Product End of Life.

Product managers are very passionate about their product. They by their DNA can only envisage success and fame of the product they own. Rarely would you see a product manager  talking passionately about declaring EOL of their product. However there are situations wherein it becomes important to think of alternates, situations where limiting the losses takes higher priority than enhancing product features. Here are few signs of aging product that might be causing similar situation in your organization, and if you happen to observe similar behaviors / patterns with the product that you own than it may be the time to initiate EOL

Product Managers, beware of fabulous ideas

Believe it or not, ‘fabulous ideas’ are the most scary part of a product managers life. I am talking about instances wherein  someone from some corner of the  office, raise hand and shout out ‘hey! I have a fabulous idea’ – this not only means that you listen to my already certified ‘fabulous’ idea but also do include this in the ongoing or worst case next sprint. Product managers are expected to listen and agree to such ‘fabulous’ ideas, after all its their duty to collect requirements and put them on the roadmap!! – but where is the filtering part? Listening is fine, collection is ok but adding is last step. All ideas, suggestions, improvements & corrections must go through a proper review cycle, and should be evaluated before they even qualify to be termed as ‘idea’. Before filtration process they are merely some thoughts which may or may not make a good product sense.

While you add new feature.....

Adding new feature is always a fun, going through list of backlogs, talking to stake holders and trying to work out the priorities of user-stories in backlog. Its also challenging because you as product owner are always under pressure from sales who want to add feature that their customer is looking forward to, or their potential prospect would not sign a deal unless you add that one golden feather in your product.

To understand true priority most of us follow a release prioritization matrix, a document (MS Excel file mostly) that helps product owners to put weightage against various features (backlog items). This probably is a good way to do find out priorities of various feature requests.

While you work on your prioritization matrix, do all maths and talking, you must always remember the primary reasons for adding a new feature (points mentioned below), and unless new feature request falls in any one of the following primary categories just avoid its inclusion in your next release.

Monitor Feature Usage

Exploring user usage data to determine what he/ she is liking and valuing is of great importance for a product manager. User data helps in knowing what strategies are working and which needs to be re-worked upon. Importantly, inputs from user usage data may also influence product road-map in a greater way as it is direct input from users to product owner. 

User usage data will help a product manager in knowing;

• who is using feature, and when (time, circumstance etc) is he using them.
• most commonly used features and least used features
• is this feature being used for the purpose it was designed for? 
• feature combinations used
• duration for which software is used for
• how often user visits helps page and what content do they search for in help files
• abnormal software exit

....and many more similar questions that a product owner or product manager is expected to answer.

Trait that creates a success manager – VI

Trait – build what customer like and not just what you prefer

A typical business challenge that a product manager is expected answer is “What will make my product most desirable by its target customers?”

Answer to this question is simple. solve customer problem, and they will love it. A straight question, with a simple answer yet we don’t get there.

Why do we struggle to offer customer what they value? Probably we as product owners at times get lost in our desires & dreams of our product so much that we forget that our prime responsibility is to build what customer will value. Bring value to your customer, either by helping him earn more or by saving his cost. Usability aspects like look and feel, easy to install, fast application etc are default requirements, you cannot sell your product just on these points

Build your product on values, categorize each feature that you add in one of the two categories mentioned below, and if it does not fit in either than drop it happily, there is always next time for those features;

1.    Features that increase revenue, this includes aspects like newer revenue opportunity, increase in usage, selling supplementary services, cross selling etc

2.    Features that save cost, this includes simplifying SOPs, improving productivity, reducing or eliminating third party license fee, saving on infrastructure / manpower etc

A success manager will always be focused on adding features that falls in one of the mentioned two categories. As @annua rightly mentioned in her May blog @productmantra “are you going feature crazy?” adding feature is not equal to improving product, it is important for you keep your product simple & lightweight and refrain from adding what you can live without.

@mathurabhay