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Blog Articles
Lessons from the VC Industry
In earlier articles we discussed the purpose of product portfolio planning and the frustrations with current product portfolio planning. In this article I’d like to look outside the typical world of product companies to a related industry that is in the actual business of making product investments, and that’s the Venture Capital (VC) industry.
Frustrations of Product Portfolio Planning
Continuing with the series on product portfolio planning, earlier I enumerated the purpose and objectives of the product portfolio planning process, but in this article I wanted to discuss the common complaints from executives and product leadership alike about the typical product portfolio planning process used at most companies beyond the startup stage.
The Product Scorecard
How does your CEO know that every product manager’s efforts are aligned with his business strategy?
How does your CEO clearly communicate to your product managers the business priorities?
How does your CEO know which product managers are making good decisions and making true progress in carrying out the business strategy?
Dogs, Cows and Kids
I have never seen a technology product company that didn’t have more ideas they wanted to pursue, than capacity for pursuing them. So constrained resources is a reality of our world. Sadly, this keeps many companies from pursuing some truly promising products.
The Purpose of Product Portfolio Planning
I am in the midst of a series of articles on product planning, but I’ve received several e-mails asking where this fits into the overall product organization, and the product discovery and product development processes, so I thought I’d make sure before proceeding further on the techniques that we’re all clear on the purpose and objectives of good product portfolio planning.
Business Strategy vs. Product Strategy
In keeping with my recent theme of product planning, I'd like to focus in this article on an important distinction and source of frustration in many companies, and that has to do with the differences between business strategy and product strategy.
The Board of Advisors
In my last article I began a series on the product planning process. I wanted to start by emphasizing that the most critical aspect to product planning is to have an effective mechanism for separating the good ideas from the bad (see The Seven Deadly Sins of Product Planning).
The Seven Deadly Sins of Product Planning
Product planning is a big topic that many product organizations struggle with. It spans a range of activities including business strategy, product strategy, product roadmaps, portfolio management, opportunity assessments, project planning and tracking, and project oversight.
Visiontyping and the Hands-On Executive
In my last article on Inspiring Product Leaders (see www.svpg.com/blog/files/inspiring-product-leaders.html) I wrote about executives that are deeply involved in the company's products, and I talked about how these are my favorite types of leaders for tech companies. Several of you wrote to me that you had such a leader, but you were
struggling to find ways to work effectively and contribute when the leader of the company is so hands-on in the product.
Inspiring Product Leaders
Last week Silicon Valley and the Internet industry lost one of its pioneers. For those that knew him, Mike Homer was unique and unforgettable. I worked for him for a time at Netscape, where he was the one of the principals there, initially running the marketing organization, and later the Internet portal effort.