Product Strategy & Architecture

Rahul AbhyankarNov 12, 2011

Briefly, about…• 20 years of high tech experience in product management, business

development and engineering roles

• Led teams to build enterprise/consumer, software/hardware/cloud based systems and services

• PM leadership for product portfolios as well as core technology portfolios

• Most recently VP of Product Management at McAfee responsible for Global Threat Intelligence and core security technologies

• Prior: FaceTime Communications, MasterCard, Union Pacific Railroad, Tata Motors (India)

Some Real-World Situations• As a PM responsible for the roadmap, my engineering team has some

“engineering requirements”. How do I weigh these against “market requirements”?

• As an Engineering Lead, how do I get “engineering requirements” road mapped into the release cycle without them getting deprioritized by sales and “market requirements”?

• As an Engineering Lead, I need to understand where this product is going in the future so we can architect it for the long term.

• As a PM, I trust my Engineering team to build the right technology. How do we ensure the architecture is future proof?

We exist to create value!

WHAT?WHY?

Business CaseMarket

RequirementsProduct

Requirements

HOW?

ArchitectureEngineering

Requirements

PM Engineering

Q&A

• For Engineering– Do requirements capture the essence of the value

being delivered?

• For PM– Do all stakeholders have a clear understanding of

how architecture will deliver that value?

Typical approach to value

• Actors, Types of Actors• Use Case Scenarios• Requirements

• Shortcomings– Focus more on what actors do, not so much WHY– Tend to stereotype actors – Binary – Requirement is met or it isn’t, use case is

satisfied or it isn’t

How do we discover Value?

• VALUE EXPECTATIONS– What are the needs– What are the capabilities to address the needs– How well are they provided (quality)

How do we discover Value?

• LIMITING FACTORS– What makes it difficult to satisfy

the value expectations?

How do we discover Value?

• CHANGE AGENTS– Events that cause value expectations to shift OR– Limiting factors to have a different impact

Value Analysis

• Value Expectations• Limiting Factors• Change Agents

• HOW SATISFIED IS OUR MARKET?• HOW DIFFICULT WILL IT BE TO SATISFY IT?• WHAT WILL DISRUPT THE MARKET?

Deployment Context

Single Context Products

All deployment scenarios have equivalent value expectations and limiting factors

Multiple Context Products

Different deployment environments, value expectations, limiting factors

Why is this important?

• Value Analysis becomes a important exercise for PM and Engineering

• Better understanding– How are value expectations prioritized– How well are value expectations going to be met– How well are limiting factors going to be mitigated– What are the interdependencies between them– What tradeoffs are necessary to fulfill value

expectations

Where does this fit?

Requirements Architecture Definition

Value Analysis

Product Managing Core Technology

• Treat platform as a product– Customer is buying the product, but getting the platform

• Link technology metrics of core components to value expectations

• Intangible indicators of value– Decline in support cases– Customer surveys– Third party reviews, bake-offs

Architecture Strategy

• Organization• Operation• Variability• Evolution

• High-level statement of direction that must be understandable by all stakeholders

• Enable positioning the platform as a product

Cisco’s collaboration architecture emphasizes interoperability and openness, allowing any device or application to use core collaboration services enabled through a set of flexible deployment models

Roadmaps – Making it Actionable• We love product roadmaps and the longer the roadmap, the greater

our pride!

• Do we have a technology roadmap?– “What is the state of VoIP?”– “What is the state of HTML5 vis-à-vis Flash for rich web apps?”

• Do we have an industry roadmap?– “When does telepresence become relevant?”

• PM and Engineering need to collaborate on creating multiple roadmaps and go beyond a roadmap that just states product release cycles

Thoughts, Thanks• Summary

• Value Analysis– Value Expectations– Limiting Factors– Change Agents

• Platform as a product– Intangible indicators of value

• Multi-layered roadmaps– Technology roadmap– Industry roadmap– Product-Technology roadmap– Product roadmap

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Product Professionals Networkingfeaturing Rahul Abhyankar

Prioritizing Technical vs Market Requirements

Starting soon..10:00-10:15 Networking

10:15 Speaker Starts

Next Networking Events in BangaloreDec 10 – Product Management for SaaS Jan 7 – Monetizing Ideas on Mobile, SaaS, B2B

Feb 11 – Market Validation through Social MediaMar 3 - Proven models for Idea Validation

http://www.adaptivemarketing.in

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Announcing a new workshop on

Adaptive Workshop on Usability and Interface Design

Duration: 1 day (9:00am-5:00pm)Date: Nov 26th (Bangalore)Price: 12,000 Rs. (FREE for Adaptive

Xchange members)

Ideation Market Problems

Visual Validation

Information

Architecture

Design Layout

Design Styling

Congratulations!!

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Jayprakash Velu, AMDCertified Product Manager (CPM)Aswin K, Consona CRMCertified Product Manager (CPM)

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Scheduled Training OfferingsOpenWorkshops

Adaptive Product Management Professional

Adaptive “Productizing” Workshop for Engineers

Adaptive Advanced Workshop for Product Mgr

Adaptive Advanced Workshop for Sales & Marketing

Duration 5 days 2 days 2 days 2 days

Audience 5+ years experience in product company

5+ years experience. Engineers, Project Managers, Architects

4+ years of PM/PMM, experience, MBA desirable

4+ years of customer facing BD, PM/PMM, sales experience

Focus Career Transformation workshop that builds foundational skillsets to become a global PM

Developing a customer & business context around building products. Understand P&L, Business plan, success metrics

Advanced PM skills, managing multiple product lines, new product launches, Business plans, social media

Focus on setting up and running sales and marketing operations. Leveraging online marketing, social media

Certification AIPMM, USA Certification (CPM/CPMM)

Adaptive Product Professional Certification

AIPMM, USA Certification (CPM)

AIPMM, USA Certification (CPMM)

Upcoming Events(sign up at www.adaptivemarketing.in)

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Bangalore Certification PM Workshop

(5days) Dec 9th

Advanced PM Workshop (2days) Dec 9th

Productizing Workshop for Engineers (2 days) Oct 28th

New Workshops (1 day) Agile for Product Owners Nov 15th

Design/Usability for Product Professionals Nov 26th

Social Media for Product Managers (TBD)

Detailed Schedule at

www.adaptivemarketing.in

More Information & Registrations at

engage@adaptivemarketing.in

Looking for senior PMs, Engineering Leaders to help shape the curriculum and setup industry board.

Focus Group for Academy for Productizing Innovation on Nov 21st.

If you are interested let us know at api@adaptivemarketing.in

Envisioning a 1 year Executive Program for Product Professionals

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Have an idea?Have a suggestion on the speaker/topics?

Group “Adaptive Marketing”

engage@adaptivemarketing.in

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