Project and Marketing managers
Other associated module leads, e.g. R&D

Project plan directly linked with requirements

Any change is synchronized and approved by core team

Tool to place all milestones, content and quality targets

Including vaulting repository to store business case, MRDs and PRDs
Connecting requirements to work products or work packages
Connecting requirements to test items

Set realistic targets without focusing on zero delay notions

Timeboxing only works for mission-critical, contract or date-bound
projects

How to balance requirements with

value ?
Functional/non-functional requirements mapped to
business case
Each requirement evaluated by all core team members
Requirements that enable re-use aspects for product
line or portfolio
Impact analysis of a group of requirements
Incoming requirement ?
Evaluate marginal value vs. marginal costs

Requirements should also be flexible

If changes cannot be met, move them over to next release

Points of interest to IT Product

Manager
To manage the hierarchical dependencies between:

Portfolio
Product Line
Product Release
Project

Performance objectives based on context of business

unit:
Success in business case, cost targets,
portfolio optimization and profitability
Milestone accuracy and time-to-market

Many objectives are outside the product development

Discussion on Software Product Line

Which is requirements engineering and which is
product line ?
Why is clone-and-own a problem ? Disk space is cheap !
What is the attributes scheme that DOORS adopts
Where are the network effects in the document:
growth in square.
Product traceability vs. product inter-dependency
What is this 2nd generation approach to product
development ?
What is the new abstraction that the tool claims to have
created ?

What is the commonsense step of

Roadmap
?
Product vision: essential features mapped to releases
Setup a business case for this

Evaluate requirements:
Capital investments, Ops Cost, Opportunistic factors
Complexity in development and maintenance
Extensible ?

Map major requirements to releases:

Also map releases to markets
Have vault for regional business cases (made by Sales groups)

Technology roadmap:
Identify dependencies
Modular and future-proof architecture

Communicate, be Predictable &

Professional
Agreed Communication strategies:
With marketing, engineering groups involving big picture
points

Stay predictable:

Use a suitable development methodology

Re-evaluate if concrete time-to-profit targets are not met
Only at life-cycle points accept wide-spread scope changes
Create a formal decision process of all stakeholders
Deliver to business objectives

Managing Risks
What are the sources of risks in product management ?
Uncertain customer needs
Supplier commitments
Technology evolution

Good solution is incremental stabilization: measure earned value.

Portfolio evaluation
Between releases: the content is the buffer
Value to the enterprise may also be inward-looking:
Inventory of all software engg. assets: reusable SW, skillsets, opportunities
Frank evaluation of other opportunities vis--vis ongoing activities

What role does Leadership have to

play ?
Understand clashing objectives:
Long-term vs. short-term
Sales vs. profitability

Grant directions empowerment to product manager

Accountability for revenues and profitability: short- or
long- term
baselined commitments must before core team takes
ownership
Stable process framework: unusually important to get
right 1st time
Agile, Lean principles in product management

Technical Marketing in IT Products

A separate, and unique, function among IT Product vendors
Sales enabler, not sales organization per se
The TM group:
Qualifies the sales lead:
Prior experience, market intelligence (all Oracle shop), technical compatibility

Works with sales group till buyer decides on purchase

Does not usually have revenue target but has:
Lead-to-order conversion rate
Cost of TM activity
PR activity success rate

May not be directly related to product or service delivery

Organizational structure
Sales and TM headed by same corporate executive
E.g. a geography manager

Sales considered profit centre, TM considered cost

centre
TM group members report structurally to a regional
manager
Functionally to TM Head in geography or region

Have responsibility of training

Sales staff and channel partners

No commissions or incentives unlike Sales:

Only fixed pay plus a variable pay component

What products need TM support ?

Certainly not plug-and-play installation products:
Are there TM groups in information appliance sellers ?

TM micro-analyses the Voice of Customer:

Buyers knowledge of product or service

Price propensity/elasticity
Business requirements
Nature of product to be sold: experiential, or credence goods
Customer lifetime value
Competitors behavior in similar segment

TM group associated with Product

Sales
Hierarchy of Buyer entities, many technical vs. many not-sotechnical:
CXOs (financials)
Program Managers, Project Managers (productivity)
Engineers or QA staff (features)

Comparison of competing products

Roadmap education to sales staff: upgrades, patches, releases
Speaking at vendor slots at various fora
Preparing two important financial documents:
RoI for any fresh investment from buyer
TCO based on maintenance requirements

TM Group associated with Product

Sales.
Simulate the buyers IT environment:
Check compatibility with other SW/services in deployment scenario
Check compatibility with standards

May even have to convince buyer on:

Post-sales support quality by virtue of higher credibility or independence

Public Relations:
Analyst briefings, developer conferences, technology academics

Sizing enterprise software for buyers (e.g. # of licenses)

Seeking outsized success:
Testimonials, joint statements, buyer-loyalty web forums etc.

TM Group in Services Marketing

Comparison with solutions proposed by the competition
But, real effort is with responding to:
RFIs and RFPs
Including dealing with entity outside the buyer (e.g. consultant)
ROI, TCO and YoY productivity modeling

Adverse impact on business:

While transitioning from existing vendor
SLAs for transitioning, and steady state

Large Bids groups:

Domain specialists coupled with TM staff
Understanding scope, sizing the bid
Assist sales in pricing the bid

Typical TM activities
Case studies, buyer quotes, endorsements
Incentive to re-use or repackage from existing portfolio
Identifying and reporting trends to product managers
Identifying basket of offerings (to become suites)
Pre-sales training of buyer staff
(Channel) Partner certification tests
Liaison with other vendors in order to compose a
solution
Cross-selling, up-selling on a 2nd-rung basis using
credibility

Benefits due to TM in IT
organizations
Companies that have best practices:

Record every step in a failed, or successful, bid

Helps create buyer-focused products and services

TM staff engages in value selling:

In contrast to top-line boosting, cut price based, activity from Sales
Communicate the goodness (VP) of the offering and command a premium
Avoids the notion of a hard sell

Discover new buyers in un-addressed markets

Link to technological entrepreneurship

Organizations image in the market:

Cheaper than hiring PR firms

Product Management, Leadership, pipeline

Product/Service Launch and its

issues
Buyer does not throw away existing product:
Incompatibility
Missing features
Punctured vendor hype

Upgrade path or migration path depending on the theme

Old assets can be transformed to the type needed for new products
Old assets interoperate with new products

Migration tool as a competitive tactic

Pricing models (esp. in services)
Per bug fixed (application maintenance)
Per call resolution
Per IT asset (when auditing security)

Buzzword of the Day

First-to-Market
Is F2M always a good idea ?
Brand, Reputations, Service can be positioned early in
costumers minds
But, conversely, customers may need educating about their
need
So a few not so formidable competitors may actually help !

How about Voice of Customer ?

The risk in being F2M is that competitors will hear a clearer
VoC

So, how does one manage against F2M risks ?

End
Part 2 dealt with Chapters 10 and 11 of textbook.
Part 1 came from the publication
The Impacts of Software Product Management by Christof
Ebert, 2007