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Start With The Customer Prodcast #5 – Roles and Responsibilities

May 31, 2011 By

In this week’s edition of the Start with the Customer Prodcast (a product focused podcast), I am excited to be joined by Jim Holland, of the Product Management Tribe, and Scott Sehlhorst, of Tyner Blain.

To start the call off, we addressed the hot topic of product ownership and the responsibility of the product manager. From there the discussion moved into product portfolio management and ownership of the multi-year strategy. Finally, we touched on maturing the product management process inside start-up organizations.

I think this was a really great discussion with lots on the theory and practice of product management. I hope you enjoy the show and would love to hear your feedback!

You can listen here:

or download from iTunes.

Show Notes:

Runtime: 43 minutes

  • Product Manager vs. Product Owner – inspired by Saeed Khan’s post
  • Feeding the beast
  • Product portfolio management
  • The “Absence of Information”
  • Internal selling
  • Understanding the decision making culture
  • From start-up product management to a sustainable process
Filed Under: Podcast Marketing Podcast Tagged With: , , , , ,

Yahoo Dropping Delicious Makes Complete Sense – But Not Really

December 20, 2010 By

Trying to figure out why Yahoo decided to drop Delicious from their portfolio isn’t hard. It could be because it isn’t growing anymore, doesn’t make any revenue, is no longer hot (hey, its been a long five years since Yahoo bought the company).

Cutting products and focusing the company is exactly what Yahoo has to do if it has any hopes of turning itself around (in fact, this is pretty much what they said they were going to do).

So, what’s the big deal?

While it may have made a good product level decision, dropping Delicious makes no sense when it comes to marketing strategy – at least at this point and time.

Delicious has been woefully neglected since being purchased by Yahoo but it is still a brand that a lot of people understand and care about.  In the meantime, Yahoo has done nothing to get people excited about Yahoo again.

Nobody really knows what the Yahoo brand stands for and why they should care anymore.

None of this will really matter if Yahoo can get it’s act together but in the short run, I would say this is another warning sign that things are not heading in the right direction.  Building excitement about your brand and products is hard enough without pissing people off first.

Image Credit:  Flickr

Filed Under: Product Strategy Tagged With: ,

Sorry WSJ, I’m Not Buying Your Product-Pruning Service

September 13, 2010 By

A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the challenges of product portfolio management and presented a strategy for keeping it under control.  There was some OK points in the article, but I found one of the main recommendations to be very dangerous when it comes to new product introductions.

What I agree with in the article:

If you ask customers whether they want more variety, I can tell you right now what they’re going to say: Yes. After all, who doesn’t think they want a lot of choices? And it’s common for consumers to be both sad and angry when a product they like is discontinued

Its hard to argue with the this point.  Most  product categories are filled with a plethora of choices.  Youngme Moon does an excellent job writing about unlimited choices in her book, Different:  Escaping the competitor heard.  Youngme writes,

If aliens were to visit a grocery store or a drugstore in this country, they would have to conclude that we are a people hooked on the pleasures of picking needles out of haystacks—of selecting a cereal among an ocean of cereal boxes, of selecting a bar of soap among an ocean of soap bars.

Category dilution and product over-saturation is an issue but I would argue that this a matter of portfolio tuning, not a cause to abandon ship.  How that tuning is done is the real art and this is where the article lost me.

What concerns me in the article:

Consider creating product-pruning teams consisting of people with marketing, sales, finance, production, and research-and-development backgrounds. Have them meet periodically to decide which products to discontinue.

Here’s why:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: feature, Product Strategy Tagged With: ,

Yahoo, Death By 200 Paper Cuts

July 9, 2010 By

Back in April of 2009 when Carol Bartz joined Yahoo as the new CEO, she discussed the challenges of their product portfolio and brining discipline to their product management process.

Techcrunch is now reporting,

In an email to all staff last week, new chief product officer Blake Irving told employees that he would be sending a two page document outlining Yahoo’s overall product strategy moving forward by the end of July. Later employees will be able to dive deeper into a twenty page document, and later still a 200 page detailed product strategy document would be available.

My gut call is that this is not a good sign (yes, I know when the ship is already sinking, it isn’t exactly risky to say it is in trouble).  2 pages is an acceptable length for a strategy document.  I can even buy 20 pages for an in-depth overview of the various parts of the product portfolio strategy.  200 pages?  That to me sounds like death by presentation that most employees will take a pass on.

To use a gardening analogy, when you are overrun with weeds you have to take drastic steps to recover lost ground.  You can’t save everything, so sacrifices must be made and made quickly.  If the plant can be saved you save it,  but this is not a time for nurturing.  What you hope to do is to pick a few hearty plants to focus on and  try to build from there.

Back in 2007, I had a chance to hear Steve Miller speak while he was in the process of trying to turn around the auto part maker, Delphi.  What I remember most from his speech was the sense of urgency he conveyed when talking about his turnaround plan.  He knew that the only way to the save the business was to to take action quickly before it was too late to save any momentum.

I would like to see more action and less presentation coming out of Yahoo.  What does Yahoo stand for?  Which of their many,many products are they going to cut and which one are they going to bet the farm on? What’s going to be the rallying cry to galvanize the organization?

I personally think Yahoo has the resources and the brand equity to make the turnaround happen – plus wouldn’t a comeback from one of the pioneer’s of the Internet make for a great story?  Let’s hope that there is more than talk coming soon!

Photo Credit:  Flickr

Filed Under: Product Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

Top Down Strategy

May 7, 2009 By

Wanted to follow-up to my last post on Portfolio Management with an add on the importance of strategic direction from the top.  This month’s HBR has an article discussing “What Only The CEO Can Do” and I thought this comment sums it up perfectly:

Resolving the tension of sometimes divergent short-term and long-term priorities is, as Peter Drucker reminded us, a challenge as old as business itself. Drucker said, “The CEO decides on the balance between yield from the present activities, and investment in an unknown, unknowable and highly uncertain future….it is a judgment rather than [a decision] based on ‘facts.’

Filed Under: Product Management, Product Strategy Tagged With: ,

Yahoo And Product Portfolio Management

April 27, 2009 By

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The current issue of Fortune has an article covering Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo, and the staggering job in front of her trying to turn the company around.

One of the most interesting parts of the article was the historical recap of the early 2000′s where the company was on a buying tear, gobbling up companies left and right.  The strategy seemed to be focused on growth through acquisitions with no attempt to merge and focus the acquired companies.  Of course, it was during this time that Google perfected paid search and the rest is history.

Comment new Yahoo CEO Bartz,

She also wants to prevent more space debris from launching in the future. “Yahoo was amateur hour in the past when it comes to product management,” she bluntly told business partners last month; groups haphazardly released things without a clear sense of whether customers wanted them.

It is always easier looking back, but I think is safe to say that a strong product portfolio management process may have helped avoid some of the missed opportunities.  The key here is to make prioritization decisions on product development that align with the strategic direction of the company.

Portfolio Management for New Products is an excellent resource on the topic.   From PMNP, the portfolio process should be the starting point for evaluation:

  • Does the new product fit our business strategy?
  • Where is the business currently spending resources and what allocation changes need to be made?
  • What needs to be done immediately and what should be postponed?

However, a good process doesn’t guarantee success.  If done right, it will defenitly help focus, but you still need a sound strategic direction to make sure at the end of the day, your products hit the mark.

Filed Under: Product Management, Product Marketing Tagged With: , ,