Product Discovery @ Google
John Gibbon
9/1/09

• Features and Products
• Products and Product Lines
• Marty Cagan: High Fidelity Prototypes
• Roadmaps: Telling a Story
• Organizational Responsibilities Spectrum
Product Discovery

• Internal
▫ Stakeholders & experts,
• Clients
▫ Site Analytics, Surveys, Client Visits, Informal Conversations, Usability Testing,
• Outside Experts
▫ Your Network, Partners/Suppliers, Magazines, Trade Associations Conferences,
Market Influencing Clients
• Internet and Published Sources
▫ Blogs, Traditional Publications, Trade Journals, Competitor websites, Google,
Quantcast, Company listings (Hoovers, Tradevibes), Tradeshows, Industry
Research (Forrester, Gartner, Yankee, IDC, Giga)
• Other
• Market and Demographic Analysis, Other Industry Best Practices
Where Get Product and Feature Ideas?

Success Metrics
-Revenue
-Market Share
-New Users
-Increase Usage
-Increased Customer
Satisfaction: NPS
-Other?

The Biggest Roadblock to Effective Product
Strategy in Most Companies is
Lack of effective Product Innovation Funnel

Product Innovation Funnel
• Analyze and prune at every stage
• How (metric?)
• Who (PM, VP, Product Board)?
• OK to fail

SHORT TERM DELIVERABLES
FOR LONG TERM GOALS

Why Supporting Sales (Customer Support)
Isn’t too Bad …
• While training sales is required and
• Customer surveys and site analytics are important
• Talking to actual users is imperative
• Basic client analysis

WULA
• Who are you?
▫ Your company, your role (analyst, “Mom”)
• What do you do?
▫ What problems trying to solve? How do you provide value?
• Win:
▫ Why us? What didn’t like?
• Usage:
▫ What problems solving with what features?
• Loss / Attrition:
▫ Why not us? How solving now? Is there a feature / issue resolved
in which consider later?

Ideas for Products and Product Lines

Where should we go?
Why will we be
successful there?
How do we get there?
• Problem?
▫ Opportunity
• Solution?
▫ Unique offering or
breakthrough (IP)
▫ Why you? Competition?
• Business Model
▫ How make money?
▫ Money need?
▫ Team
Company or Product Portfolio Strategy

Is There An Opportunity?
• Is there customer pain?
• Is the pain sufficient to generate a compelling
reason to buy?
PAIN
REASON TO
BUY
Sue Barsamian: “Reality Marketing for Startup”

Is The Opportunity Big and Growing?
• Are there enough customers with
this profile to make a market?
• Is it growing?
PAIN
REASON TO
BUY
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PAIN
REASON TO
BUY
Sue Barsamian: “Reality Marketing for Startup”

How To Size Your Market
Build a tops down and bottoms-up model for your
market
• Empirical
• Qualitative research
Your revenue and unit forecast
• Analyst data
• Proxy modeling
Total Market
Total Addressable Market
Your Projected Share
Sue Barsamian: “Reality Marketing for Startup”

Spicy

Why will we be
successful there?
-Core Competencies /
Differentiation
-Mission
-Competitive Analysis

How do we get there?
-Financial / Dev Plan
-Tech Strategy
-Partnering Strategy

Red Ocean
Strategy
Blue Ocean
Strategy
Compete in
existing
market space
Create
uncontested
market space
Beat the
competition
Make the
competition
irrelevant
Exploit existing
demand
Create and
capture new
demand
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make
Competition Irrelevant – Kim and Mauborgne

Strategic Trade-offs

The Boston Consulting Group’s Growth-
Share Matrix
20%-
18%-
16%-
14%-
12%-
10%-
8%-
6%-
4%-
2%-
0
MarketGrowthRate
10x 4x 2x 1.5x 1x
Relative Market Share
.5x .4x .3x .2x .1x
Dogs
8
7
3
?
Question marks
?
2
1
Cash cows
6
Stars
5
4
Accelerate a Few Divest Most
Liquidate
Harvest
Invest

Ansoff Matrix:
Product Strategy
Current
Products
Future
Products
Current
Markets
Future
Markets
Market
Penetration
Product
Development
Market
Development
Know
Customers
and Market
Rich Product
Offerings

•New Product vs. Mature Product
•New Market vs. Existing Market
•Short Term vs. Long Term Revenue
•Usage vs. Revenue
•Client A vs. Client B
•Research vs. Development
•High Risk vs. Low Risk
Strategic Balance
Trade Offs
Trade-Offs

Marty Cagan and Product Discovery
1. Valuable
2. Usable
3. Feasible

Document Use Cases with Prototypes
1. Better Understood Since Closer to Actual Experience
2. Different Fidelity / Technologies:
- Lower Fidelity
-PowerPoint / Visio (Storyboarding)
- HTML / Code Development Tools:
- Weebly, Google Sites, Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc.
- VisualBasic, etc.
- High Fidelity Prototyping Tools:
-Axure, Irise, etc

Requirements: High Fidelity Prototypes
1. Realistic Enough to Test Idea with Target Customer
2. Refine Business Idea Before Commit
3. Helps Product Be Better Understood Throughout Org
4. Underlines Functionality and User Experience Intertwined
1/29/09

Roadmaps

Roadmaps
• Product Vision
• Product Themes
• Specific Enhancements
▫ Market Penetration
▫ Market Development
▫ Product Development

2008
Products Portfolio / Feature Roadmap
* Items in italics are tentative and subject to further planning
2009 2010
Improved Analytics
Product Line B (with product B1 , B2, and B3)
Investigating in ‘08 & ‘09; releasing some in ’09 & ‘10:
China, Latin America, Italy, Brazil, Russia,
Partner X – Analytics / Biz
Intelligence
Partner Y (CRM), Partner C
(ERP)
New Algorithms Introduced
Upgrades
Improved Reporting
Last updated 10-Sept-08
Localization
(New
Markets)
Improved Analytics SaaS Version Available
Upgrades
Third Party
Integration
Product Line A (with product A1 and A2)
SaaS Version Available
Product A1 – Integration with
Data Integrator product
Also investigating mobile …
Product Vision “Strengthen the Standard by growing products and markets for our product”
or “Enabling CFOs …” “making the joy of giving fun and easy to experience….”

Client
Server
Office
Business Solutions

Tell a Story
(depends on your message and your audience but …)

Other Roadmap Formats
(Brian Lawley 280Group “Expert Product Management”)
• Internal or External Facing
• Trends:
• Competitive, Market, and Technology
• Technology:
• External Factors / Internal Dev
• Checkout 280Group Product Roadmap
Toolkit

3 Year Technology Roadmap
2006 2007 2008
Platform
Products
Tools
Release 1 Release 2 Release 3
Product 1
Product 2
Product 3
Product 4
©2006 280 Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Organization Responsibilities Spectrum

Product Responsibilities Spectrum
• Engineering
- How
• Project / Program Management
- Organizing development and release/launch tasks
• Product Management
- What / Inbound (“product owner/GM”)
- Agile “Product Owner” and “Product (Marketing) Manager”
• Product Marketing
- Messaging / Outbound
• Marketing Communications
– Company level communications: branding and advertising

Product Feature Requests / Ideas
New Customer /
Market Market
Requirements
Organization from a Product Process Viewpoint
Existing
Customers
Pro. Services
Executive Team
QA/ReleaseDevelopment
Product
Management Doc/Support
Post
Deploy
Support
Sales
Support
Market Comm
Features
Test Results
Function / UI Rqmts
Docs
Functional /UI Requirements
Releases
Releases
What are your core competencies / value-add? What can you contract?
Financial, Legal, Admin, HR, IT, Support

Additional Slides

Financial Plan
-Costs
-Benefits

Basic Financial Plan
• Assumptions 2009 2010 2011
• # Customers / Unique Visitors
• # Employees
• Revenue
• Subscription / License
• Advertising / Partnership
• Professional Services
• Cost of Goods (Sales/Service)
• Gross Profit (Rev – COG)
• Operating Expenses
• Product Development
• Marketing
• General and Administration
• EBITDA (Gross Profit – Expenses) (basic P&L)
• Cash Needs

Market Segment Analysis
Segment Needs How
Satisfy
% Our
Sales
%
Industry
Sales
Size/Gr
owth
Rating
(1-5)
Consumer
SMB
Large
Enterprise
Linda Gorchels: “The Product Manager’s Handbook

Basic Competitive Analysis
Description Strengths Weaknesses Price
Product A
Product B
Product C

Competitive Analysis
Via Advertised Positioning
ERP Accounting
Vendors
Lawson MBS Best SAP Oracle SSA
Understand SMB
Needs X
Understand Biz
Fundamentals X
Flexible, Adaptable
X X X
Affordable
X X X
Lawson Abinanti “Messages That Matter”
Assess key success factors in your industry and how others stack up

Competitive Analysis Alternatives
Today Future Implications
Direct Competitors
Substitute
Budget
Organization
Linda Gorchels: “The Product Manager’s Handbook

Your Value Proposition
For Target Customer
Who Problem / Pain ( “must have” not “nice to
have”)
The Product Name / Product Category
That Solution / Key Problem Solving Capability
Unlike Competitors / Alternatives
Our
Product
Key Differentiators / Product Features