This September webinar for PMI’s Agile Community of Practice laid out the basics of tech product management, how it maps against project/program management, and how agile shifts these (traditional) roles.

1. AGILE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
ESSENTIALS FOR PROJECT
CLICK
AND PROGRAM MANAGERS
TO Rich Mironov
EDIT 13 September 2012
MASTE PMI Agile Community of Practice
R TITLE

2. ABOUT ME
• “Product guy” at 6 startups
• Most recently as CEO/founder
• Software as revenue
• Author
• “The Art of Product Management”
• Product Bytes blog
• Business models, agile, organizing product teams
• Chaired first Agile product stages
• Founded Product Camp
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 2

3. DISJOINT COMMUNITIES
Not enough overlap
or shared thinking
Product Agile
Managers Communities
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 3

4. AGENDA
• What does a product manager do?
• Product vs. Project/Program Management
• Agile, product managers and product owners
• Take-aways

5. WHAT DOES A PRODUCT
MANAGER DO?
• For commercial / revenue software…
• Drives delivery and market acceptance of whole products
• Targets market segments, not individual customers
• For strategic internal development…
• Drives acceptance and adoption
• Resolves inevitable competing priorities

6. WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER
DO?
budgets, staff, strategy, forecasts,
targets commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence
Executives
CLICK
market information, priorities,
requirements, roadmaps, epics,
user stories, backlogs,
personas, MRDs… Product
Field input,
Market feedback
TO Management
EDIT Development
Marketing
& Sales
Markets &
Customers
MASTE product Segmentation, messages,
R TITLE bits benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M

7. PRAGMATIC MARKETING
FRAMEWORK
Director of Product
Product Strategy Business
Positioning
Marketing
Marketing
Plan Plan
Market Market Buying Customer
Manager
Pricing
Problems Definition Process Acquisition
Win/Loss Distribution Buy, Build Buyer Customer
Analysis Strategy or Partner Personas Retention
Distinctive Product Product User Program
Competence Portfolio Profitability Personas Effectiveness
Market Strategy Business Planning Programs Readiness Support
Competitive Product Require- Launch Sales Presentations
Innovation
Landscape Roadmap ments Plan Process & Demos
Technology Use Thought “Special”
Collateral
Assessment Scenarios Leadership Calls
Status Lead Sales Event
Dashboard Generation Tools Support
Technical Product Manager Referrals & Channel Channel
References Training Support 7
© 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved

8. Good product managers
drive customer-relevant
decisions (choices) despite
uncertainty and
contradictory goals

9. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT RHYTHM
• No natural sequence
• Intensely interrupt driven
• Bottom-up meets top-down
• Demands strategy, judgment and
integration as well as execution
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 9

10. IDEAL CANDIDATE
CLICK
TO
EDIT
MASTE
R TITLE W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 10

11. AGENDA
• What does a product manager do?
• Product vs. Project / Program Management
• Agile, product managers and product owners
• Take-aways

12. PRODUCT, PROJECT, PROGRAM?
Disclaimers
• No role/title consistency
• Unclear division of labor
• Execs create novel organizations
• Each tech company is
uniquely dysfunctional
• Good teams make things work
in spite of titles and roles

13. ONE PROBLEM, TWO VIEWPOINTS
• Project/Program Managers
tasked with how to deliver
• Not-so-secretly worry about
market success
• Product Managers tasked with
what to build (and when)
• Not-so-secretly worry about delivery,
quality, completeness

14. IN A PERFECT ORGANIZATION…
• Product Management: more outward-facing market-visible
decisions
• What FEATURES/BENEFITS are market segments demanding?
• How are we POSITIONED and PRICED versus competitors?
• WHICH must-ship feature will we DROP first?
• SALES impact of slipped dates? Commitments?
• Project/Program Management: more inward-facing
resource allocation decisions
• HOW should we get this done? WHO works on what?
• WHEN will it actually ship?
• Have we defined and met QUALITY goals?
• What outside RESOURCES could speed things up?

15. LIVING THE CUSTOMER’S REALITY
Product managers sense the market by…
• Helping close deals
• Trading off conflicting
customer commitments
• Sweating price/volume forecasts
• Identifying novel (or terrible) user cases
• Anchoring opinions with lots of
first person customer/field input Source:
Pragmatic Marketing

16. AGENDA
• What does a product manager do?
• Product vs. Project / Program Management
• Agile, product managers and product owners
• Take-aways

17. DISCUSSIONS OF AGILE
We tend to mix…
• Philosophy and religion
• Process, tools, techniques, methods
• Organizational design
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 17

18. AGILE METHODS
CLICK
TO Extreme
Programmi
ng (XP)
Crystal
Methods
Scrum Feature
Driven
Developme
Test Driven
Developme
nt (TDD)
EDIT
nt (FDD)
Dynamic Lean Agile Rational Rapid
Systems & & Lean Project Unified Application
MASTE
Developme
nt Model
(DSDM)
Startup Managemen
t
Framework
Process
(RUP)
Developme
nt (RAD)
R TITLE
(APM)
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 18

19. DIFFERENT MOTIVATORS
• Why development teams want Agile
• Focus more on developing, not SDLC
• More quality, fewer peaks and valleys
• Build what customers want
• Move the bottleneck elsewhere
• What executives want from Agile
• Get more done (more “ROI”)
• Faster, more predictable
• “More responsive to market” means
they can juggle the roadmap more often

20. WHY NOT WATERFALL?
Requirements Waterfall projects
and estimates
rarely deliver
according to plan
Design
Coding and
unit test
System
integration & QA
Operation and
maintenance
20

21. AGILE’S INNER LOOP
From Mike Cohn
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 21

22. AGILE’S STRATEGIC OUTER LOOP
(PdM)
• Markets • Customers
• Customers • Sales
• Biz Models • Marketing
• Strategy • Support
• Portfolios • Upgrades
• Funding • EOL/EOS
22
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M

23. PRODUCT MANAGER, PRODUCT
OWNER
• Most agilists think about “product owners”
• Formal part of agile team
• Needs to be physically present
• Driving user stories and sub-iteration decisions
• Showcases are primary method of customer input
• Most product managers are not agilists
• Majority of work to deliver products (revenue) happens outside
Engineering
• Interacts with markets directly, not filtered through Sales or Marketing
• Servicing multiple inbound and outbound queues
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 23

24. PRODUCT OWNER’S CALENDAR
Borrowed from Catherine Connor, Rally
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M

25. ‘Small p’ PRODUCT OWNER
Executives
CLICK
market information, priorities,
epics, user stories,
backlogs, personas… Product
TO Management
EDIT
Marketing Markets &
Development & Sales Customers
MASTE product
R TITLE bits
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M

26. ADAPTED PRAGMATIC
FRAMEWORK
Business Marketing
Positioning
Plan Plan
Market Market Buying Customer
Pricing
Problems Definition Process Acquisition
Win/Loss Distribution Buy, Build Buyer Customer
Analysis Strategy or Partner Personas Retention
Distinctive Product Product User Program
Competence Portfolio Profitability Personas Effectiveness
Market Strategy Business Planning Programs Readiness Support
Competitive Product Require Launch Sales Presentations
Innovation
Landscape Roadmap ments Plan Process & Demos
Technology Use Thought “Special”
Collateral
Assessment Scenarios Leadership Calls
Status Lead Sales Event
Dashboard Generation Tools Support
product owner
Referrals & Channel Channel
References Training Support
26

27. PdM/PO FAILURE MODES
Product Manager fails agile team Product Owner fails marketplace if
if • Weak on market realities: pricing,
• Part-time, disengaged packaging, selling, upgrades,
• Stories lack detail service models, discounting,
• Stale backlog competitive dynamics
• Best of intentions, but pulled in • Disconnected from Marketing,
too many directions Sales, Support
• Not buffering team from • Trading off company-wide strategy
customer/ sales interruptions for product features
• “Build what I meant” • Confuses showcase customers
with broader market
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 27

28. ONE PdM/PO ORGANIZATIONAL MAP
GM / VP Eng / VP Prod / CPO
CLICK Product
TO Managers
EDIT Product
Owners
MASTE
R TITLE
more technical
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M
more market-focused
28

29. TAKE-AWAYS
• Product management struggles with
market success, product sufficiency and
inconsistent customer segments
• Project management struggles with
resources, timelines and unreasonable
commitments
• IMHO, simple product owner role fails to
address market complexities
• We need to work together to ship great
products!
W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 29

30. Mironov Consulting
CONTACT
CLICK 233 Franklin St, Suite #308
San Francisco, CA 94102
TO
EDIT Rich@Mironov.com
MASTE RichMironov
R TITLE
@RichMironov