Balance give and take, yes and no, push and pull with products

In a week that seemed to bring every form of product choice a PM can encounter, I decided to exhibit strong product leadership on every front.

Most Product Managers are continuously making choices about what goes into the product and what stays out. We use tools like the product roadmap to break down and convey these decisions over appropriately-sized release cycles.

Senior PMs also have to make choices about which Product Manager works on what parts of the overall puzzle and how best to coordinate dependencies across all the pieces to deliver the larger solution in a timely way.

We make difficult choices about what we feel comfortable promising to the Sales and Marketing teams who are busy prospecting for future customers that will bring in new revenue.

And Product Managers have to make critical choices about how to balance the perfectly usable product with what's feasible given the available technical resources as well as other constraints that are also in play.

It is rare, in my experience, that a Product Manager is faced with all these choices in the span of a single week. This was one of those rare weeks for me.

What drove these decisions

We are closing in on the end of the calendar year and that is affecting each department differently:

• Can we close these deals before the quarter ends? Our Sales team is a rush, scrambling more than normal to close their deals. Sales leadership is pushing everyone to go a little faster and be more aggressive with their prospects.
• What can I tell my customers who have "urgent" questions about next year's product developments? Our Professional Services and Support teams are trying to work with existing customers who can't seem to wait for the future product enhancements that might be just around the corner.
• How will we grow the Product and Tech teams to meet the demands of the business? Our senior management team is trying to lock down schedules and budgets in the planning for next year, hoping to align individual departmental recruiting and hiring plans.
• Did we get as far as we wanted? And of course, my own Product team is doing some reflecting on our efforts over the past year as we think about changes we want to make in the coming year.

As I said before, this is a unique time of the year where Product Management, like other departments, is feeling an increase in pressure to respond to our customers, our fellow employees, and our stakeholders. But I felt more impact during this particular week as I fielded product-related solicitations from every corner of our business. 

The decision: Use each and every opportunity to demonstrate solid product governance.

In a recent, rather insightful exchange with a PM peer, I was made even more aware of how broadly the Product team's decisions will radiate outward to the rest of the organization. For example, the product priorities can influence deals in the Sales pipeline, ideally in a positive way, as we build trust with prospects around the upcoming roadmap commitments.

The choices we make will also impact how the Professional Services team and the customers do or don't utilize our products to solve their problems. In too many situations, I have seen product/platform deficiencies spark some creative workarounds, many of which create even bigger complications for me as I inevitably roll out future product enhancements to address the feature gaps.

I was made even more aware of how broadly the Product team's decisions will radiate outward to the rest of the organization.

Our decisions can also lead to new technical debt (knowingly or unknowingly), that will someday impact downstream engineering work.

Like every Product Manager, I carefully weigh the impact of my decisions with exactly these outcomes in mind.

Plan of attack

While I was still intent on pushing forward with my own Product agenda, I tried to be conscious of the respective priorities and stresses of each department with whom I came in contact. In each circumstance, I looked for a way to balance the needs of all parties while still doing what I thought was best for the long-term health of our business.

Along the way, I also found opportunities to revisit and improve my own methods.

Give a product, take a product

This week, I passed over the ownership of a new product to a very capable PM and was thrilled to see him deftly receive the hand off. It was a big relief for me to be able to move the effort safely off my plate, but it was even more satisfying to watch an experienced Product Manager run the entire exercise without any oversight. I am confident that this decision will help the company deliver the new product to customers according to the original plan.

During the same week, I pulled a separate product initiative away from a different PM on my team, partly because I needed him to focus on (and finish) a separate project. But I was also concerned that the initiative was not advancing at a good pace, which was going to negatively impact a large percentage of our customer base. This was the harder of the two product ownership decisions, but the needs of the customer ultimately prevailed.

Saying no and saying yes to customers

This week, Sales pulled me into two high-profile customer conversations where strategic outcomes were partially dependent on release dates outlined in my product roadmap. In the first case, I knew our teams were ahead of schedule which prompted me to confidently confirm to the customer, "yes, we will absolutely hit those dates for you."

The second conversation didn't go as well. I began the discussion by asking questions meant to help me discover exactly what this organization thought they needed. It didn't take long for me to recognize their request though, as it frequently shows up in competitive sales situations as an obvious land mine strategically placed by another prominent vendor.

My attempt to point out to the customer that they had been misled was not well received. They persisted by parroting their "needs" to us and pinned me down by asking if I had plans to deliver features to address their problem. I said, "No, we do not currently have such a feature and I have no plan to deliver that in the next year.  Specifically, it is not on the product roadmap."

After that call ended, I found myself in some heated discussions with our Sales team who was not altogether pleased that I had been so blunt with the customer. I reflected on this for some time and later came back to apologize and to say that I would try to soften my answers on future such calls. Indeed, I would need to learn better ways of saying "No."

Push and Pull Priorities

This week, I also sat with the CTO to have several talks about our product plans for next year. We agreed that the teams would need to spend more time on product deficit in the months ahead but recognized that it would impact our ability to keep up the pace of innovation in terms of customer-facing features.

Flickr image source: http://tinyurl.com/qhw8hzf

In a simple whiteboard exercise, we were able to list more than 20 separate initiatives that needed prioritization and ultimately reorganized a number of the items on the product roadmap.   

Some of the short-term, scale-related items would ultimately pay off for all of our customers even if they couldn't be demoed in a webinar or training course. Many of these projects were overdue as parts of the underlying platform were in need of repair or rebuilding to handle the next wave of new users. 

I can appreciate the need for ongoing investment in the plumbing, in the supporting architecture and all the frameworks on which our products are built. I understand how the resulting performance of the applications contributes to a positive user experience. Still, it can be hard to sell that to the other stakeholders in the company who can't readily appreciate the improvements. Part of my job in the coming months would be to help extol the virtues of those investments to impatient parties who crave more visible features.  

The impact

I left out many of the other events of the week that included making some necessary personnel changes, planning for an upcoming office space shuffle, and recovering from the annual holiday party. But the net impact of the decisions I described above were ultimately positive for the company. I am confident that we will end the year strong and will have an even better, more productive product year ahead.

Look for more reports from theProductPath around capacity planning, managing stakeholders, and PM credibility here on PM Decisions.

More articles from our blog PM Decisions

Convey the Product Vision to outside influencers

To do my part in helping promote the company with external stakeholders, I decided to tune up my product presentation to deliver a compelling blueprint for the future.

An early stage company often needs to do more than simply sell and support its products. For instance, there are occasions where larger and longer term plans must be discussed to advance the business through the help of customers, partners, and investors.

As the Head of Products, I often participate in these discussions, usually to tell our unique story from a product perspective. My contribution is relating all the progress made over the past weeks and months to the broader and still unfolding product narrative that will continue to propel us forward in the years ahead.

What drove this decision

With all the hyperbole about taking it to the next level, I rarely see anyone writing about what you do when you get there. There is, of course, the want to celebrate the achievement but that is short-lived and you usually don't rest there for very long. The same energy and passion and drive that got you and the team to this point is what will ultimately compel you to keep moving forward.

My company had reached another stage in its growth and it was time to turn our sights to the next plateau. New players were now starting to take an interest in the company and it would take additional time and energy investments on our part to engage with them.

It should be no surprise then, that in this situation, I would turn to the same tools and tactics I had used to help get our company this far. It was clear to me that, going forward, I would be telling and selling an even larger product vision.

The decision: Prepare and pitch a more strategic product roadmap that could accommodate a broader range of business conversations.

The product roadmap continues to be my go-to asset for constructing full and lively reports, especially with those unfamiliar with our business. I continuously tweak our roadmap, not just to reflect the evolving initiatives and priorities but also to help me tell better stories.

Every so often, I am able to produce a rendition of the roadmap that has just the right amount of fidelity. When that happens, I can communicate equally well with everyone from Engineers to Board members. This was one of those occasions where details about individual features or shorter-term enhancements would be folded into larger themes that stretch out for many months and clearly connect parallel product initiatives.

Plan of attack

Over the past year, I had been more tactical with my product plans, mostly with the intent of rebuilding credibility with the other departments in the organization. Now, I was focused on communicating our product direction to audiences outside the company.

Highlight product advancements to strategic partner

My first opportunity came in an early stage discussion with a new partner. This group was more familiar with the general domain, our specific problem space as well as our closest competitors. So there was no need for me to start all the way back at square one. They would understand how the pieces of our platform fit together, where our ongoing innovation was helping us take a leading position in the market, and how we were preparing to address weak spots in the product.

In covering the roadmap, I stepped through a number of the major past and future milestones to highlight where this partner could "plug in" and expand the value for our joint customers. This tailored view of our company's go-forward product plans ultimately helped them construct a companion roadmap for a strong joint offering. 

I found this conversation to be very productive as little time was wasted covering small details. Instead, we were able to focus on a series of touchpoints around which a mutual partnership could be developed. 

Communicate rate of progress to potential investors

anytime I find myself in front of investors, I try to emphasize the current product returns realized from past investments.

My next challenge was to use the same roadmap material to build a story that communicated how recent product advancements had directly contributed to the best year in the company's financial history.

The first part of that story was tying important customer victories to key product milestones in an attempt to prove some level of correlation. Indeed, we had prioritized some of our work over the past year to help advance large deals in the sales pipeline.

More than that perhaps, I wanted to communicate that we felt we had nailed the product-market fit and that customers were more regularly landing directly in our sweet spot.

And anytime I find myself in front of investors, I try to emphasize the current product returns realized from past investments. This audience, more than any other, responds well to proof around ROI.

Demonstrate domain expertise and solid product planning to an unacquainted party

The last test was to engage a new group that had no prior contact with our company and no exposure to our particular problem space. For this discussion, I chose to deliver an expedited product overview that highlighted achievements from the past year. My goal was to try to condense the past 12 months and past 5-10 years into a 45-minute presentation - without losing my audience.

Because I didn't know how long I would be able to hold their attention, I decided to focus on how good we had been (and would continue to be) at product planning. I wanted to show how well we understood our customers' problems and why we were confident that we hold our place as a leader in the market.

I was able to underscore this by calling attention to a few parallel development threads in the roadmap that had recently converged to deliver big payoffs for our customers.

The impact

I received positive feedback from participants in all three meetings over this week. Ultimately, I believe the outcomes were largely driven by the preparation time spent on the roadmap material itself. I have been able to get a great deal of mileage from my product roadmap by making sure that it clearly communicates product intentions, that it justifies product investments, and that it ties these investments back to actual customer needs.

Look for more reports from theProductPath around socializing roadmaps, product roadmap themes, and managing stakeholders here on PM Decisions.

More articles from our blog PM Decisions

Showcase roadmap to advance a large deal

Flickr image source: http://tinyurl.com/pgfwehq

To accelerate the largest sales opportunity in our pipeline, I agreed to lead a spirited, product-oriented discussion with the prospect free from any heavy sales pressure.

It is not uncommon for Sales to pull the Product team into large deals, especially late in the sales cycle where there is a need for even greater assurance that we are a vendor on which they can rely. I have developed and shared sanitized, customer-facing roadmaps on many occasions and have even delivered custom product demos to help our Reps close their transactions.

I do have to be careful about sharing too much information prematurely. Even hinting that the product may be headed down a particular path can send an overeager Account Executive spiraling off in a wrong direction. But I do appreciate the positive impact for a potential customer to "be invited to a private meeting with the head of our Product group." I also think it is valuable to assist in efforts like these and to maintain a healthy relationship with our revenue-producing Sales team.    

What drove this decision

 I am firmly against letting any one customer hold sway over the roadmap and my product priorities

I was familiar with this particular prospect - indeed we had all been watching the opportunity progress over the past few months. The use case was squarely in our wheelhouse but the prospect had identified a few specific feature requests that we might not otherwise have delivered in a suitable time frame. And while I am firmly against letting any one customer hold sway over the roadmap and my product priorities, I do believe there is room for a large, active user base to weigh in on decisions about product direction. 

The decision: Demonstrate an impressive pace of innovation through a series of past accomplishments and future intentions and encourage the customer to weigh in on the ongoing roadmap priorities.  

Image source: http://tinyurl.com/qjogg57

Customer seem to love talking about roadmaps. Even when you lay out all the disclaimers about lack of certainty and best guess estimates, there is still enough curiosity remaining to drive a lively conversation.

I don't mind sharing our vision for the products and where I'd like to take them in the months and years ahead. There are certain paths that are quite clear to me at the moment and others that are more directional in nature.

I am also very comfortable weaving a strong product story that incorporates past achievements with current work and that extends into the not-to-distant future.   

Plan of attack

As I mentioned, the meeting was not intended to be overly sales-y but the parties on both sides knew this would be another part of our pitch for their business. I built a product-focused agenda that put our offerings in the best possible light. I accentuated the products and features that were high on their list of needs, starting with items for which we had just completed development and moving to the ones that were still several months away.

Demonstrate A working version of an early prototype 

Previously in the same sales process, I shared some clickable prototypes with this prospect to give them an idea of where we were headed. One prototype in particular was more relevant to their primary use case and the prospect had showed great interest at the time.

The Product and Engineering teams had since made good progress with the development of this feature so I used this opportunity to walk the prospect through a fully implemented version. The feature was intended to be the highlight of the upcoming product release so the demonstration was positioned as an early and somewhat exclusive sneak peak.

Preview unreleased features

Another keen area of interest for the prospect happened to overlap with one of my high priority product initiatives. I had been pushing our internal teams to complete the first iteration of a major component whose full delivery schedule would stretch out for many more months.

It turned out that while this initial cut was not quite ready for widespread use, it was certainly viable for use in pilot exercises like the one the prospect had scheduled. Again, we emphasized the exclusive access being offered and made sure to highlight our company's rapid pace of development.    

Share detailed roadmap of prospect's most requested feature

After completing the feature demonstrations (which were well-received), I switched gears and walked through a customized product roadmap. The prospect had expressed a need for functionality that was not yet part of our product but that would represent a natural extension to the platform.

While I was careful not to make promises about specific dates, I was able to talk through a plausible plan that illustrated the incremental delivery of their requested functionality. 

Unveil results of relevant internal research efforts

In a separate internal research & development initiative, I had recruited a data scientist to help us look for useful and insightful ways to share the data we were collecting around our customers' workflows. She had produced some impressive dashboard-style reports and charts that were scoring huge points with our internal stakeholders. 

So, as the big finale to the conversation with our prospect, I rolled out these artifacts and tied them back to the workflows they would ultimately use in their own solutions. The resulting discussion was quite fruitful for both parties as we collectively described a future partnership filled with great potential.

The impact

The short version is that it worked! The conversation was very productive and we impressed the prospect enough to have them throw more weight behind the initiative. Nothing specific was promised but they did acknowledge our commitment to advancing the products and their unique opportunity to work with us to guide its long-term development.

Look for more reports from theProductPath around product reviews, socializing product roadmaps, and the PM role here on PM Decisions.

More articles from our blog PM Decisions

Fire up the Sales team

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacelion/3008520385

After being invited to participate in our mid-year, internal Sales team rally, I decided to deliver a rousing product presentation to get the troops pumped up.

Over the course of my career, I have spent months embedded with various Sales teams and I would recommend it for any aspiring Product Manager looking to better understand their stakeholders. Some of their customs, however, may still be a bit peculiar, at least to me. In particular, there is this practice of routinely gathering the entire Sales team for an entire day or two, typically somewhere away from the office with the intent of re-energizing everyone.

I know that the Sales team, like most other teams, have their own set of priorities and that they don't often stay as connected to the products as I would prefer. So I find it valuable to take advantage of occasions like this to better "align" myself and our products with the Sales team.

What drove this decision

We had recently hired some new folks into the Sales ranks over the past few months and the entire team had been focused on rolling out an updated sales process with our revamped Marketing team. This meant less bandwidth for absorbing the last few rounds of product updates.

Everyone in the company is invited to attend our monthly Release Previews of course but Sales attendance, in particular had been somewhat spotty for awhile.

Now, with this mostly captive audience, I had a chance to focus everyone's attention on our Products and to remind the team how much progress we have made in the last six months.

The decision: Weave together a powerful before/after story that relates the numerous product enhancements as well as our impressive rate of innovation to stir the team and inspire them to carry that message to our customers.

I can't blame our Sales reps for settling into a comfortable routine and sticking with a story that works for them. Asking them to change up their narrative every time we release new software is a little unrealistic. But I knew that the product improvements we had made over the past six months had been significant and would have a big positive impact on the way we all were engaging with our customers.

Our company had indeed devoted a great deal of time to understanding our customers' pain and I knew we could speak to that confidently. But I had sat in on enough product demos to know that there were plenty of rough spots - areas of the product that didn't show particularly well. Much of the Product effort in the first half of the year went to address these specific issues and our story needed to be refreshed to incorporate every one of those Product improvements.  

Plan of attack

They gave me 60 minutes to dazzle the troops.

They gave me 60 minutes to dazzle the troops. Even the best slides would not likely keep their collective attention for that long so I supplemented a PowerPoint presentation with live product demos and tantalizing prototypes to help keep them captivated.

The goal for me was to have everyone walk away with renewed pride in our company's product and more importantly, for each of them to feel even more confident that we were truly the best option for solving our customers' problems.

Create a backdrop for the main narrative

The first step was to set up a familiar context around which I could piece together the different elements of the story. As a framework for my slides, I decided to use a 1-page diagram I had created months earlier as a sales aid to help orient our prospects and drive productive sales discussions. I began by highlighting a number of improvements I had made in this iteration of the diagram to help me grab the team's attention at the very start.

My (abbreviated) presentation flow for the Sales team tells a before/after story using the familiar customer process as the backdrop

Show old screenshots highlighting the known bad spots

The next step was easy. I found old screenshots from the recent past and positioned them on top of the diagram. This had the intended effect of reminding everyone how hard it once was to brag about our solution. During the presentation, I intentionally exaggerated the struggles associated with this familiar but outdated description of our product - but concluded that this awesome team was still able to sell that version. The good news is that it wouldn't get any worse!

Replace with new screenshots

Then, one by one, I swapped in the new hotness. Gradually, I unfolded our updated story to the group showing how all our pain points had been (or would soon be) addressed. Even better, the Product team had introduced entirely new features that helped to strengthen our overall story. The resulting picture not only improved on the known problems but gave the Sales team even more talking points and would help them address customer issues that we might have dodged in the past.

Tease with early prototypes

But wait - there's more! Stacking up all the existing enhancements on a single slide was certainly effective but to really energize the crowd, I then switched gears and started demoing some of the new stuff that was just around the corner.

Using live code that was still working its way through QA along with fancy, clickable prototypes created by our UX team, I began to weave an even stronger narrative for our Sales team to use immediately with their prospects and customers.

The impact

My talk had the intended effect and I was certainly encouraged by all the positive feedback from the team. I do realize that the real payoff for the company will only come when they carry this updated story to the front lines. 

I remember days in recent past where Sales Engineers would brush past certain areas of the product or skip them entirely hoping that the prospect wouldn't notice. I also remember the collective cringe when a savvy customer would ask to explore the next level of detail behind a particularly well-manicured product demonstration.

With this presentation, I made it clear that we would no longer have to avoid those areas of our product. Instead, I urged our team to intentionally stop and even linger at certain points in the demo to prompt more productive conversations. I wanted our customers to ask those tough questions and engage further with us. We had even more reasons to be proud of our company's products and what's more, could now point to an impressive rate of product improvement over the past six months.

Look for more reports from theProductPath around product review, product culture, and socializing product roadmaps here on PM Decisions.

More articles from our blog PM Decisions

Publish and promote a more consumable product roadmap

Flickr image sources: http://tinyurl.com/otrq3r6, http://tinyurl.com/qyf68uo

As interest in the future capabilities of our products began to increase, I decided to invest more time in making the roadmap more accessible to all parties.

I could spend hours tinkering with a roadmap. There are so many variables to play with, dependencies to work through, customer feedback to fold in, unanticipated hiccups that challenge the schedule, new bugs that surface, and on and on. Without any prompting, I will frequently create several versions of the roadmap to emphasize different details or highlight specific risks. But the list of people that want or NEED to get that close to those details is quite short.

The roadmap can be an indispensable tool for communicating plans to those outside the product team. In my experience though, geeking out with the product roadmap is just not for everyone - most people just want the simple story.

What drove this decision

Over the past few months, I had been fielding a steady stream of inquiries from our Sales team who in turn, were being asked by our customers and prospects to share our product roadmap. These requests were prompted by a desire to see where the company were headed, product wise, especially when there was some set of requirements that would seem to stretch the current limits of our platform.

Most people just want the simple story.

I was also being pulled into discussions with other departments across the organization where, inevitably, the conversations were centered around how our products would (or wouldn't) address a variety of concerns. During these meetings, I often felt as if I should have been carrying a copy of the roadmap with me but the versions I had were too elaborate and were more likely to have generated more questions that it would have answered.

The decision: Socialize a lighter weight product roadmap for inside and outside audiences

Many of the questions I was answering were simple in nature and could be settled with a quick clarification or by referencing a feature in an upcoming release. Unfortunately, there was no accessible model or illustration to reference. I needed to create an alternative, more accessible artifact.

Plan of attack

You have different considerations when you produce a version of your primary artifact that is suitable for external audiences. Not only will you have the challenge of reducing the overall complexity of the content to make it more accessible to those with less context, but you may also need to put it within appropriate physical reach to accommodate the timeliness of their needs.

For me, this meant paring down the content to eliminate details that would only be needed or appreciated by the Product and Engineering teams. It also meant distributing the new artifacts to new channels that puts them within arm's reach and encouraged self-service (vs. disruptive, ad-hoc inquiries).  

Create an attractive artifact that's easy to follow

The first step was perhaps the most difficult for me. I started with the assumption that this extended audience would have a very limited attention span. They would not be that interested in exploring all the potential paths, dependencies and implementation details of the 12-month product roadmap. They were looking for quick answers to broad questions.

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/freshwater2006/693945631

In an attempt to remove the "clutter", I focused on highlighting outcomes, specifically the key dates when they could reasonably expect the big ticket items to become available. I retained the high level  themes, the broad commitment dates and other key elements that go into creating a solid product roadmap. I also embellished this version a bit, altering the names of certain features to line up better with customer use cases. For example, instead of listing a simple "reminder" feature, I described how the reminders could be used to better support a particular business process lifecycle.

Finally, I included and emphasized disclaimers about the accuracy of the roadmap commitments to help set/adjust expectations. This was a bit more CYA than anything else as I want to be able to defend future product decisions that will inevitably conflict with any previous "promises".

Make it accessible for self-service

Not that I don't appreciate being pulled into product conversations but a great number of these do not require the Product Head Honcho. To help people answer their own questions, I took care to put the light weight Roadmap in easy-to-find places throughout the office and beyond:

• Outside my office - My own office is on a well-trafficked path making it convenient to post a copy of the Roadmap on the wall. Several times, when people have barged into my office, I have had to gently usher them outside to point out the "self-service" display. 
• On monitors - Our IT team has placed large, flat-screen monitors throughout the office. I have inserted an image of the new Roadmap into the standard rotation for these monitors to help keep it top of mind.
• Shared repository - I also found it useful to put a copy of the Roadmap artifact in the shared "folder". We have been coaching people to begin any new search there before emailing or picking up the phone.

Present early and often

Now that the distilled Roadmap was ready, I started to share it with the teams at every opportunity. At "all hands" meetings, at our monthly Release Preview, during weekly Sales and Marketing meetings, and at customer events, I would present the artifact to show incremental progress, update everyone on recent product decisions and even show sneak peaks of ongoing development initiatives. 

The impact

I am pleased to have stemmed the tide of inbound roadmap-related queries. And while it does take a few extra cycles for me to keep everyone up to date, I am confident that we have further empowered our Sales team and are helping them move past would-be obstacles with customers and prospects in the sales cycles.

The simpler, lighter weight rendition of the Product Roadmap is now a staple of our planning efforts. We will continue to produce and promote the roadmap through this artifact.

Look for more reports from theProductPath around product management tools, product roadmaps, and product culture here on PM Decisions.

More articles from our blog PM Decisions