Software product management is the process of managing software that is built and implemented as a product, taking into account life-cycle considerations and generally with a wide audience. It is the discipline and business process which governs a product from its inception to the market or customer delivery and service in order to maximize revenue. This is in contrast to software that is delivered in an ad hoc manner, typically to a limited clientele, e.g. service.
The need for software product management
To develop, sell and support a successful software product a business needs to understand its market, identify the opportunity, develop and market an appropriate piece of software. Hence the need for product management as a core business function in software companies.
Hardware companies may also have a need for software product management, because software is part of the delivery: for example when providing operating systems or software embedded in a device.
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The role of software product manager
The software manager leads and manages one or several products from the inception to the phase-out in order to maximize business value. He works with marketing, sales, engineering, finance, quality, manufacturing and installation to make the product a business success (usually engineering and marketing). He has business responsibility beyond a single project. He determines what product and features to make and guide fully instruction with engineering team, is accountable for the business success within an entire portfolio. He approves the roadmap and content and determines what to and how to innovate. He is responsible for the entire value chain of a product following the life cycle. Software product management roles can be further subdivided depending on the focus: Software product marketing managers work at marketing communication activities. Software program managers focus on engineering processes, design, documentation, planning, execution, operations, feedback, so they work with engineering team. Technical product managers collect requirement gathering and communication with clients.
Software product managers can deliver better results by:
- Behaving like an "embedded CEO"
- Driving strategy and portfolio from market and customer value
- Being enthusiastic about their own product
- Having a profound understanding of your markets, customers and portfolio
- Measuring their contribution on sales (top-line) and profits (bottom-line)
- Periodically checking assumptions such as business cases
- Taking risks, and managing them
- Fostering teamwork based on lean processes
- Insisting on discipline and keeping commitments
- Being professional in communication, appearance, behaviors ...
Content of software product management
Software product management covers all steps from inception of a product to its end of life. It consists of five major phases in the product life-cycle, namely:
- Strategy
- Concept phase
- Market entry
- Development
- Evolution
Within these five phases it deals with the following aspects of a software product within a software and/or hardware company:
- Idea generation (e.g. on whiteboards) for a new software product, or for the next version of an existing product.
- Collection and prioritization (see below) of business and/or market requirements from prospects, customers of earlier versions of the product, domain experts, technology visionaries, market experts, products / solutions from competing vendors, etc.
- Crafting of Marketing Requirements Documents, or MRDs, which synthesize the requirements / needs of various stakeholders as outlined above.
- Using the MRD as a basis, come up with a product requirements document or PRD, as an input to the engineering team to build out the product. A PRD is generally not the same as a functional specification since it specifies what a product should do, but not how the product should do it. Frequently, a PRD can be a collection of UML Use Cases, UML Activity Diagrams, HTML mockups, etc. It can have other details such as the software development environment, and the software deployment environment (client-server, web, etc.).
- Deliver the PRD to the software engineering team, and manage conflicts between the business units, the sales teams, and the engineering teams, as it applies to the software products to be built out.
- Once the software development gets into build / release cycle, conduct acceptance tests.
- Deal with the delivery of the product. This can vary from demonstrating the product to customers using web-based conferencing tools, to building product demonstrations, to other placement and promotion tactics. Frequently, in Silicon Valley, these two aspects of marketing, and sometimes also pricing, are dealt with by Product Marketing Managers, as opposed to Product Managers.
- Once the product is deployed at a customer site, solicit customer feedback, report software bugs, and pass these on back to engineering for subsequent build / release cycles, as the product stabilizes, and then matures.
- Perform competitive analysis as to how this product is behaving in the market, vis-a-vis other products catering to the same / similar customer segments. In the software space, this might require the product manager to take the opinion of analysts, who can come from name brand market research firms like IDC, Forrester Research, and Gartner Group.
- Solicit more features and benefits from the users of the software product, users of competitive products, and from analysts and craft / synthesize these requirements for subsequent product build / release cycles, and pass them on to the software engineering team.
The above tasks are not sequential, but can co-exist. For Product Managers to be efficient in the above tasks, they have to have both engineering and marketing skills. Hence, frequently, Silicon Valley firms prefer engineers who are also MBAs to do software product management.
Education
Industry and academia established a standard for software product management education. According to this consensus, a software product manager is educated in the following areas:
- Core practices: product strategy and product planning
- Participation in strategic management
- Orchestration of development, of marketing, of sales and distribution, and of service and support
The International Software Product Management Association (ISPMA) maintains the public body of knowledge and syllabi for international certification.
Prioritization
A key aspect of Product Management is the correct prioritization of enhancements. User story mapping is a valuable tool that assists with visualizing and organizing priorities. Here's a method that works well (borrowed and adapted from Joel Spolsky):
- Identify the panel, i.e. whose opinion you are going to seek
- Make a list of all items
- Estimate the effort required (either in days or in money) - this needs to be very rough and approximate
- Add up the total effort E
- Give the panel members a budget of 0.5 × E each - they can place this any way they like, including all on a single item. You should disclose the rough estimates to the panel, as it may influence their vote.
- Rank the items in terms of the ratio Votes / Estimate
- Do as many of the items as the actual budget allows, respecting the sequence
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