All starts with a plan. The team is sitting around a table and starts talking about what the competitor X has done and was super, what the company Y has done. One hour has passed, two, three…four … the final decision came: We need to schedule a new meeting.
After an initial plan has been drawn and agreed by the team, the plan must be put in an electronic format. And the real work begings now: the colors are not ok, the format should be changed, vision is not good enough…etc, etc. Version 1, version 2, version 3…version 10…and so after 3 month of work, the plan is ready. Meanwhile, the market trends changed, the competition moved quicker than planned and the plan is out of date.
Lately, I start thinking what can I do in order to prevent this situation and I have collected some ideas:
Continue create a plan: even if you do not discussed it with your colleagues or your manager.
Continue watch what the competition is doing (if they launched a product one year ago, but they stopped the communication on that product and the support is not able to solve an issue, then the product failed. DO NOT included in your plan!
Do not try to only copy your competition successful ideas.
Listen to your customers and to your competitors customers. Analise better what does your competition do in order to keep their customer happy.
Listen to market, read a lot about the new trends and analyze their impact in your products.
Emarketer.com has published an interesting report regarding what do the American users on the mobile internet.
I’m expecting that the top will change soon, mainly, due the penetration of smartphones and the continue growth of mobile application available in the market.
An interesting view regarding social products. I do not believe in social products, either but I strongly believe that social media channel should be under the lead of a product manager and integrated in Go-to-Market flow.
I’m impressed with the number of adopters for social media in USA and how you can solve a problem with your telecommunication provider or an airline on Facebook or Tweeter.
As a product manager, I try my best to come with new ideas, to be involved in many projects and to help the organization develop attractive products/campaigns. I worked with technical departments, sales, marketing and I tried to talk to all “on their language”. I always have in mind the say that”if a product manager does not do the job, somebody else in the company will do the job for him/her!”
Still…there are a lot of problems, like:
1. The technical departments take the Business Requirement and implement as they want
2. If there is no follow up – there is nothing
3. The prioritization of requirements is invisible for the product manager
4. The manager requests with very high priority the development of a feature, which failed just some months ago. Main reason:”The VP has asked for this!”
5. After long discussions with Marcom team, the final materials are funny, but the message is not clear. The customers will not understand the new product and its benefits. Back to the long and painful discussions.
6. After lots of meetings, conference call and thousand of emails, the product or the feature is live! You announce it through the organization, thanking the IT and Marcom teams and wishing good luck to the sale team. What next? In an hour a new prioritization meeting for the new features. There is no thank you email for you. At a road map review meeting you discuss about your work and you get an “Ok, that’s nice but the company strategy has change and we must have a new road map! It’s not January or March…
I never understood what does expression like” Fair point” means. Is “the road” ok or not?
Lately, I’m wandering where is this going to, but I haven’t found an answer yet.
Every day is a new change! What yesterday was ok, today is forgotten…We re-design plans, we do again the road maps and these situations repeat over and over.
There are times when I analyze myself and I realized that after a change there is period when I’m feeling lost, when nothing makes sense.
If you have a good mentor then these periods can pass without any problems…but if you don’t, then you need patience. With the time, your work experience will be better and better. Good luck!
I still think that there are lots of Product Manager who do not pay enough attention to the social media and company which don’t understand the new communication channel and its particularities.
Although, I think that most of business (and strategies) can use “social media” benefits, the uncontrolled and not thought growth can very create unhappy customers.
For me is difficult. I’m a product manager and a friend is a technical expert. For fun, let me just tell you our after work discussions (m=me, h=he)
M: I was in a meeting today with the technical guys. I just needed the development of a small features and the email response was, like always, no
H: I was in a meeting with PM today. I proposed them a new feature. It’s something new and the competition doesn’t have it yet. We can do it in time for the new release, but they said that they will think about it. My God feeling is that they don’t care.
M: But my feature is so easy to be implemented and it will improve our customers’ experience.
H: We could be different! We could have been the first on the market! We could have developed interesting solutions.
M: After long discussions we’ve agreed on the light versions
H: I have sent them an email asking again if we can develop the solution and they said ok (after 2 weeks – through a new meeting) The product manager asked me if we can develop the same feature.
Since 2 years I still can not believe that discussions have the same tone. And I’m just wandering if we interact with different people or our companies have a different vision.
All starts with a plan. The team is sitting around a table and starts talking about what the competitor X has done and was super, what the company Y has done. One hour has passed, two, three…four … the final decision came: We need to schedule a new meeting.
