Do Product Managers need Domain Knowledge?

As part of the second Pragamatic Marketing blogfest, I’m responding to Steve Johnson’s post: “Everyone needs to know what we do here“.

In it, Steve writes about the need for domain knowledge for technology workers, particularly in regards to the business they are in and the needs of their market. Whether talking about engineers, marketers, sales people or product managers, everyone needs to understand the company’s strategic objectives as well as some aspect of market dynamics.

In this case, I can’t really argue too much with Steve. If key people in a company don’t have domain knowledge, then the question “Why not?” must be answered. Do your competitors have domain knowledge? Most likely, especially if they are leading you in the market. How can anyone run any kind of successful business without domain knowledge?

For technology companies, the questions to consider revolve around defining exactly what “domain knowledge” is, and how best to acquire and maintain it.

Domain knowledge, particularly in B2B technology companies, can be quite complex. Not only do Product Managers need to understand the overall market, but also market specifics that vary from geography to geography. They need to understand overall trends in the market, as well as technology and economic trends that could impact product performance. Then come the questions related to competitors — who are they, what are their strengths/weaknesses, and where are they heading? Finally, Product Managers need to understand their target customers in detail — what they do, what they find valuable, how they currently use your product (or one of your competitors), and why they would value yours.

All of these areas of knowledge constitute domain knowledge. The reality is, very few individuals can have a full understanding of all of this information. I believe there is a myth that the lone Product Manager can collect, analyse, understand and then react to all of this information. The reality is that technology companies should look at the Product Management function as opposed to the individual Product Manager, as the locus of this knowledge.

Clearly other teams in the company also have domain knowledge, but Product Management needs to collect it and put it all together to make a coherent picture out of it. To do that well, it can’t be the responsibility of a single individual. Companies should be thinking about Product Management teams for each of their products or product families.

Some companies seem to succeed in spite of themselves. You’ve all heard of (or maybe even worked for) at least one of these kinds of companies. They had an innovation that lead to a successful product, but couldn’t repeat that success. Why not? One of the principal reasons is lack of sufficient domain knowledge to make the leap to a second successful product.

Case Study

Remember Delrina Corp? The makers of WinFax? Back in the early 1990s, WinFax was the clear market leader for faxing on Windows operating systems. Everything in the company was focused on the Windows operating system.

I was a technical writer at the time, and was hired to join the “small but growing” Macintosh team at Delrina. The goal was, as I was told, to build out a whole product line of Macintosh products, with the first product being fax software. And who knew fax software better than Delrina, the people who invented it?

At the time, the core Macintosh development team consisted of three people: the lead (and sole) developer (Don), the QA engineer (Mike) and me (the tech writer).

During the development cycle of the first version of Delrina’s Macintosh fax software, a number of things happened that made me wonder if I’d made a good choice coming to Delrina.

Given that the three of us (Don, Mike and I) were virtually the only people in the entire company who had actually used a Macintosh, most people there only experienced the product through the documentation that I was writing (on a Windows PC using Ventura Publisher nonetheless — not my choice!).

On the Macintosh, the software worked by setting the fax-driver as the target for print jobs. This was done via the Chooser in the Macintosh environment.

At one cross-team meeting to review the development and documentation status, someone, I don’t recall who, asked:

“What are these Chooser and Finder things? Who named them that? Can we change them?”

I kid you not. I couldn’t make that up. Almost immediately Don looked at the person and stated, almost robotically:

“No we can’t change them or rename them. They are fundamental to the operation of the Macintosh.”

I gathered that this was not the first time he had uttered that line.

Later on, the issue of the product name came to light. At another cross-team meeting, it was announced that the naming committee had decided on a name for the product, and all software, documentation, marketing materials etc. should use the name. The name was….hold your breath: WinFax Mac.

Now, if you recall back to the early 1990s, it was the height of the Macintosh vs. Windows fight. Users in the Macintosh community were pretty vocal about their disdain for Windows.

Mike and I looked at each other and waited for Don to say something. Don made an attempt to hide his frustration and then tried to calmly explain why the prefix “Win” as in WinFax was not an acceptable name for a Macintosh product.

The Product Manager would have none of it. He explained the enormous brand equity “WinFax” had, and how strongly attached the name “WinFax” was to fax software and that the plan was to leverage it in this new foray in the Macintosh market. Mike also tried to explain the issues with using “Win” in the name of a Macintosh product and was also shut-down.

A couple of months later, at yet another cross-team meeting, the PM announced that feedback had been received from a large number of beta customers indicating their dislike of the product name, and thus a new name would be found without the prefix “Win” in it. Mike, Don and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

Once the project was complete, I decided to leave the company and find employment elsewhere. Even back then, early in my career, I could see the dark days ahead if I stayed at Delrina. I found work at a startup, but continued to track Delrina and their Macintosh product line. A few months later, I saw a review of the product in a computer magazine. The review was OK, but the documentation got a 4 out of 5! I still have a copy of that manual.

As it turned out, the fax product was Delrina’s first and last Macintosh product. Aside from Delrina’s lack of knowledge about the Macintosh computer and user community, they also didn’t understand the dynamics of the Macintosh fax market. Delrina had succeeded in the Windows market by being first to market with an innovative product, and then controlling the channels by signing OEM deals with virtually every PC fax hardware manufacturer. In short, virtually every PC faxmodem that shipped at the time came bundled with a copy of WinFax Lite.

The same strategy had already been executed by other Macintosh fax software manufacturers. So when Delrina entered the Macintosh market, it not only was a late entrant, but the channels were all tied up by competitors. Their strategy, leveraging their Windows dominance to enter the Macintosh market was completely useless. And why? Quite simply because they had no real domain knowledge or true understanding of the market they were entering. Decisions made in a vacuum always look pretty good at the time.

Saeed

How to be a GREAT Product Manager (part 6)

Own the product from conception to completion and beyond

In my early product management jobs, I focused a lot on the process of product management. A CEO of a startup I worked for told me that my approach to product management was “very academic” in nature. He viewed himself as a “get it done by any means necessary” entrepreneur, while I viewed myself as a”get it done right” product manager.

The startup was a very sales/deal driven company, as many startups tend to be. Putting product management in place in such an organization is not easy. But having a process focus is very important for a product manager. Every other function, from sales to marketing to development to finance to HR implement processes.

But because product managers work across these functional units, people don’t realize or understand that even in small companies there must be a repeatable and scalable process to conceive, research, define, develop, test, launch, promote, sell, support and sustain winning products!

And while product managers have a direct responsibility in some of these 10 areas and indirect responsibility in others, PMs absolutely have a core responsibility to oversee and align the activities of other teams across this entire process. I’m not talking about managing those people directly or telling them what they should do. I’m assuming people know how to do their respective jobs. What I am saying is that if you want to be a great Product Manager, take ownership (not necessarily full control) over the process and lead the teams in alignment through it.

Get alignment from the very beginning
From the start, as you (and/or your PM team) are doing your research, clearly define the context and vocabulary necessary to effectively convey the research results to the intended audiences. This vocabulary, whether related to personae/roles, business functions, consumer needs, product architecture or functionality or something else, will become key to bringing everyone into the same frame of reference. This is important because it helps to minimize misinterpretations and miscommunication during the product development and launch process. If people aren’t aligned early on in the process, you are likely to see confusion or conflict later on as requirements are implemented incorrectly or with unacceptable constraints.

As an example, before becoming a product manager, I worked at a company that was developing a fairly sophisticated reporting and visualization framework for business and financial data. One of the engineers was tasked with the requirement to create a flexible means to allow users to format and display numeric and character text (including time, date and multiple international currency values) dynamically for display in pop-up boxes when on-screen entities were moused-over. Are you with me?

He went off, did some research and without a lot of internal discussion, implemented functionality to address the requirement. I was responsible for documenting the functionality. When I saw what he had developed, I was stunned. He had created a flexible — but incredibly complicated — formatting subsystem. Yes, it could do everything and more relative to the requirement, but I’m certain only the engineer and a few other technical people could actually use it. The documentation for this functionality took 60 pages (out of a 600 page reference manual). When people in the company saw how complex it was, the functionality was removed from the product.

What went wrong? A number of things including lack of internal communication, lack of oversight, and lack of involvement from the product manager. Where was he during all this? I don’t recall exactly, but I think he was out, working with sales and trying to close some deals. Helping sales is good. Don’t get me wrong. But not when it comes at the expense of the product being built.

Get your hands good and dirty
During the development cycle, work to keep other teams such as marketing, product marketing, sales, sales consulting, support, channels, alliances and professional services informed and educated on the development status and product functionality. For smaller consumer products or websites, this may not be a difficult task, but for larger enterprise or data center software, this can be a daunting task.

For a major release of a large product, a development cycle will last 12 months or more. There are many decisions that are made during this cycle that need to be conveyed to downstream teams to ensure they can plan ahead for the impact of the new release.

Don’t stop until adoption is clear
Once the product is released, you need to stay focused on the product. You can’t let up and simply go start gathering requirements for the next release. Stay engaged with early customers, partners and the customer facing teams such as sales and professional services. If early customers are upgrading to the new release from a previous version, track those upgrades and follow up with the customers to see how the upgrade went and what comments they have about the new release.

Join members of the sales team on customer and prospect calls and listen to how they are describing and selling the new release, and what the reaction is from the audiences.

• Are the salespeople on message?
• Are the sales consultants adequately trained?
• Do the demos hit on target?
• Is the market need that you researched and identified oh so long ago, still as relevant and critical as it was back then?

These questions (as well as others) should be the focus of product managers (and product marketers) after product launch.

All too often, I’ve seen people work on a release, have it launch, and then essentially forget about it as they start focusing on the next release. Big mistake. If sales is struggling to sell the product, as the Product Manager, you need to take the challenge on and work to identify and remove the barriers.

Don’t look at it as someone else’s job because it isn’t. Would a CEO let a struggling VP of Sales flounder for a quarter or two? Absolutely not. As a PM, take your cues from the CEO and within reason, do what a CEO would do. Don’t wait for others to tell you what needs to be done. Take charge of your product, make sure it is built right and then ensure it trounces the competition.

Saeed

Part 5 - Be an integrator, translator and communicator