Does your product plan get you faster horses?

A good business plan forces company leaders to think through the direction they are taking the company. A product plan does the same for a product manager. It elevates him/her from managing the day-to-day to becoming a product leader.

There are countless companies who stop at the yearly business plan and do not translate this into a product plan. This puts the product manager on the back foot and prevents him/her from leading, as there is no clear direction to lead the product towards.

A rolling yearly product plan is the essential tool for a product manager to become a product leader.

A good product plan will describe how the product vision and strategy will be translated into the yearly product action plan. It should have a link with the product roadmap to ensure it is an effective communication tool for discussions with the key stakeholders. The product roadmap defines which product features are prioritised and is a vital input to the overall company development workstack.

However, is it enough? Borrowing from the Henry Ford quote:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” 

The horse was a solution. It was up to Ford to consider the problem and develop alternative solutions.

Product plans are firmly on the solution side; they describe the “What, When and Who”. Often the plan is mainly concerned with product features and technology. The plan is likely to be inwardly focussed as it expands on improving an existing solution. So yes, a good product plan gets you faster horses but it is not enough in a rapidly changing competitive world.

To remain competitive the product manager needs to consider two additional areas:

1. The complete Customer Experience for the existing product
2. The problem the customer is trying to solve.

1. The complete Customer Experience for the existing product

To remain competitive with the existing solution the product manager needs to consider the complete Customer Experience of the proposition. The “What” of the traditional product plan needs to be augmented with the “How” of good Customer Experience design. Besides considering what the product features are, the product manager needs to evaluate:

• How will your customers find your product?
• How will your customers get your product?
• How will your customers set up your product?
• How will your customers use your product?
• How will your customers pay for your product?
• How will your customers get help using your product?
• How will your customers stop using your product?

For the existing product these “Hows” — and changes in the “How” — need to be included in the product development plan.

The development capacity of a company is a defined resource. There is only so much development which a company can manage.

There might be situations where the product feature developments have to be scaled down to prioritise customer experience developments. For example, developing a radical new way of paying for the product has nothing to do with the core product but it might still be of a higher value to the company than introducing a feature which did not make the first 3 releases. Other examples might be found in “How” the customer gets the product. In a situation where your competitor has made successful, sweeping changes in the distribution, your next product feature is a mute sales point if the customers are no longer shopping in your outlets.

To remain competitive with the existing solution the product manager has to go beyond product features and consider the complete Customer Experience developments which are needed to keep the product a viable option for the customer.

2. The problem the customer is trying to solve.

The existing product is an existing solution to a problem. Given time pressures and day-to-day firefighting it is easy to become complacent and assume this solution will remain the preferred solution for the customer.

However, to remain competitive the product manager has to carefully re-analyse the problem space at least once a year. Most product managers know this but how often is this actually done? We smile at the horse quote from Henry Ford. We are fascinated by Uber’s drive through the taxi industry. We laugh about the demise of Blockbuster in favour of Netflix. We all saw that coming…right?

All these are examples where a new entrant has looked at the existing customer and existing solution and came up with alternative ways to solve a problem. To remain competitive a product manager has to look with fresh eyes at the problem a customer is trying to solve.

An easy to use and free tool for this assessment is the concept capture canvas available on the resources page of www.CXNPD.com. This handy tool allows the product manager to consider the customer problem from a blank slate.

 So does your product plan get you faster horses?

Yes, a product plan is a vital tool for a product manager to develop faster horses. A good product plan will focus on the features (the “what”) and it will make the existing product better.

But that is not enough; in addition the product manager needs to evaluate the complete Customer Experience. The Customer Experience will address the “How”.

The development workstack for the company needs to balance the requirements from the product plan and the required Customer Experience developments. Only in this way the product manager will ensure the best possible developments for the existing solution.

To make life even more exciting for a product manager he or she has re-analyse the problem space from scratch. With a fresh pair of eyes the product manager needs to review the problem the customer is trying to solve. The Product manager needs to ask the key question: “Are there now better and alternative ways to solve the customer problem?”

A combination of above mentioned activities will form a foundation for the product manager to be a product leader in a rapidly changing competitive world.

Jeroen Visser , Feb 2016

Blog inspired by Rags Srinivasan – What is your product Vision?