Presentation at the Product Professionals Networking event hosted by AIPMM & Adaptive Marketing

1. Product Strategy & Architecture
Rahul Abhyankar
Nov 12, 2011

2. Briefly, about…
• 20 years of high tech experience in product management, business
development and engineering roles
• Led teams to build enterprise/consumer, software/hardware/cloud
based systems and services
• PM leadership for product portfolios as well as core technology
portfolios
• Most recently VP of Product Management at McAfee responsible
for Global Threat Intelligence and core security technologies
• Prior: FaceTime Communications, MasterCard, Union Pacific
Railroad, Tata Motors (India)

3. Some Real-World Situations
• As a PM responsible for the roadmap, my engineering team has some
“engineering requirements”. How do I weigh these against “market
requirements”?
• As an Engineering Lead, how do I get “engineering requirements” road
mapped into the release cycle without them getting deprioritized by sales
and “market requirements”?
• As an Engineering Lead, I need to understand where this product is going
in the future so we can architect it for the long term.
• As a PM, I trust my Engineering team to build the right technology. How do
we ensure the architecture is future proof?

4. We exist to create value!
PM Engineering
WHAT? HOW?
WHY?
Business Case
Market Requirements Architecture
Product Engineering
Requirements Requirements

5. Q&A
• For Engineering
– Do requirements capture the essence of the value
being delivered?
• For PM
– Do all stakeholders have a clear understanding of
how architecture will deliver that value?

6. Typical approach to value
• Actors, Types of Actors
• Use Case Scenarios
• Requirements
• Shortcomings
– Focus more on what actors do, not so much WHY
– Tend to stereotype actors
– Binary – Requirement is met or it isn’t, use case is
satisfied or it isn’t

7. How do we discover Value?
• VALUE EXPECTATIONS
– What are the needs
– What are the capabilities to address the needs
– How well are they provided (quality)

8. How do we discover Value?
• LIMITING FACTORS
– What makes it difficult to satisfy
the value expectations?

9. How do we discover Value?
• CHANGE AGENTS
– Events that cause value expectations to shift OR
– Limiting factors to have a different impact

10. Value Analysis
• Value Expectations
• Limiting Factors
• Change Agents
• HOW SATISFIED IS OUR MARKET?
• HOW DIFFICULT WILL IT BE TO SATISFY IT?
• WHAT WILL DISRUPT THE MARKET?

11. Deployment Context
Single Context Products Multiple Context Products
All deployment scenarios have Different deployment
equivalent value expectations environments, value
and limiting factors expectations, limiting factors

12. Why is this important?
• Value Analysis becomes a important exercise for
PM and Engineering
• Better understanding
– How are value expectations prioritized
– How well are value expectations going to be met
– How well are limiting factors going to be mitigated
– What are the interdependencies between them
– What tradeoffs are necessary to fulfill value
expectations

13. Where does this fit?
Value Analysis
Architecture
Requirements
Definition

14. Product Managing Core Technology
• Treat platform as a product
– Customer is buying the product, but getting the
platform
• Link technology metrics of core components to
value expectations
• Intangible indicators of value
– Decline in support cases
– Customer surveys
– Third party reviews, bake-offs

15. Architecture Strategy
• Organization
• Operation
• Variability
• Evolution
• High-level statement of direction that must be
understandable by all stakeholders
• Enable positioning the platform as a product

16. Cisco’s collaboration architecture emphasizes interoperability and openness,
allowing any device or application to use core collaboration services enabled
through a set of flexible deployment models

17. Roadmaps – Making it Actionable
• We love product roadmaps and the longer the roadmap, the
greater our pride!
• Do we have a technology roadmap?
– “What is the state of VoIP?”
– “What is the state of HTML5 vis-à-vis Flash for rich web apps?”
• Do we have an industry roadmap?
– “When does telepresence become relevant?”
• PM and Engineering need to collaborate on creating multiple
roadmaps and go beyond a roadmap that just states product
release cycles

18. Thoughts, Thanks
• Summary
• Value Analysis
– Value Expectations
– Limiting Factors
– Change Agents
• Platform as a product
– Intangible indicators of value
• Multi-layered roadmaps
– Technology roadmap
– Industry roadmap
– Product-Technology roadmap
– Product roadmap

19. Product Professionals Networking
featuring Rahul Abhyankar
Prioritizing Technical vs Market Requirements
Starting soon..
10:00-10:15 Networking
10:15 Speaker Starts
Next Networking Events in Bangalore
Dec 10 – Product Management for SaaS
Jan 7 – Monetizing Ideas on Mobile, SaaS, B2B
Feb 11 – Market Validation through Social Media
Mar 3 - Proven models for Idea Validation
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http://www.adaptivemarketing.in

20. Announcing a new workshop on
Adaptive Workshop on
Usability and Interface Design
Duration: 1 day (9:00am-5:00pm)
Date: Nov 26th (Bangalore)
Price: 12,000 Rs. (FREE for Adaptive Xchange
members)
Ideation Market Visual Information Design Design
Problems Validation Architecture Layout Styling
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21. Congratulations!!
Jayprakash Velu, AMD
Certified Product Manager (CPM)
Aswin K, Consona CRM
Certified Product Manager (CPM)
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22. Scheduled Training Offerings
Open Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive Adaptive
Workshops Product “Productizing” Advanced Advanced
Management Workshop for Workshop for Workshop for
Professional Engineers Product Mgr Sales & Marketing
Duration 5 days 2 days 2 days 2 days
Audience 5+ years 5+ years 4+ years of 4+ years of
experience in experience. PM/PMM, customer facing
product Engineers, Project experience, MBA BD, PM/PMM,
company Managers, desirable sales experience
Architects
Focus Career Developing a Advanced PM Focus on setting
Transformation customer & skills, managing up and running
workshop that business context multiple product sales and
builds around building lines, new marketing
foundational products. product operations.
skillsets to Understand P&L, launches, Business Leveraging online
become a Business plan, plans, social marketing, social
global PM success metrics media media
Certification AIPMM, USA Adaptive Product AIPMM, USA AIPMM, USA
Certification Professional Certification Certification
26 (CPM/CPMM) Certification (CPM) (CPMM)

23. Upcoming Events
(sign up at www.adaptivemarketing.in)
 Bangalore
 Certification PM Workshop
(5days) Dec 9th
Detailed Schedule at
 Advanced PM Workshop
(2days) Dec 9th
www.
 Productizing Workshop for adaptivemarketing.in
Engineers (2 days) Oct 28th
 New Workshops (1 day) More Information &
 Agile for Product Owners Nov 15th Registrations at
 Design/Usability for Product
Professionals Nov 26th engage@
 Social Media for Product adaptivemarketing.in
Managers (TBD)
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24. Envisioning a 1 year Executive
Program for Product Professionals
Looking for senior PMs, Engineering Leaders to
help shape the curriculum and setup industry
board.
Focus Group for Academy for Productizing
Innovation on Nov 21st.
If you are interested let us know at
api@adaptivemarketing.in
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25. engage@adaptivemarketing.in
Have an idea?
Have a suggestion on the
speaker/topics?
Group “Adaptive Marketing”
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