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Your one-stop guide to becoming a product management prodigy Product management plays a pivotal role in organizations. In fact, it's now considered the fourth most important title in corporate America yet only a tiny fraction of product managers have been trained for this vital position. If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people who hold this essential job or simply aspire to break into a new role Product Management For Dummies gives you the tools to increase your skill level and manage products like a pro. From defining what product management is and isn't to exploring the rising importance of product management in the corporate world, this friendly and accessible guide quickly gets you up to speed on everything it takes to thrive in this growing field. It offers plain-English explanations of the product life cycle, market research, competitive analysis, market and pricing strategy, product roadmaps, the people skills it takes to effectively influence and negotiate, and so much more.
* Create a winning strategy for your product * Gather and analyze customer and market feedback * Prioritize and convey requirements to engineering teams effectively * Maximize revenues and profitability Product managers are responsible for so much more than meets the eye and this friendly, authoritative guide lifts the curtain on what it takes to succeed.

Product Management For Dummies

Introduction 1





About This Book 1





Foolish Assumptions 3





Icons Used in This Book 3





Beyond the Book 4





Where to Go from Here 4





Part 1: Getting Started with Product Management 5





Chapter 1: Welcome to the World of Product Management 7





Understanding the Need for Product Management 8





Recognizing the Critical Role of Project Management 9





Defining product management 9





Serving as a strategic driver for business 9





Product Management in a Nutshell: Checking Out Your Day-to-Day Life 12





Managing a product during every phase of its life 12





Reaching in to your bag of tricks 13





Chapter 2: Getting in Character: Discovering Your Role as a Product Manager 15





Orientation Day: Examining Your Role as Product Manager 15





Checking out the job description 17





Pinpointing product management on the organizational chart 19





Drafting your product management manifesto 20





Comparing Product Management to Other Related Roles 21





Checking out product marketing 22





Looking into program management 23





Exploring project management 25





Knowing what other roles you interact with 27





Conducting a Self-Assessment: Traits of a Great Product Manager 32





Business acumen 32





Industry knowledge and expertise 33





Technical knowledge 33





People skills 34





Decision-making skills 34





Problem-solving aptitude 35





A cool head 35





Leadership chops 36





Scoring your product manager traits 37





RACI and DACI: Understanding Responsibilities 38





Going the RACI route 38





Taking a DACI direction 39





Using RACI and DACI effectively 40





Chapter 3: Checking Out the Product Life Cycle 41





Defining the Product Life Cycle: What It Is and Isn't 41





Phases and gates 42





Mapping phase-gate to Agile methodologies 43





It's Just a Phase: Breaking Down the Product Life Cycle 46





Phase I: Conceive 46





Phase II: Plan 47





Phase III: Develop 48





Phase IV: Qualify 49





Phase V: Launch 49





Phase VI: Maximize 50





Phase VII: Retire 51





Detailing the Optimal Product Process 52





Taking a look at how the process works 52





Understanding the nine core documents 54





Part 2: Discovering, Evaluating, and Planning for Great Products and Services 57





Chapter 4: Coming Up with Great Product Ideas 59





Getting a Handle on the Creative Process 59





Exploring sources for new ideas 60





Letting your team play 61





Generating Creative Ideas: Techniques and Tips 63





Brainstorming 63





Consulting customer councils 65





Tapping the power of mind mapping 66





Trying a more structured approach: The four actions framework 67





Chapter 5: Working to Understand Who Your Customer Is 69





Moving from Markets to Segments 69





Defining markets and segments 70





Determining market segments 70





Harnessing the Creativity of Personas 72





What is included in a persona description 72





Developing personas 74





Making Sure You Cover All Persona Roles 77





Visiting Customers 78





Observing customer visit courtesies 78





Interviewing customers 79





Chapter 6: Doing Your Homework: Evaluating Your Ideas 83





Understanding the Importance of Market Research and Competitive Intelligence 83





Subdividing kinds of market research 85





Looking for the right place to start 86





Undertaking the Market Research Process 87





Spelling out the market research process 88





Asking the right questions 89





Examining market research methods 91





Studying Competitive Intelligence 93





Identifying competitors 93





Collecting all the competitive intelligence possible 93





Keeping track of the competition 98





Reality-Checking Your Ideas and Hypotheses 99





Using a simple validation process 99





An example of product validation 100





Crunching the Numbers with Financial Forecasting 100





Chapter 7: Prioritizing and Selecting Your Ideas 101





Prioritizing Your Ideas 101





Finding the right fit with the product-market fit triad 102





Putting business canvases to use 104





Weighing different opportunities 108





Applying Scoring Models 110





Scoring for differentiation: The Kano model 110





Scoring for efficient use of development resources: Value versus effort analysis 111





Filling out a prioritization matrix 112





Collecting ballots: Dot voting 113





Buying features 114





Chapter 8: Planning to Plan: Choosing a Suitable Approach 115





Adopting Planning Best Practices 115





Starting early 116





Including your team 116





Treating your plan as a living document 117





Deciding on the Right Amount of Planning 117





Comparing Lean versus in-depth planning 118





Completing the types of new products and services grid 119





Finding the right level of planning for your company's culture 120





Considering your executives' expectations 122





Evaluating investment risk 123





Streamlining the Planning Process with Lean and Simple Planning 124





Understanding the Lean approach 125





What numbers are you looking at? 125





Taking a look at a popular business model canvas 126





Being prepared to rapidly change and pivot 128





Taking a More Thorough Approach: In-Depth Planning 128





Deciding whether to document 129





Using key documents and corresponding questions 130





Estimating your time investment 132





Chapter 9: Developing Your Business Case 133





Making a Business Case for the New Product or Service 134





Recognizing the importance of a business case 134





Outlining your business case 135





Gathering the necessary information 136





Putting It All Together: Documenting Your Business Case 136





Part I: Executive summary 136





Part II: Problem and opportunity 137





Part III: Market landscape 139





Part IV: Competitive landscape 139





Part V: Financial and resource impact analysis 141





Part VI: Risks 143





Parts VII through XI: Other sections 143





Getting buy-in for your business case 146





Chapter 10: Developing Your Market Strategy 147





Grasping the Importance of a Market Strategy 148





Setting Yourself Straight on Strategy Tools 149





Go-to-market strategy 149





Strategy models 150





Considering Other Components of Marketing Strategy 156





Whole product offering 156





Brand promise 157





Pricing 157





Segmentation 161





Positioning 161





Naming your product 165





Messaging 166





Putting Your Market Strategy in Writing 168





Part I: Executive summary 169





Part II: Whole product offer 170





Part III: Pricing 171





Part IV: Segmentation 172





Part V: Positioning 172





Part VI: Messaging 173





Part VII: Strategy 173





Part VIII: Launch programs and activities 175





Part IX: Budget 175





Part X: Concluding sections 175





Chapter 11: Developing a Plan: Market Needs, Product Description, and Road Maps 177





Uncovering Market Need and Creating Product Feature Descriptions 178





The problem space 178





The solution space 178





Comparing market needs and product features 178





Keeping discussions clear 180





Documenting Market Needs 181





Questioning why "why" is so important 181





Gathering the necessary information 183





Detailing your market needs document 187





Prioritizing detailed features and market needs 192





Whipping Up a Product Feature Description 193





Outlining the product description 194





Completing the product description document 195





Plotting Your Product's Path to Success with a Product Road Map 199





Part 3: Building and Maximizing Product Success: From Development to Retirement 201





Chapter 12: Shepherding a Product Idea through the Development Phase 203





Getting the Lowdown on Waterfall/Phase-Gate versus Agile Development 203





Waterfall: Measure twice, cut once 204





Agile: Plan and deliver rapidly 205





Creating the backlog in Agile 207





Assuming typical responsibilities 211





Unlocking the Secrets of the Product Development Trade-Off Triangle 213





Maintaining Best Practices during Development 215





Chapter 13: Gearing up for Your Product Launch: The Qualify Phase 217





Getting Up to Speed on the Qualify Phase 217





Ensuring internal and external quality validation 218





Creating a beta plan 219





Dodging typical beta testing mistakes 220





Putting a Beta Program in Place 221





Setting appropriate goals 221





Making your goals concrete 221





Recruiting participants 222





Making the Decision to Ship the Product 226





Chapter 14: Liftoff! Planning and Executing an Effective Product Launch 227





Unlocking the Do's and Don'ts of a Successful Product Launch 228





Understanding the importance of first impressions 228





Detailing the elements of a successful product launch 229





Setting Launch Goals 230





Checking Out Different Launch Types 231





Launches under Agile or very frequent releases 231





Easy does it: The soft launch 231





A small effort: The minimal launch 232





Going all-in: The full scale launch 233





Choosing a launch type: Key considerations 233





Running a Smooth Product Launch 234





Building your launch squad 235





Tracking milestones and ensuring accountability 235





Arming your sales team and other key stakeholders 236





Creating a Product Launch Plan 237





Recognizing the importance of the launch plan 237





Filling out the launch plan template 238





Validating the Plan against Your Launch Goals 241





Chapter 15: Maximizing Your Product's Revenue and Profits 243





Grasping the Basics of Marketing 244





Marketing mix 244





Working with marcom and creating marketing collateral 248





Fitting into the sales and marketing funnel 252





Getting sales the tools to sell the product 254





Becoming marketing aware 255





Forecasting: A Look to the Future 256





Collecting data for forecasting 256





Making assumptions 259





Creating an Effective Marketing Plan 260





Recognizing the importance of a top-notch marketing plan 261





Outlining your marketing plan: What to include 261





Setting goals 263





Monitoring Product Success Metrics 265





Keeping tabs on the sales funnel: Leads, opportunities, and conversions 265





Examining revenues and profitability 265





Gauging market share 266





Benchmarking: Tracking against the business plan 266





Changing Course: Making Adjustments 267





Beefing up sales support 268





Enhancing the product 268





Trimming costs 268





Chapter 16: Retirement: Replacing a Product or Taking It off the Market 271





Deciding How to Retire a Product 272





Taking into account internal and external expectations 272





Considering Critical Factors in a Product Retirement Plan 273





Breaking down specific end-of-life issues by product type 273





Distinguishing a product's various end-of dates 275





Checking out parts of a product retirement plan 276





Following Best Practices when Retiring a Product 277





Part 4: Becoming a Phenomenal Product Manager 279





Chapter 17: Cultivating Your Product Management Leadership Skills 281





Identifying Traits of an Effective Product Management Leader 282





Developing Your Leadership Style 283





Reaching for results and motivating people 283





Handling stress 284





Thinking, acting, and communicating like a leader 287





Chapter 18: Mastering the Art of Persuasion 289





Brushing Up on Persuasion Basics 289





Active listening 290





Convincing with the three reasons method 291





Asking for what you want - concisely 292





Getting Your Executive Team on Board 293





Drawing up an influence map 293





Building relationships with the key players 294





Talking the talk: Executive-speak 295





Winning Over Your Development Team 296





Building your credibility 296





Assessing your team and adjusting 298





Sizing up different types of developers and how to handle them 299





Fostering rapport with the team 300





Getting Sales on Your Side 301





Making it easy for sales to sell your product 302





Chapter 19: Getting to the Next Level in Product Management 305





Mapping Your Career Path: Setting Goals and Target Dates 305





Establishing goals 306





Building a career plan 307





Writing one-, three-, and five-year action plans 309





Remembering the favors 310





Mastering Your Market and New Technologies 310





Becoming the market and customer expert 311





Increasing your technical expertise 312





Part 5: Part of Tens 313





Chapter 20: Ten Common Product Launch Mistakes to Avoid 315





Failing to Plan Early Enough 316





Not Having a Sustaining Marketing Plan in Place 316





Shipping a Poor Quality Product 317





Inadequately Funding Launch 318





Underestimating the Required Marketing Exposure 319





Driving Customers to Buy Your Competitor's Products 319





Announcing Too Early 320





Not Having a Dedicated Product Review and Public Relations Program 321





Delaying Communication 323





Considering International Markets as an Afterthought 323





Chapter 21: Ten (Plus One) Road Maps to Help You Succeed 325





Theme-Based Product Road Maps 326





Timed Release Product Road Maps 328





Golden Feature Product Road Maps 329





Market and Strategy Road Maps 329





Visionary Road Maps 330





Competitive, Market, and Technology Trends Road Map 331





Technology Road Maps 331





Technology across Products Road Map 332





Platform Road Maps 333





Matrix Product Road Maps 333





Multiple Product Line Road Maps 334





Chapter 22: Ten Ways Product Managers Fail 337





Talking More Than Listening 337





Focusing Only on Features 338





Not Continuing to Learn 338





Reinventing the Wheel 338





Avoiding Seeking Help 339





Digging In and Refusing to Compromise, Ever 339





Never Visiting Customers 339





Not Owning the Whole Product 340





Adopting Agile but Losing Overall Business Focus 340





Being a Product Janitor Rather Than a Product Manager 341





Glossary 343





Index 349