Product Management – Workshop 1 (What Must Products Have to Succeed?)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Product Management is provided by Professor Fradin Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Professor Fradin has experience in building successful products and services since 1969, at organizations including Hewlett-Packard as well as Apple, where he was at the same management level as Steve Jobs.
Professor Fradin also heads a professional development company (Spice Catalyst, Inc) specializing in building insanely great products, product management, and product marketing and has trained thousands of managers throughout the world based on his experience at Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and across 75 products and services and eleven startups.
His clients have included Cisco, GameStop, Botswana Telecommunications Company, IDA Singapore, Pitney Bowes, Capital One Bank, Infosys, Cognizant, and many others.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
The mission of this workshop is to set the stage for the following 47 workshops in terms of understanding the rate of product failures and its associated cost. Also to understand what is a product and who is the person, the product manager, that is responsible for the product.
Another part of the mission is to learn about the six keys to product success.
First is the product market strategy which contains such elements as what is it that the customer wants to do, how do they do it, when do they do it, why do they do it, where do they do it, and how satisfied are they with the way it is being done now and how important is getting that thing done.
Additional elements are:
• Design thinking the process and how to do it, innovation: what is it and where does it come from,
• The value proposition or the product/market fit or what is the product going to do for the customer,
• Customer research and
• How to conduct it via observation, interviews, surveys and if big data is available the analysis of it,
• Market research including sources both first hand and second hand,
• Product positioning that is a stake in the mind of the consumer about the product and its relationship to competing products,
• Distribution channels that is how will the product be distributed: direct, through distributors, retailers, manufacturing representatives,
• Features/advantages/benefits: what features does the product have, what are the advantages each feature has over the competitor’s product and what are the benefits of each feature to the customer,
• Pricing strategy like a cash cow, skimming, gross profit, training plan in terms of who needs to be trained on what topics and by when and where, and
• Product roadmap laying out the development of the product and/or product line into the future
Lastly, the mission is to understand that product success is not just about technology.
The overall mission is for the participants to be able to have a structure or framework around which they can plan and implement what is necessary for a successful product or service.
The other 47 workshops go into these topics in greater detail.
Objectives
1. Understand the size and causes of product failure
2. Learn what is a product and a service and their differences and similarities
3. Learn about the role of the product manager in the success of the product
4. Learn the six keys to product success
5. Understand what goes into a product market strategy
6. Understand the importance of repeatable product development processes
7. Understand the importance of having the right information at the right time for product success decision making
8. Understand how important it is to understand your customers and to learn what it is that they want to do
9. Learn the key competencies or skill sets that your employees need to have in order to help ensure product
10. Learn about the information technology, software products, and systems that can be used to. track product management processes and success
11. Understand that success is not just the technology
Strategies
1. Read the section related to product failure
2. Read the section related to what is a product?
3. Read the section related to. the role of the product manager and discuss with the class Including how the role In your organization is similar or different?
4. Read about the six keys to product success and be able to articulate them
5. Read about the key elements of a product market strategy
6. Read about the importance of a repeatable product development process in order to avoid product failure
7. Review what product information is currently available and identify the steps necessary to acquire the additional information that is needed
8. Read about the process to learn about what your customer wants to do.
9. Read about the list of competencies required for product success and identify which of those you currently have and those in which you need additional training
10. Identify current systems and tools being used in the management of your product or service and which ones you should consider adding
11. Read about why technology is not the only factor in product success
Tasks
1. Select a product that recently failed and identify the factors that contributed to its failure. Identify what things could have been done to have helped predict success.
2. Identify five products and five services add decide whether or not they are a product or a service.
3. Based upon the role of the product manager described in the workshop discuss what additional responsibilities and authorities should be added or removed to your current product manager job description
4. Each member of the class should pick one of the six keys to product success and describe them in detail
5. Each member of the class should pick one of the elements of a product market strategy and discuss in detail
6. Pick a recent product failure and discuss whether it was a repeatable process that was used in its product management lifecycle
7. For product information that is needed for good decision-making, identify a methodology to Obtain the information that is needed
8. Identify the four cumulative ways of obtaining customer information
9. For those competencies you feel you need to acquire describe how you are going to go about acquiring them
10. For the tools you currently use in product management, identify each of their strengths and weaknesses
11. List the reasons why technology is not the only factor in product success
Introduction
This foundational workshop gives you a birds-eye view of the entire Product Management lifecycle and the key elements that make a product successful.
It briefly covers why products fail, what is a product, what a product manager is, and the six keys to product success.
Executive Summary
About 40% of all new products fail each year representing a waste of over USD 0.64 Trillion. But they don’t have to. This workshop and the next will give you the tools, skills, and competencies for consistent product success.
This workshop will cover:
• Product Failure and Its Impact
• Introduction to The Six Keys to Product Success
• What Is a Product? What is a Product Manager? Six Keys to Product Success The First is the Strategy or Plan or Product Market Strategy
• The Keys to Product Success
• The History of the Management of Products and its Organization
• What Distinguishes Products and Services?
• Business Model and Canvas
• Product Management Lifecycle and Framework
• Product Management Competencies
• Successful Management of Products in Startups
• Competencies Required for Successful Management of Products
• Product Management Focused Organizational Structure
Chapter 1: Product Failure and Its Impact
The actual product failure rate is about 40%. New products can fail for a variety of reasons—poor product-market fit, unanswered customer needs, or staunch competition, to name a few. The reasons are:
No Product-Market Fit because the product does not fit the needs of the market and thus has little to no value.
The product is solving the wrong problem. Sometimes there are just not enough potential users for that product.
Letting the perfect miss, the market window because it is taking too long to develop and build the product.
Ignoring the voice of the customer results in failing to update the product to current customer needs.
Failing to establish beforehand customer listening posts to hear what the customers think on a regular basis.
Moving too slowly, so the market passes by.
Misunderstanding your customers in terms of what they want to do and perhaps where they go to buy a product does not match your product’s distribution.
Having the wrong price could be another reason, like being too expensive for the customer to justify or afford. Or too cheap, so the customer doesn’t believe the product will do what its value proposition says at such a low price. Or a competitive product offers a better return on investment.
Another mistake is going after a market that is too small, or your research into the target market is flawed.
Sometimes the wrong area of business is invested in. For example, resources are spent on product features instead of gaining distribution where the market is located.
Intensively competitive markets can also result in product failure. Lastly, poor execution can affect product success. For example, wasting advertising funds before the product is distributed and the sales force is trained.
Chapter 2: The Six Keys to Product Success
The six keys to product success is Strategy, Process, Information, Customers, Employees and Systems.
The Product Market Strategy consists of up to 32 key elements, from clearly understanding what your customer wants to do, to market and competitive research, to the product’s value proposition, product positioning, product roadmap, pricing and distribution strategy, and more.
Repeatable and mature product development and marketing process is the second key.
Having the right information available for decision making is important too.
Understanding clearly and deeply what the customer wants to do and where they research and buy a product or service for that problem.
Having within your product managers all of the 130 competencies required for product success.
Plus having the systems and tools for getting the job done is the last key.
Chapter 3: What Is a Product? Who Is a Product Manager? Six Keys to Product Success The First the Strategy or Plan or Product Market Strategy
A product is an article or substance that is created or refined with the intention of being used. Typically, it is marketed to be sold and/or delivered. A product usually is tangible. Even though one cannot touch software, it is considered to be a product too, because people interact with it through their computers or other devices.
A service is an intangible product.
Therefore, the services that are developed and/or delivered by commercial or non-profit organizations, including government, are products too, and the foundations discussed in this workshop also pertain to them.
Who is a product manager?
In many organizations, the person or persons responsible for the success of a product has the title Product Manager or Product Marketing Manager. However, they also some- times go by different other titles—perhaps as many as a few hundred more titles—but they pretty much do the same things (or a subset of the same things) and need to have the same competencies.
Chapter 4: The Keys to Product Success
The following are the six keys to product and organizational success—in short, SPICES:
1. Strategy
2. Process
3. Information
4. Customers
5. Employees
6. Systems
Chapter 5: The History of the Management of Products
The concept of a Product Manager (which we will cover in more detail later) started in 1932 at Procter and Gamble (P&G) and spread, based on my research, from P&G to Hewlett-Packard, to Apple (and others) and then to many companies in Silicon Valley and around the world. This includes such places as Australia, Sweden, and recently Germany, Portugal, and India.
Chapter 6: What Distinguishes Products and Services?
A product is a tangible entity that satisfies a want or need. It could be something that has been made to be sold. You can touch it. It is considered inventory and might have value if it can be sold. You can feel it. It is usually measured in units.
Merchandise, raw materials, finished goods, commodities, project deliverables, and insurance policies are all products. Recently, the concept of non-physical, intangible data products has emerged as virtual data goods, which are virtual products. You cannot touch them, but they are there. JPG, MP3, video files, and in the future, more and more 3D representations or Star Trek’s Hologram are other examples of products.
For-profit organizations, which are typically corporations, manufacture and/or develop products for sale.
A service is an intangible product.
Chapter 7: Business Model and Canvas
A business model is a description of means and methods a firm employs to earn the revenue projected in its plans. It views the business as a system and answers the question: “How are we going to make money to survive and grow?”
A business model contains four parts: value proposition, organizational structure, organizational relationships, and operations.
There are many different business models to make money.
A business model canvas provides a one page summary of the business model.
Chapter 8: Product Management Lifecycle and Framework
Frameworks have started being used only recently to the management of products, based on software architecture frameworks. Some companies have tried to adopt frameworks from manufacturing’s lean or just-in-time architecture. Others have based their framework on the Six Sigma framework for quality assurance. Additionally, others have recently adopted agile framework, replacing waterfall or Toll-gate/Stage-gate processes.
The advantage of having an agreed-upon framework is that everybody in the organization knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. The disadvantage of a framework is picking the wrong one. If it does not match into the vision, values and culture of the company, the framework will contribute to failure. For example, if the company’s value is to build quality products, but the process drives getting the product out quickly to get sales and compromises on quality, there may be a conflict caused because of the differences between the two priorities.
Chapter 9: Product Management Competencies
A competency is the ability to do something successfully and efficiently. In this session, we will discuss the various things an organization needs to do successfully and efficiently to enable the successful management of products. We will also discuss the skills or abilities required in a product management team to manage the products successfully.
The list of personal competencies required for the successful management of products is long, detailed and very complex. Few organizations, let alone professionals, have all the necessary competencies. Even fewer have the required depth of knowledge and experience necessary. That is why the management of products requires teamwork and effective give- and-take as areas are explored, debated and decisions made.
For product success, it is essential that your organization has competencies in all the areas discussed here in terms of the activities that need to be performed in each area.
These competencies fall into the categories of organizational, foundational and individual.
Chapter 10: Successful Management of Products in Startups and Competencies Required for Successful Management of Products
While we discuss the product management lifecycle and framework, a question comes to mind—Do these also apply to startups, which typically seem to function a little differently from bigger organizations?
It is typical for entrepreneurs and those involved in startups to think that what they have to do is different from what organizations would usually need to do to successfully manage their products. Some of this understanding developed from the agile hacking together of a product—which is why the term ‘development’ was changed to ‘hacking’.
Trying to come up with product ideas and what they help do is being called by some as ‘innovation’, as if this is something that organizations have started doing recently, and in the past, it was a mystery.
Chapter 11: Competencies Required for Successful Management of Products
A competency is the ability to do something successfully and efficiently. In this session, we will discuss the various things an organization needs to do successfully and efficiently to enable the successful management of products. We will also discuss the skills or abilities required in a product management team to manage the products successfully.
The list of personal competencies required for the successful management of products is long, detailed and very complex. Few organizations, let alone professionals, have all the necessary competencies. Even fewer have the required depth of knowledge and experience necessary. That is why the management of products requires teamwork and effective give-and-take as areas are explored, debated and decisions made.
In addition to personal competencies, there are also organizational ones necessary for product success.
Chapter 12: Product Management Focused Organizational Structure
The organizational structure can affect the success of a product severely. In this session, we will understand which organizational structures support, and which do not support customer-centric products.
In this workshop, you will learn about a military or railroad top-down structure, a matrix structure, management by badgering, and a new enlightened approach as evidenced by Hewlett-Packard which makes the employee and asset not a liability.
Curriculum
Product Management – Workshop 1 – What Must Products Have to Succeed?
- Product Failure and Its Impact
- The Six Keys to Product Success
- What Is a Product?
- The Keys to Product Success
- The History of the Management of Products.
- What Distinguishes Products and Services?
- Business Model and Canvas
- Product Management Lifecycle and Framework
- Product Management Competencies
- Successful Management of Products
- Competencies Required for Successful Management of Products
- Product Management Focused Organizational Structure
Distance Learning
Introduction
Thank you for enrolling in Appleton Greene’s Product Management. We are sure that you will find this journey exciting and rewarding to both you as an individual and for your company as a whole.
The Product Management training program is a forty-eight-step process that is presented through Appleton Greene’s distant learning method. This method requires the participants who are involved in the various workshops to take more responsibility for their learning than in the more traditional training methods. With the distant learning method, you will be doing a combination of group classroom learning, individual and group study, and preparation outside of the classroom.
This method may take some getting used to because a lot of the learning will happen outside of the classroom. This being the case, to be the most successful you will need to hold yourself accountable plus you will be part of teams that will hold each other accountable. This Distance Learning Guide explains how this method works and what is required on your part to be successful.
You have been assigned an Appleton Greens Product Management facilitator. This person is responsible for supporting you and helping you achieve maximum benefits from the Product Management. Please see the following Tutorial Support section for further explanation.
As Individuals
In order to effectively implement the Product Management workshops, it is important that everyone involved in a workshop learn all they can prior to and during a workshop. This involves reviewing and understanding the materials presented during a workshop as well as preparing for the workshop by studying the material required prior to each workshop. All the materials available prior to, during and after each workshop are designed to reinforce what you learned during a workshop to help ensure that you are prepared for the next step in the process.
The Introduction material is designed to help each participant better prepare for the workshop so they learn more and are better able to contribute to the discussions during each workshop. Participation from everyone attending a given workshop is essential if you are to reap the most from the Product Management workshops. Some workshops will have exercises that the participants will be asked to complete prior to the workshop. If the material is not clear to you or if you need help to better understand the pre-workshop exercises you are asked to contact your Appleton Green Product Management facilitator for clarification and guidance. Please refer to the Tutorial Support section for guidelines concerning the process to be used when contacting your Appleton Greene Product Management facilitator.
As Team Members
In order to effectively implement the Product Management, it is also important that as a group everyone involved in a workshop learn all they can from the workshop and as a group be ready for your next workshop. This involves team learning and team accountability. Learning is individual but applying this learning is only beneficial if it helps the team.
Your individual learning is dependent on how you personally study and learn. Some of what you learn is applicable to you individually. Most of what you learn, however, is aimed at learning how to apply your individual knowledge to a team setting. The focus here is on making sure that everyone in a workshop understands the subject matter. If you are unclear or confused, you need to speak up and ask questions within the workshop setting. Your Appleton Greene Product Management facilitator is available to help you, or your team members clarify what is expected of you. This will need to be scheduled in advance and at a time that works for everyone involved, making it more productive for everyone and giving your facilitator proper time to prepare. Please see the Tutorial Support section for suggested timing requirements.
Self-Discipline
One of the challenges of receiving training through the distance learning method is that you are more on your own than if you are strictly working with a facilitator in a classroom setting. It is up to you to evaluate your progress. It is up to you to be truthful with yourself concerning your level of understanding of what you have been taught. If you are uncertain you need to reach out to your Appleton Green Product Management facilitator or talk with others who are in the same workshop as you. You will not be given any tests in order to move on to the next workshop. It is up to you to determine your level of understanding and to be sure to ask questions about what you do not understand. This can be a trying situation for some people who are used to being given clear direction concerning their job tasks. This can also be intimidating to those who do not have as much self-confidence as others. One of the main purposes of the Product Management workshops is to create synergy through effective teamwork throughout a company. Remember, everyone is in the same boat. You are all learning together. There is no reason for any of you to feel intimidated or that you lack what others may have. Everyone is different in varying respects and possesses different skill sets. These differences are in large part what makes teams so effective.
It is important that you discipline yourself to stay on track with what you are learning. If you do not stay current, you will not only hurt yourself because you are not gaining the type of understanding you need but you are also hurting the other members of your team.
Summary
The distance learning method allows you some freedom to study when you want and the ability to work around a more flexible schedule. However, it does require more self-discipline to ensure you stay on course. It also requires a more truthful self-assessment than if you are in a more structured learning environment. Not only does it require a more truthful self-assessment, it requires a more open atmosphere among the team you are part of. As team members, you will need to rely on each other to ensure that not only as individuals you are gaining the understanding you need but as teams you are gaining the combined knowledge necessary to make the Product Management workshops as successful as it can be.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportu