The Discipline of
Product Management
中国古代颜色
Phillip J. Windley, Ph.D.
Chief Information Officer
Office of the Governor
State of Utah
围裙图片Product development is the process of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a good or rvice 1. Software and Internet companies u a product development process to ensure that they are not just manufacturing a
technology, but creating a product that people will want to buy and continue to u. To be sure, a ba technology is at the heart of the product, but product development ensures that the customer’s voice is not lost in the rush to an exciting technology. Product development adds things like pricing, marketing, and customer support to the technology to create a complete product.
Without a product management philosophy and discipline, an IT organization becomes focud on the technology instead of the customers and is often organized along technology lines rather than in ways that benefit the customer. Ultimately, an IT organization must rve its customers or it will go out of business, either becau the customers go away or becau they complain to executive management until the organization is changed.
This paper discuss the product management discipline and how it can be applied to creating a customer driven IT organization.
Product Development
Product development is performed by a multi-disciplinary team who goal is building, operating, and maintaining the product. Team members may include product managers, software developers, project managers, product operations engineers, customer support managers, software quality assur
ance engineers, ur interface design engineers, marketers, financial personnel, and graphic artists.
The product manager rves as the leader of this cross functional team. While the product manager does not necessarily function as the operational manager for the people, she does lead, coordinate, and supervi their work toward the end goal of making the product a reality, launching it, operating it, and managing it throughout its life cycle.
Copyright 2002, Phillip J. Windley. All rights rerved. Reproduction of all or part of this work is permitted for educational or rearch u provided that this copyright notice is included in any copy. Unconditional u is granted to the State of Utah.
1 For purpos of this document we will refer to all rvices, goods, or other things offered for sale by an organization to be a “product.”
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Product management as a discipline is about what the product should be. Product managers are advocates for the customer’s needs and desires. A large product might have numerous product managers working towards its success at a variety of levels, all the way from the junior product manager writing specifications about single feature ts to a product strategy director who has overall responsibility to executive management for the product direction. A product manager’s respo热锅上的蚂蚁歇后语
nsibilities include the following:
• Defining and planning product lines and product enhancements
描写人物性格的词语• Managing product contracts and sales
• Setting strategic direction bad on customer needs and business goals • Interpreting strategic goals into operational tasks
• Making proposals to nior management regarding implications of propod plans
• Serving as a reprentative to internal and external clients.Taking the lead in establishing tactical plans and objectives
短途旅游• Developing and implementing administrative and operational matters ensuring achievement of objectives
• Evaluating risks and trade-offs
• Proposing contingency plans
• Analyzing business process and creating applications to improve or support tho process
• Branding
• Working with graphic designers to create look and feel
• Defining navigational flow and ur experience
• Defining feature ts and scooping releas
People not familiar with the discipline of product management frequently get a product manager confud with other players. Its uful to look at what a product manager is not. A product manager is not:
A developer – Developers are focud on the technology and not the overall product. Some great product managers are former developers, but it is difficult to do both at once. There is a natural tension between developers and product managers that should be maintained to create a balanced product.
A software manager – the software manager is a functional manager and usually not focud on the product or the customers.
A project manager – project managers are about how and when, while the product manager is about what. Project managers work cloly with product managers to ensure successful completion of different phas in the product life cycle.
A marketer – while product management is usually en as a marketing discipline, marketers are focud on the marketing plan and are usually not driving the overall product direction.
Product managers are accountable to executive management for overall product direction, key decisions, product budget (and sometimes even the complete product P&L), ensuring that final product meets specifications, and evangelizing product to internal and external stakeholders. Product managers also have accountability to urs for feature ts, navigation, quality, and overall experience.大二学习计划
Before we can discuss product management as a discipline and how it functions in the organization we must consider two important life cycles: In the next ction, we’ll talk about the product life cycle; in the following ction we’ll discuss the customer life cycle.
Product Life Cycle
In its simplest form, the product life cycle consists of three phas:
1. Develop the product
2. Operate the product
3. Decommission the product
Obviously this simplistic model leaves a number of questions about changes, procedures, etc. Figure 1 gives a more complete view of the product life cycle.
Figure 1: Product Life Cycle语法填空解题技巧
Product Initiation Pha: In the Initiation Pha, Product Management, Engineering, or Operations submits a request for a new rvice or modification to an existing rvice.
The requests are received and prioritized by the Program Management Office (PMO). Once prioritized, the requests are reviewed by various management teams to asss the impact and viability of the request in the context of business needs and the organization’s strategy. If approved, the request is given necessary funding and resources in order to proceed to the Feasibility Pha. Feasibility Pha: The Feasibility Pha is where an idea is explored in more depth in order to determine the feasibility of engineering the requested rvice within the scope of the business needs. The request that has been approved during the initiation pha by the Governing Committee is evaluated at the engineering and product management level. From an engineering perspective, the rvice is evaluated for technical feasibility. The preliminary Technical Service Description outlines the general architecture of the propod rvice. The Feasibility Analysis and stable Business Ca are also developed during this pha. The documents summarize time and cost estimates and other investment information necessary for deciding whether to continue the product development process or not.
Design and Plan Pha: In the Design & Plan Pha, the cross-functional team documents all detail pertaining to the development of the rvice. While core documents, such as the Marketing Service Description, Technical Service Description, and Design Specifications, are stabilized, other groups, including Operations, QA, and Customer Care begin to specify their requirements for supporting the rvice. All of the documents are approved and signed off by the project team and the Design & Plan Checklist is prented to the Governing Committee for final approval before moving into the Development Pha. Development Pha: In the Development Pha, the actual engineering of the rvice is completed. As the rvice is being developed, other functional groups continue preparatory work for the Testing and Introduction Phas. Much of the documentation to support Customer Care, Training, Vendors, and Clients is created during this pha. Also, the Quality Assurance Group prepares for the testing handoff by documenting Test Plans and Test Specifications, and configuring the test environment.
In this pha, a decision gate ensures that all pieces required for testing have been completed. The following are requirements to pass through the decision gate:
• Ready for Testing Pha from a System Integration Test perspective
• Documentation Complete
• Test Environment Complete
• Code Complete
• Vendor Requirements met
• Integration Testing & Results Complete
Once the Project Team has approved the readiness of the rvice, the Development Checklist is compiled and prented to the Governing Committee for approval to move the rvice into the Testing Pha.
Testing Pha: The majority of the Testing Pha is spent certifying the hardware and software changes involved in the rvice. The rvice will undergo a number of readiness tests in a Lab Environment. Operations also performs necessary system and network tests to ensure operational readiness prior to deployment. Once QA Test Results and Operations Readiness Test Results are completed, the rvice may under go field trials as directed by product management. The Testing Pha Decision Gate is bad on the QA Test Results, Operations Test Results, Field Verification, Change Requests, and Business Needs. A 'go' decision at the gate authorizes the launch of the rvi
ce. Product Launch Pha: The Product Launch Pha coordinates the deployment of the new or modified rvice. As the rvice is enabled by Operations, the supporting organizations initiate support process to maintain the rvice. Once deployed a rvice check is made by the Project Team and Program Management Organization to ensure that the Service is available. If the rvice is found to be unsuccessful, a predetermined un-launch process will be executed. If the rvice is launched without incident, the Project Team then evaluates the stability of the relea and the rvice is transitioned to the Life Cycle Management Process.
Operation Pha: The Operation Pha is typically the longest of the phas since once a product is developed, it may be operated for quite some time before it is updated or decommissioned. The operation pha requires an organization that can manage the product, track problems and bugs, and respond to customer issues regarding the product in a timely and cost effective manner. A multi-tiered product support model is ud to ensure that products are operated in a way that leads to RASM (reliability, availability, curity, and manageability). Decommissioning Pha: The Decommissioning Pha occurs at the end of the product life cycle. While it may em like the decommissioning pha is something that can be safely ignored since there will likely be larger problems if the product is decommissioned, the truth is that many products are taken out of rvice.
Even when a company is in bankruptcy, the rational, orderly closing down of a product or rvice is important to managing the company’s asts. Customer Life Cycle
Just as products have life cycle, customers also have a life cycle. In its most simple forms the customer life cycle consists of two phas:
1. Customer buys the product
2. Customer us product
