Jeff Lash

“Who should be responsible for competitive analysis?” “Who should own go-to-market strategy?” “Who creates user personas?” These questions aren’t surprising, given that one of the most common topics we help our clients with through our Product Management and Portfolio Marketing research services is establishing or improving the product commercialization and lifecycle process. Companies are trying to be faster and more nimble, more customer-centric, and more consistent in how they innovate and bring offerings to market to drive growth.

• The COVID-19 crisis requires organizations to reassess their plans and activities
• Product management leaders must skillfully lead their teams and portfolios to address immediate customer needs while positioning the organization for the future
• Recommended actions include uncovering and validating customer needs and solutions, refining the portfolio, and investing in talent

• Initial focus during the coronavirus crisis has been on the impact to employees overall, and marketing and sales specifically
• Though not as immediately severe, there are implications for product management and actions product managers should be taking
• Product managers can take several actions during this time of crisis to help customers and position their products for success and growth

• In a recent SiriusDecisions survey, we asked product management leaders about their top challenges and the skills their product managers need to improve
• Major challenges included the quality and consistency of the product innovation and lifecycle process, portfolio management, focusing on solutions, and clarifying roles
• Common skill gaps include understanding customer needs, developing business cases, collecting customer feedback, and market sizing and segmenting

• Product management leaders have a variety of challenges to focus on as they plan for the next year
• Product management leaders often prioritize developing the skills of their product managers
• SiriusDecisions is conducting a short survey on product management leaders’ priorities and challenges for 2020

• Many product teams – especially those working on software-as-a-service offerings – spend most of their time and energy enhancing existing products
• Organizations often add features for unclear reasons or without a plan for realizing value, resulting in wasted resources, confusing products, lost opportunities and frustrated customers
• With a more regimented approach to assessing, planning and measuring enhancements, organizations can realize greater value and improve growth and retention

• Minimum viable product (MVP) is one of the most misunderstood and misused terms in product management today
• Many product teams apply the term MVP incorrectly, leading to confusion and frustration from colleagues and customers, as well as missed opportunities
• Good MVPs should be structured on a hypothesis informed by what requires the least amount of effort to build but provides the best ability to learn about customer needs

• Product management has long been practiced based on “gut”; organizations have used approaches that seemed logical, but may have been based more on opinion than evidence
• New research from SiriusDecisions shows that high-performing product management organizations exhibit specific behaviors and follow key practices in four key areas
• By instituting these best practices, product management leaders can improve the product managers’ performance and ensure greater business success

• ’Twas the night before product launch, when all through the organization, the cross-functional team was preparing for a major release
• When what to their wondering eyes did appear – a major rival had released a competing product the day before; oh dear
• A wink of Jeff Lash’s eye and a twist of his head soon reminded product teams they had nothing to dread

• Many organizations are transitioning legacy products from on-premises to software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms
• Although these shifts affect many functions, the initial impact is most significant for product management
• Agile, launch, pricing and packaging, and metrics and measurement must all change for SaaS products

• SiriusDecisions has identified six assumptions that product management leaders should incorporate into their planning for 2019
• The rise of SaaS, agile and lean concepts has increased pressure to adapt quickly to meet customer needs, and drive customer retention and recurring revenue growth
• Learn more about these trends by downloading the SiriusDecisions Product Management Planning Assumptions for 2019

• Those developing and managing products for healthcare organizations face some specific and unique challenges
• For 2018, this includes more of a focus on solutions and process compliance, understanding the various types of users, and paying more attention to value-based pricing
• Product management leaders should ensure their teams have the knowledge, competencies and processes in place to deliver repeatable product success

• Many product teams working in an agile development environment focus too much on short-term tactical activities isolated from the broader product strategy and lifecycle
• Product management leaders often struggle to articulate how product managers need to connect what’s happening at the sprint level to releases and product strategy
• The SiriusDecisions Agile Engine for Product Management shows product manager’s responsibilities at each level and how they all should connect

• Sales reps often pass along requests from customers or prospects that require changes to the product roadmap
• Product managers should view these requests as valuable customer input
• Engaging sales on product roadmap development can help prevent surprises and ensure products are aligned with customer needs

• Fall is often when product managers are creating or refining their product roadmap for the next year
• SiriusDecisions provides three specific tips to help with roadmapping, related to roadmap organization, portfolio management and product experiments
• More product managers are starting to leverage product management-specific technology to help with their roadmapping efforts

• Product planning, prioritization and roadmapping tools help product managers develop product plans that detail the execution of the product’s strategy
• Many product managers are looking for product roadmap software that can collect and prioritize feedback and integrate with product development tools
• This SiriusView report summarizes the capabilities and benefits of these solutions and provides overviews of seven vendors

• The 2017 SiriusDecisions Product Management Tools and Technology Study looks at tools and technologies used by B2B product managers
• While most product managers use tools designed for purposes other than product management, interest in purpose-built tools is increasing
• Thirty percent of B2B product managers regularly use product management tools to create and manage product roadmaps

• Many B2B organizations recognize the need for product management but struggle to get it established
• SiriusDecisions recommends a four-step process to define the role’s value, clarify responsibilities, establish the function and demonstrate quick wins
• Providing a strong foundation for product management will better enable the organization to create commercially successful products

• More organizations are interested in applying agile approaches to marketing
• Microsoft has made a shift to applying agile practices within the Office365 marketing group over the past several years
• The shift to agile marketing requires new processes, mindsets, skills and approaches to technology