So Where Do I Invest?

No one would disagree that investment is required to create products that solve customers' most pressing problems... the controversy is about how/who/why/when/where these investments are made. In the last post I outlined how many companies focus too narrowly on direct product investment (think developers writing code) and under-invest on the Product Management craft that is required to properly inform those investments.

So if you think your organization might fall somewhere in that camp, where do you begin?

Your product management team, leader, or outside expert needs to create a brutally honest assessment of the full range of activities which underpin healthy product management in a growth stage company.

There are plenty of Product Management taxonomies out there, most are helpful, none are perfect, but the good ones all somehow cover the key topics under A) the market(s) you serve, B) the product(s) you offer to serve those markets and C) the Product Management team (and processes) you have that drives that relationship forward.

Some examples of what some people in late stage start ups or growth stage companies think are "mature software company nice-to-haves" but I believe are absolutely required in if you expect to grow your product revenue and customer base:

• Do you have the target market and value proposition of your product well documented and are Sales, Marketing, and Product all 100% aligned to them?

• Do you have an agreed-upon long term product vision that is supported by a mid term product strategy which in turn is supported by a near term roadmap? Note: an enchancement backlog does not equal any of these three!

• How/who/when do you decide what gets built vs. what gets depriortized? Is this an open, fact based process facilitated by your Product team?

• Does everyone agree what key internal and customer metrics will be used to measure the effectiveness and overall success of the product(s)?

Those are some key examples but there are more that need to be properly assessed. The key areas of weakness need to then be actioned to avoid wallowing in a kind of "strategy of hope." In many cases, the fixes are easily actioned once everyone agrees that change is needed.