I have been struggling with this question for a while. Thought, I’ll take a shot at providing insights on facts and myths about product management responsibilities in a SaaS environment. High level themes (planning, strategy, GTM plans etc) remain the same. However, the differences arise in the way each theme is handled in an on premise Vs SaaS environment. The bullets below provide a high level overview of the differences:
Theme : Product Development
Off course, development cycles are shorter. Iterative/ Agile development is must have for a SaaS environment. This also means that as a product manager you have to be quick in translating requirements into use cases and prioritization of use cases with engineering groups. Brainstorming sessions tend to be quicker, verbal discussions will be more, documentation tasks would be less. Focus should be on quick iterations and greater customer response.
Theme: Requirement Analysis
SaaS environments cannot be customized easily. Thus, clear understanding of the customer’s problem & how your feature will add value is vital.
Theme: Customer feedback
Prepare to receive, interpret feedback from multiple direct sources. Blogs, Wikis, community portals etc. Product should have built in mechanism to provide feedback to the core groups. Product managers shouldn’t cut down on the direct communication with the customer. You also need to make sure that customer input should not be tailored in manner that fits predefined customer buckets.
Theme: Usability
This is obvious. However, in a SaaS environment you have to more vigilant/informed about the user’s needs, their tasks, their aspirations for the product, user scenarios, industry and user characteristics. You have to make your customers stick to the product. The cost of moving away is nothing. In addition, strong understanding of the web based technologies is essential. Easy, simple UI that gets the tasks is important. Clear crisp use cases hold the key.
Theme: No Training
Design and develop your product with a “no training” goal.
Theme: Communities
Focus on creating and leveraging communities.
Theme: Quality
Quality is important for on – premise and SaaS products. However, with a SaaS product you don’t have the luxury to exclude your sev3/sev4 bugs also. Every user would hit the issue in the SaaS model. Besides, you cannot control what the environment on the users machine and thus the chances of running into edgy issues is very high.
Theme: Innovation
“Me too” features is a recipe for disaster.
New Product Development: Product Managers play a key role in evaluating & launching new products
Managing existing product portfolios is relatively easy than launching new products. However, as a product manager it’s vital to focus on future along with managing the current expectations. Normally, product managers are under pressure to ship the products on time meet the current customer demands/expectations and thus cannot devote time and energy on new ideas. Innovative ideas are muddled by what occurs in the present.
Strategic investments and not incremental innovations lead to great products. Gary Hamel’s landmark book highlights the importance of innovation not as a buzzword but a philosophy that every company needs to follow to create a niche market for their products. Absolute must read for Product Managers. The blog highlights how product manager contribute to the NPD process. Have highlighted the high level process below.
Step 1: Define your vision
Step 2: Define product strategy
Step 3: Ideation
Step 4: Define your business case
Step5: Define the project operating plan
Step 6: Product launch
One could easily write detailed chapters on every phase of the NPD. I have focused on the Ideation phase since this is where product managers spend most of their time.
Ideation phase is essentially a phase where product managers collect ideas from multiple sources. There is no scientific procedure to collect this data. However, one could use a disciplined approach to generate and prioritize the data points to make a compelling business case and a product that works for your market segment.
Here is the framework that one could use to collect ideas:
One could easily write detailed chapters on every phase of the NPD. I have focused on the Ideation phase since this is where product managers spend most of their time.
Ideation phase is essentially a phase where product managers collect ideas from multiple sources. There is no scientific procedure to collect this data. However, one could use a disciplined approach to generate and prioritize the data points to make a compelling business case and a product that works for your market segment.
Here is the framework that one could use to collect ideas:
Customer Visits (Most Important)/Lead User studies: Coordinate customer visits to gather ideas from your lead users and not the representative users. Lead users are smart, are aware of the business, products, industry & technical trends and have ideas. It’s important to work with smart people inside and outside the company if you have to focus on creating innovative solutions.
Talk to your sales: Relationship with folks who sell the product is important. They are closest to your customers.
Brainstorming sessions with R&D and cross functional groups: As stated above…its important to work with smart people. Assemble a team with cross functional group participation and setup a whiteboard discussion. Don’t forget to include your support team. Unfortunately, many IT companies do not involve support in the product development process. During the session highlight the high level use cases, analogies, metaphors…anything that gets the discussion going and helps generate ideas. At times, this functional group could be from a different product unit. Cross – pollination from one product to another can lead to new products/newer selling channels.
Competitive studies: It’s easy to learn about third party products. There are quite a few forums to gather this data.
Past success: Established products have this luxury. Learn from your past
Market Research : Technical forums, social networking groups, focus groups, seminars etc: I’d categorize everything else that you read/explore as a vital step that is essential
Strategic investments and not incremental innovations lead to great products. Gary Hamel’s landmark book highlights the importance of innovation not as a buzzword but a philosophy that every company needs to follow to create a niche market for their products. Absolute must read for Product Managers. The blog highlights how product manager contribute to the NPD process. Have highlighted the high level process below.
Step 1: Define your vision
Step 2: Define product strategy
Step 3: Ideation
Step 4: Define your business case
Step5: Define the project operating plan
Step 6: Product launch
One could easily write detailed chapters on every phase of the NPD. I have focused on the Ideation phase since this is where product managers spend most of their time.
Ideation phase is essentially a phase where product managers collect ideas from multiple sources. There is no scientific procedure to collect this data. However, one could use a disciplined approach to generate and prioritize the data points to make a compelling business case and a product that works for your market segment.
Here is the framework that one could use to collect ideas:
One could easily write detailed chapters on every phase of the NPD. I have focused on the Ideation phase since this is where product managers spend most of their time.
Ideation phase is essentially a phase where product managers collect ideas from multiple sources. There is no scientific procedure to collect this data. However, one could use a disciplined approach to generate and prioritize the data points to make a compelling business case and a product that works for your market segment.
Here is the framework that one could use to collect ideas:
Customer Visits (Most Important)/Lead User studies: Coordinate customer visits to gather ideas from your lead users and not the representative users. Lead users are smart, are aware of the business, products, industry & technical trends and have ideas. It’s important to work with smart people inside and outside the company if you have to focus on creating innovative solutions.
Talk to your sales: Relationship with folks who sell the product is important. They are closest to your customers.
Brainstorming sessions with R&D and cross functional groups: As stated above…its important to work with smart people. Assemble a team with cross functional group participation and setup a whiteboard discussion. Don’t forget to include your support team. Unfortunately, many IT companies do not involve support in the product development process. During the session highlight the high level use cases, analogies, metaphors…anything that gets the discussion going and helps generate ideas. At times, this functional group could be from a different product unit. Cross – pollination from one product to another can lead to new products/newer selling channels.
Competitive studies: It’s easy to learn about third party products. There are quite a few forums to gather this data.
Past success: Established products have this luxury. Learn from your past
Market Research : Technical forums, social networking groups, focus groups, seminars etc: I’d categorize everything else that you read/explore as a vital step that is essential
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