parts of being a product manager is how busy you are and yet how often what you actually do feels transient. In other words, as you work through a product’s life cycle, at certain times you may just be producing a short Word document or a simple tracking spreadsheet while many other people are off writing pages and pages of code or creating tons of marketing material. However, without your direction, these folks wouldn’t be able to be nearly as productive.
In this section, we cover some of the roles you work with closely. Sometimes you’re checking in with each other hourly and sometimes you’re in contact less frequently because you’re in a different phase of the product life cycle, working with different departments or working with different development methodologies. However, knowing how the roles fit together is integral to producing a successful product.
Checking out product marketing
Creating or updating a product is always such a great feeling. One small problem: Your customers need to learn about it, too. That’s where product marketing managers come in. Their primary goal is to create demand for the product through effective messaging and programs. If these people do their jobs well, your product has a shorter sales cycle and higher revenue.
The product marketing manager role is broken down into four parts:
❯❯ Market strategy expert: Market strategy lays the foundation for market success. It is the high-level thinking, planning, and research that happens before a product goes to market. The product marketing manager has an in-depth knowledge of the market and how the product should enter that specific market. In practice, this idea means knowing which customer segment to target, how to reach it, and what combination of messages will drive these customers to buy (see Figure 2-3). Note that in the figure, the messages aren’t the taglines, and the benefits are stated in the language of the customer. Then the strategy is executed through the launch and eventually marketing plan.
❯❯ Marketing expert: After the product marketing manager analyzes market opportunities for your product, he then creates key messages that guide marketing efforts. In conjunction with marketing communications (also known as marcom), the product marketing manager’s goal is to generate customers that demand or pull your product through to sale. This comprehensive market understanding is one reason that the product marketing manager participates in or decides on pricing.
Product marketing managers ensure that all the messages are consistent. Consistency builds awareness, layer by layer, in the customer’s mind. And she works with marcom to make sure that what product managers decide to say about a product translates correctly into web, mobile, or printed materials.
❯❯ Marketing program guidance: This piece is the traditional core of the product marketing role. It’s here where a product marketing manager, in conjunction with the product manager, outlines the product positioning which articulates the value proposition. On the basis of the positioning, he works out the messaging and links each feature to a customer-oriented benefit. Chapter 10 has more information about creating compelling marketing messages.
❯❯ Supporting sales: Product marketing managers can create a library of marketing collateral, which should generate market pull. However, your salespeople may need to work harder for a sale. They’re the ones who generate market push by convincing customers to buy your product. To do so effectively, sales needs great sales tools. For example, they often need good product training, a solid product presentation, and a compelling demonstration. A product marketing person knows what salespeople need for them to get their jobs done and what points to emphasize so that the sales pitch is more successful.
FIGURE 2-3: Examples of a marketing message and corresponding tagline.
Some companies expect you to do both product management and product marketing plus the entire marketing role all by yourself. If that’s your situation, read Marketing For Dummies by Alexander Hiam (Wiley) to see how the responsibilities of product management, product marketing, and marketing all fit together.
Agile is a flexible way of developing products that mostly applies to software development. Refer to Chapter 12 for more details. Agile has two very specific roles that you don’t see in other development environments: the product owner and the scrum master. The scrum master is typically only used in a specific version of Agile called scrum. The following figure illustrates which responsibilities lie exclusively with the product manager (PM), which are shared according to preference and skill between the product owner (PO) and product manager, and which are specifically allocated to a product owner. Use this figure and the later sections on RACI and DACI to have a discussion within your own organization to clarify roles and responsibilities.
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Here are definitions of the specific roles:
• Product owner: The mission of the product owner is to represent the customer to the development team. A key activity is to manage and make visible the product backlog, or the prioritized list of requirements for future development. In fact, the product owner is the only person who can change the order of items in the product backlog. One unusual aspect of product owner responsibilities is that she must be available to the development team at all times to answer any questions team members have regarding the customer’s view of how they’re implementing a product feature.
A product owner shouldn’t be a scrum master. In many teams the product manager is also the product owner. This situation leads to a crushing workload and difficult-to-manage expectations because product managers should be spending a fair amount of time understanding customers’ needs by being outside of the office. The need to be in the office as a product owner – and yet still have a deep understanding of customers – is a conflict that continues to create great difficulty for product managers and product owners in Agile development organizations.
• Scrum master: The scrum master role is to keep the development team working at the highest level of productivity. This person facilitates scrum rituals that drive the iterations with the scrum team and the product owner. She ensures that scrum processes and scrum-specified meetings are being followed and checks progress against expectations. Critically, she acts as a coach or facilitator for the team, helping team members solve problems and remove impediments to their progress.
The scrum master can be a part time role or shared among multiple scrum teams, but under no circumstances should scrum master be a product owner.
Looking into program management
Program management is typically a department dedicated to managing the critical internal processes of an organization so that it meets internal targets. For example, program managers might work across the company to develop a new way of delivering a product to market. Or they may track how much is being spent to deliver a new product platform. In companies that are regulated or in which precision is very important, program management ensures that the important processes are reviewed and complied with. In some instances, project managers report into program management, but this isn’t universally the case.
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