Focus On the Market
Focus On The Market
Within our chosen market segment we have products that address many of our customers’ needs. To sustain the competitive position of our products, we need to maintain awareness of the way that customers’ needs are changing and how our competitors are evolving their products. Beyond this we need to understand our market and adjacent markets well enough to find opportunities for the innovation of new products.
In A Nutshell
The way we manage our current portfolio of products gives us insight into the market places in which we participate. We use our interactions with our customers to obtain feedback on our products so that we can improve the services we provide. We gain insight into evolving customer needs so that we can evolve the product roadmap and backlog to remain aligned to the changes we observe. We observe our competition to understand areas where our existing products and offer competitive advantage or lag behind our competitors.
All of this knowledge is helpful in sustaining our competitive position and in becoming even more competitive over time. What we miss is the potential to move into whole new markets or areas of markets where our products have not reached previously. Gathering market intelligence we can begin to test new opportunities that are open to us. We can experiment to test the reality of the opportunity and our planned response to it. Where needed, we can launch new services supported by our existing products. If the opportunity is large enough and outside of our current portfolio we may decide to define and launch new products.
Practices
Research The Market
The team or wider organisation may readily identify that there are problems with its current way of working, that it wishes to improve its performance, or change its technology. Understanding the problem is inherently simpler than identifying a solution. Even if a potential solution is evident, we may be uncertain about its effectiveness. We experiment with changes to understand whether they will be effective and, if so, the extent of improvement we can realise.
The Product Roadmap provides a simple view of how the product will grow towards its vision. As a forward looking view, the roadmap does not set fixed priorities or deadlines. Rather it is a fluid view that evolves as our understanding of customers’ needs evolves. Roadmaps are influenced by concerns in addition to the customers’ needs. These may include our capability and capacity to deliver change and the business, financial and legal context in which our product operates.
The Product Strategy provides the route map to achieve the current vision. It describes how different aspects of the product will evolve to realise the vision. Aspects described in the strategy include features, qualities and technologies. Specific products may need additional aspects to be described within the overall product strategy.
The product vision gives us the point on the horizon that everyone involved in the product is aiming for. The vision is a shared point of view created by the organisation through an understanding of what its customers are demanding. The vision focuses on the why of the product. This is the organisation’s unique view of the services that will be provided that makes it compelling for customers to use.