Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is quickly gaining credibility and market share against traditional packaged software.  This presents new opportunities for product groups and also new challenges to teams used to developing packaged software.    This article provides an overview of SaaS, how it differs from packaged software and specific new areas of focus from an end-to-end product perspective required to ensure a successful service.

Deciding what features to do in your next product release and beyond can be a difficult process.  There are always more requests than can be done, different priorities from various stakeholders, and even vastly different types of features that are competing for attention.   This paper discusses a framework and tools for assessing how to attack the problem and can be used in both traditional and Agile projects.

5 Activities for Successful Product Conceptualization

The early stages of product planning earned the nickname The Fuzzy Front End due to the unpredictable nature of initiating new product ideas and concepts within most companies.   The process, the timing, and the outcome are all often quite nebulous and mysterious.   This is in apparent stark contrast to the next phase, Product Development, which has clearly defined processes and deliverables.     This article dives into the murky waters of this front end phase and discusses five activities to help demystify the process.

A Productization Capability Self-Assessment

When was the last time you really assessed your products and your organization’s ability to create and deliver them to the marketplace? If it’s been a while (maybe never?), here are 12 quick questions and scoring criteria to help you determine how well you’re doing and to identify potential areas of improvement.

Part 1 of 3

Apple has been hitting home runs since the 2001 release of the iPod, then iTunes Store, then iPhone, then the App Store. How do they do it? One place to look is in their level of investment in R&D… are they outspending others? As it turns out, Apple’s R&D expense as a ratio of gross profit is only 10%, compared to 12% for HP, 15% for Oracle, 17% for Microsoft, and 21% for Google. So… HOW DO THEY DO IT?! This article is the 1^st of 3 parts to discuss three key activities Apple does well to create innovative products.

A Discussion of Roadmap Planning

In a recent survey of product managers, the biggest challenge they faced was that of “Roadmap planning and commitment”. Figuring out where your products should be headed, in what timeframe and getting corporate support to commit resources to the plan can be daunting and frustrating. This article explores methods for improving the process of developing your plan and in getting organizational support. For reference, also see the article Your Product Management Poll Results.

By Understanding Where Things Go Wrong

Developing a new product is risky business and a big part of the problem lies in planning and delivering the right product. In the book New Products Management[i], Crawford & Di Benedetto give 3 primary reasons for why new products fail:

1. Customers had no compelling reason to buy
2. The product did not meet customer expectations
3. Customers did not get the product message

This short article focuses on the early pre-launch activities (items 1 & 2 above) and where things can go astray.

One of the main drivers of post-V1 Development activities are Feature Requests, both external and internal to the company. The process of managing these requests is far from standardized, resulting in many products with a weak pipeline of ideas or a roadmap comprised of less-than-compelling functionality. This article discusses ways to optimize the process to acquire and select the best options for your customers and your company. In addition, we also look at a few leading companies using social networks to improve their results.

Portfolio Management, Opportunity Assessment, & Release Planning

As technology companies move from the startup phase into more mature states with multiple customers and multiple releases of at least one product, a normal queue of requested functionality or ideas begins to form for what to do next. Customer requests, competitive responses, new opportunities, internal operational issues and defects all begin to pile up and compete for attention. Someone needs to deal with all of this and the question then becomes WHO & HOW? How do we organize, understand, prioritize and decide what to do with this stuff? More importantly, which of these items, IF ANY, will actually contribute to the long term success of the product and company?

And Are You Delegating Your Company's Future?

Where do you find most product management teams organizationally within companies or divisions? The two most likely scenarios are within the Development organization reporting to the CTO or VP of Development, or in the Marketing organization reporting to the CMO or VP of Marketing.

The question is: Is this the right place in your company for this function?