Product Managers Can Use The Start Of The Year To Get A Jump Start On The Year

Happy New Year to everyone! As we stand together at the start of another business year, it’s important to realize that this time of year provides a product manager with a unique once-a-year opportunity to use this time of the business cycle to accomplish a few things that you just can’t get done at any other time of the year.

I’m not exactly sure why this is such a special time of year, outside of the fact that we’re coming out of the holidays. Considering how much of a product manager’s job revolves around contacting and communicating with people, this time of year just seems to make this task that much easier.

Here’s my list of what a product manager needs to do at the start of the year:

• Plan For Success: Forget New Year’s resolutions, I’m talking about Product Manager plans. Take a few moments and picture the end of 2009 - what do you want to have accomplished by the end of the year? Keep it real - no, your product is probably not going to become the next iPhone, but if you want to still have your job it is going to have to have some level of success. This plan can be a simple as a list of 5-10 items that you jot down. Paste it on the wall and you’ll be reminded of your yearly goals all year long.
• Reconnect With Old (Business) Friends: The madness of the end of the year is now over and everyone is in the process of trying to get their acts back together. This is a great time to reach out to everyone and connect with them in order to rekindle the relationship and get yourself in good standing for when you really need to talk to them later in the year.
• Hoard Resources: The neat thing about the start of the year is that nobody has a clear plan for what they want to do yet. This means that if you show up and ask for “things” - people, funding, office furniture, etc.  you have a better than average chance of getting what you want. What’s that phrase, “The early bird gets the worm…”
• Visit Customers: Just like everyone else, your customers are going to get more and more busy as the year starts to pick up steam. If you want to have a chat with your customers about their needs and wants this can be the best time of year to have that discussion.
• Pick Your Product’s Next Features: We’ve talked about Job Mapping as a great way to find out what features your customers would like you to add next to your product. No matter how you go about doing it, the start of the year is THE time to plan out what features you are going to add and in what order you are going to add them.
• Plan Your Next Product: As product managers, we can easily become too comfortable with the products that we know and love. The truth is that all products have a life cycle and will eventually end up going away. We need to take the time to plan for what products will come next. The start of the year is a great time to do this type of activity.

Once again, the first few weeks of each year are a special time that, just like Christmas, comes only once a year. Make sure that you use this time to ensure that the rest of the year is merry for all of your products!

What do you do during the first part of the year to get ready for the rest of the year? Do you find that it’s easier to get in touch with people during this time? Have you ever asked for more resources at the start of the year? Was your request successful? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: launch new product, new product, new product development, new products, product life cycle, product management, product manager, product mangement, product manger jobs, product manging, Sales

Coke Product Managers Have Over 450 Different Products To Manage

So I just happened to be leafing through an issue of Information Week and I ran across an article that was talking about how IT is run over at Coke. In a nutshell, the article was a glowing review of the changes that Jean-Michel Ares has been making. However, what really caught my eye was a discussion about how Coke is running their product manager activities. It turns out that Coke currently has over 450 separate brands including Coke, Diet Coke, Minute Maid, Dasani, etc. Just how can product managers at Coke possibly manage so many different products globally?

Perhaps because of the IT focus of the article, there was a lot of discussion about an application that Coke has implemented to help it track all of it’s ongoing projects. They selected an application called Clarity from CA (are they still in business?) It appears as though they have mated this app with an Oracle DB and now use it to track all of their development projects. What was interesting is that Coke appears to use a gate process as their project management process that most companies use as a way to remind themselves to kill a project if market conditions have changed - just getting the green light for a project does not mean that it will ever see the light of day.

Coke is in the process of moving to a new way of managing their products (product managers pay attention!) They are getting ready to implement a new application called the Common Innovation Framework. The reason that Coke gives for doing this is that they want to provide a global view into their product pipeline. It appears as though they are trying to set up a form of knowledge sharing in the hopes that product managers in different countries will search for brand or beverage ideas that worked well in other countires. Oh yeah, they are also hoping that if they have duplicate efforts going on at the same time, this application will allow those to be spotted and combined.

It appears as though the future that Coke’s Product Managers are working towards will allow them to quickly identify customer’s changing tastes, rapidly introduce new products, and kill off products that are no longer meeting customer’s needs. Interestingly enough, Coke views Japan as being the leading market for new products because their consumers quickly get bored with existing products and are always looking for something new. As products die in Japan, they get pulled there and can be introduced in new markets.

It sure looks like there is no shortage of information available to Product Managers at Coke. The entire company has standardized on SAP’s ERP application and they have even been able to extend it down into parts of their bottler and distributor network. The big challenges at Coke appear to be that the costs of raw materials are rising at the same time that consumption of their flagship product, Coke, is declining due to changing consumer tastes. What this all means is that Product Mangers at Coke need to move quickly. Coke has a number of competitors: Pepsi, of course, but also 100’s of local brands that have been fine tuned to meet local tasts.

We all know that relations between departments are never perfect, no matter what people tell magazine reporters. I suspect that the 450+ Product Managers at Coke had their own thoughts about the new product tracking applications that were put in. However, Coke is a successful company that has very deep pockets. One can only hope that at least some of their Product Managers have been able to build bridges to the IT, bottling, and regional teams in order to simplify and smooth out the challenges associated with trying to “… teach the world to sing…”

What do you think that it would be like to be a Product Manager at Coke? Do you think that Product Managers have an easier or harder job to do than Product Managers at other companies? Do you think that things will move even faster for Coke Product Managers as they move into the future? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: Coke, IT Product manager, new products, product development, product life cycle, product management, product manager, Sales

Netflix is looking for different ways to stream video to your TV

Once upon a time, going to a Blockbuster Video store was a regular part of my weekend. Since I am such and engineer, running back to the store the next day to return the video that I had watched was also part of my weekend. However, I don’t do any of these things any more - now that Netflix has entered my life.

Netflix blew Blockbuster Video out of the water and they did it very quickly. Instead of trying to compete with Blockbuster on their own terms, Netflix redefined the market and did away with all of those video stores. Poof! I’m sure that we can all applaud what Netflix has done so far; however, if you were a Product Manager working at Netflix, what would you be doing now?

Let’s look at the facts: Netflix currently has a very successful product. However, technology keeps moving forward. This product, like so many of our products, has a limited shelf life. Netflix has a lot of existing customers. What do they need to do to retain their existing customers even while they move forward?

Right now it sure looks like the future of at-home movie watching is streaming video via the Internet. Exactly how this is going to work itself out is still just a bit unclear. So what should a Netflix product manager be doing right now? How about laying down the path to the future with the full realization that things may change on the way.

The key is to make delivery of the Netflix movies to their customers as easy as possible. I’m pretty sure that Netflix believes that the transition from mailed DVDs to watching streaming video will be a gradual process that will happen over time - not a flash cut. Netflix has been offering access to streaming video over the Internet for over a year now. Initially they limited how many hours of video each user could stream each month; however, at the start of 2008 they made this unlimited. The only downside to this service is the selection: it’s pretty much movies and TV shows that have run their course. The new releases are not available here.

What’s next? Allowing end users to stream video not into their laptops, but rather into their existing humongous TVs. In order to do this, Netflix needs some serious partnerships. This appears to be what the Netflix product managers are spending their time doing. Netlfix and LG Electronics have teamed up to offer a $500 Blue-ray DVD player that will also stream Netflix movies. Netflix has announced a partnership with Microsoft to allow users of Xbox live to stream Netflix movies. Finally, Netflix has worked with Roku to develop a standalone player that will allow movies to be streamed to your TV.

Which one of these partnerships is the right one? Who knows? I suspect that alot of what is going on here is an attempt by Netflix to discover what the correct product pricing is for this new type of product. The bet is that one of these approaches will bear some fruit and will allow Netflix to remain in the lead in their market. In the end, can any Product Manger ask for anything more?

Do you use Netflix now - what do you think of them? Have you used any of their streaming services? Did it cause you to use less of their DVD-via-post service? Which one of Netflix’s partnerships do you think is the right way to go?

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