From Good to Great: Shifting Product Teams to be More Strategic

Welcome and Introductions

Robyn Brooks | 00:00–02:30
welcome everyone today’s webinar is on being a more strategic product manager and uh we’re excited to dive into this topic because we find it comes up pretty frequently with uh product teams that we talk to all right I am Robyn Brooks I’m director of product management here at Productside so I work on many of the courses uh that you see that we offer and other products that we offer um and uh I’m coming to you live from Portland Oregon where we have a lovely rainy fall day uh Roger uh how about you can you say a few words about yourself

Roger Snider | 02:30–04:10
of course thank you Robyn my name is Roger Snider and I’m a principal consultant and trainer at the Productside I help deliver the courses that Robyn creates uh excited to be with you all today I’m based in California in the Santa Cruz mountains where it is a gray day and we are being threatened with rain supposedly it’s going to really poor this afternoon but right now the rain has not yet started so thank you Robyn and let’s let’s keep going let’s talk more about today and a little bit about well I’ll let you talk

About Productside and Webinar Logistics

Robyn Brooks | 04:10–07:30
all right yeah I just want to say a few words about Productside who we are for anyone who might be new to us um we are an outcom driven product partner we transform product teams um into better versions of themselves and we focus on uh training from industry leading experts as well as Consulting uh that we can do to help you help your whole team shift to being more strategic because we know that that is a that is a problem that many teams have uh really focused on the next release or the next product iteration and uh we’re going to talk about quite a bit of that today

during the webinar we tend to get a few questions pretty consistently um one is is can I watch this later or can I share this with a colleague absolutely um all attendees will receive an email uh with a link to the recording after the webinar is ended um so if you find Value feel free to share this with a colleague we’d love to uh we’d love to help them out as well

um we also are taking questions so during the webinar feel free to make this really interactive um Post in the chat um we find a lot of people can help learn from each other as well as from us and uh we also encourage you to use the Q&A feature um to post questions because we will have a Q&A session at the end so if you have a topic that you’d like us to address or a question you’d like to ask as we’re going through the content today um please post that to the Q&A and we’ll have a chance to address it towards the end of the session

definitely want those to be interactive so absolutely your questions at any time and at any time bot will be happy to answer them line

Product Management Leadership Group on LinkedIn

Robyn Brooks | 07:30–08:30
yeah I also want to encourage you to check out our product management leadership group on LinkedIn we are also live on LinkedIn now so hello to everyone watching us uh from LinkedIn

um we do a lot of have a lot of conversation in this LinkedIn group sharing best practices connecting product leaders and product managers with each other um and we really do uh encourage networking with your peers and uh in the LinkedIn group so join us

all right Roger I will hand it over to you

Agenda – Becoming a More Strategic Product Manager

Roger Snider | 08:30–11:30
very good thank you Robyn so today we want to talk about how you’re going to become more strategic uh in your role as a product manager and so this is the agenda we’re going to talk about shifting to be be able to have a more strategic perspective we’ll talk about how to organize your releases so that they are more effective in actually meeting customers needs but in making new use for your organization as well

the foundation of this work is based on what we call the product outcome canvas so we’re going to be giving you a guided tour of that canvas which will help you better organize everything you’re thinking about your product and bring a more strategic perspective throughout the organization on what your product is all about

we’ll also talk about how this canvas is is uh an outgrowth of the lean canvas and compare it to the lean canvas just so you can understand their relationship and then we’ll be able to pause and and uh entertain some questions have a conversation with you about how to become more effective become more strategic and be able to use the product outcome canvas as a tool to accomplish this goal of becoming more strategic

so let’s dive in let’s talk a little bit more about how do you go about shifting your product teams uh but I want to get a better understanding of our audience so I’d actually like to start with a poll

Poll #1 – How Often Are Releases Tied to Corporate Priorities?

Roger Snider | 11:30–15:00
so if we can get that poll launched what I’d like to understand a little bit better is how often are your product releases directly tied to corporate priorities so there’s the poll question it is going now so is every release connected to a corporate priority or would you say most of them are say around three quarters of them would you say half of them are maybe only a few a quarter of them or it’s kind of rare actually that your release is connected directly to a corporate priority so let’s see how we’re doing here got love to get a little few more answers

all right looks like we’ve pretty much gotten the results here so let’s end the poll and share the results if we can

all right so looks like the sweet spot here can you see that Robyn

Robyn Brooks | 15:00–15:40
I can see that yes sweet spot is around three4 of our releases around but half so 68% in total between three qus and half that’s pretty actually encouraging right

Roger Snider | 15:40–16:30
so it’s encouraging to see that most releases more than half are connected to corporate priorities that’s fantastic ftic um and and we’re going to talk more about how can you even up that number even more as we are going through our presentation

Roger’s Confession – Activity vs. Strategy

Roger Snider | 16:30–20:30
so great want to do first though is is a little bit confession time um early in my career as a product manager I have to tell you that you know I was I was doing the work right I was showing up I love being a product manager I was attending the team meetings I was taking notes I was I was really writing comprehensive prds product requirement documents back in the day

um but I noticed that you know other folks were getting promoted better than I was and and what was going on there and in fact I actually dug back into the attic of my product management career and on the right this is a real PRD that I wrote back in the late 90s I have uh smeared things out to protect the innocent but in fact uh this was the kind of work I was doing writing extremely detailed product requirements and like I said others were you know getting promoted more effectively than I was so what was that all about

well they were telling stories right and their products definitely appeared to be more strategic even though I felt like I was contributing real value to the organization with our products uh I wasn’t necessarily as strategic in the the way I was even telling the stories or the way I was connecting the dots between the strategy and uh the real things that we were producing right so I wasn’t doing a good job of connecting those dots so avoid that mistake that I was making admittedly was early in my career and I did learn but try try to avoid that

Connecting Releases to Company Strategy and User Goals

Roger Snider | 20:30–25:00
so we want you to be thinking more strategically as you are developing your your product requirements as you’re thinking about your overall product strategy and those releases so can you tie every release to your company strategy is there something going on something that the the company has said is an important goal that you can show how your product is actually contributing to that is it going to help increase product loyalty and therefore reduce churn is it going to be able to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction in a way that means they’re going to renew more often they’re going to keep that subscription going is it I’m adding a new capability that’s going to actually increase revenue and be able to create better margins for our company be able to express that right

of course our company goal goals are important but even more important are our user goals what is it that our customers are trying to achieve what benefits do they want to receive from using our product or what job do they want to have done as a result of using our product and it could be an emotional job it could be that the product is just putting a smile on the customer’s face it’s making their life better and happier right so it could be nuts and bolts oh great they can run a report and be more efficient or it could be something that is really just making them happier as they conduct their their jobs of life okay

and then can you tell a story connect the dots between the problems you’re solving for your customer the satisfaction that you’re bringing to them the benefits that those those products are bringing to our company and then telling that all as a story a story arc right and remember you’re not the hero of the story your customer is the hero of the story you are perhaps the wise Sage right you’re going to be the one telling the story and showing how the customer benefits from this but really keep the customer as the hero of the story that you tell

all right so we’re going to talk more about this right but what you want to do is produce more strategic results they align to strategy they are able to make news for the company something that the company can promote and and and trumpet from the top of the building and then you’re going to help you achieve your own corporate goals and satisfy your customers ultimately if you do this well then you’ll be promoted you’ll be noticed as a product manager who is getting things done right

Finding Strategy in Company Goals

Roger Snider | 25:00–29:00
all right so how do we go about doing this let’s talk a little bit more about how we organize our releases so where do we go and look for strategy well I would start with say your quarterly Town Hall meetings or your annual goal reviews whatever it may be but normally your CEO is going to publish goals of the year they’re going to be putting it out there clearly for you hopefully to understand what’s going on and we’ve listed a whole bunch of possibilities here right the typical things of you know obviously you want financial performance right maybe it is you’re trying to crack a new market maybe it is that customers haven’t been as happy with your products and so you’re trying to increase customer satisfaction with something like a net promoter score right The NPS right or maybe you’re just trying to become more efficient reducing costs all right maybe you want to make your products easier to sell easier to understand for your customers easier to understand for your sales team so take a look at those quarterly meetings or the annual goals or if the CEO sends out a memo and look at what is it the Company’s trying to accomplish and then think about all right how can my product contribute to that overall success in one or multiple Dimensions right

Personas and Knowing Your Users (Fred & Claire)

Roger Snider | 29:00–33:30
now of course like we said the the user is going to be the hero of your story so you’ve got to understand your user extremely well right go deep in becoming what we call the voice of the customer and sometimes a lot of companies thankfully more and more are generating what we call personas right they are getting a deep understanding by doing market research customer interviews focus groups whatever techniques you may be using visiting customers spending time with sales to be able to then build these profiles these personas of your customers and I’ve got two examples here right Finance who is a key user profile and Claire the CEO who is the buyer profile right so don’t just be thinking about who uses your product every day be thinking about who’s actually going to have input on the purchasing decision as well and can you make sure that your product satisfies their needs too right

so I want to point out a couple of things here and Rob feel free to chime in if there’s something that you want to emphasize but let’s take a look at Fred a little bit right Fred wants to make sure that key metrics are that are important to to his business are something that gets in front of the executives so they see how things are working right he wants to be able to satisfy his constituents his boss right and of course Fred is not going to renew stuff that isn’t valuable right so you’ve got to always be thinking about how do I make our product more valuable for Fred right taking a look at Claire the CEO Claire wants success Claire holds people accountable right and Claire wants to make sure resources are achieving goals so the more Fred can help Claire the more Claire is likely to say yes to renewing the products that Fred needs to use to be successful the products you’re selling to Fred

Robyn Brooks | 33:30–35:10
yeah I like how these personas really focus on the goals of the customer um I’m not sure if anyone here attended our last webinar on personas where we put personas on trial to to discuss what personas are helpful and when personas are not used correctly and um this is a really good example of what you need to include in a persona for it to be relevant and helpful when you’re telling the story The Narrative of your product and the the goals of the customer right

Roger Snider | 35:10–36:10
so start with like I said your customer as the hero of the story and be able to connect what challenges you’re helping that hero face and how are you helping that hero that customer to be more satisfied and more happy in how they are using your products

Telling a Strategic Story Across Releases

Roger Snider | 36:10–41:00
all right so once you’ve got that story you still have to be able to tell that story over time right so you want to be able to you know if you’re using say agile methodology and you are maybe rapidly reducing products you don’t necessarily have to tell a story with every single product increment that comes out of your Sprint but you need to be able to tell a story and be able to have that story Advance over time so that in dashboard release b1.2 what are you going to emphasize as the cool new things that are going to help your customer be more satisfied be more productive be more effective right and then the same thing in 1.3 1.4 can I keep telling that story and evolve it over time right okay

and then maybe I’m adding whole new capabilities that’s also an opportunity of course to tell a great story and have that release come out with this whole new report Builder and MVP but there should be some key value in that mvp that is going to be something that you are are able to trumpet like okay this one nugget of new capability is what we’re offering in the MVP and then over time you’re going to continue to add to that story and say look we’re going to actually be able to add more capability over time but you want that story to be an evolving Story one that keeps going one that keeps helping Advance why your product is valuable to your customers right

so to my point earlier you want to bundle these benefits up you’re not going to tell a story probably every two weeks now maybe some like if you’re in the gaming industry you are telling little stories more frequently right but depending on the pace of business depending on how often you are releasing be thoughtful in how you’re going to bundle together new capabilities and tell a compelling story right and once you do that you work with and partner with your marketing team to be able to actually have some great press releases right you want to be able to have this information available on the public website but also at trade shows or important Publications maybe it’s going to be promoted as part of a webinar maybe it’s going to be promoted at a trade show that’s coming up but you want to always be thoughtful about how am I going to be connecting the dots between the value my my product is delivering and the moments of opportunity when I can make that great story for our company to share

Robyn Brooks | 41:00–43:00
okay this is really key we get this question quite a bit from uh um from attendees of our classes well how can I make um release planning easier how do I prioritize how do I tell a story with my releases we’re doing a lot of work but you know marketing tells me that they don’t know how to Market it it’s really about telling stories and consolidating these features and keeping your customer at the center and thinking about who do these features serve and how is it going to make their life uh more interesting then the press releases start to write themselves right

Roger Snider | 43:00–43:40
that’s a great Point absolutely so you as a product manager need to be mindful about sure you’re working with product owners or technical product managers getting down into the details but you need to pop back up and make sure you’ve got this story arc clear in your mind about over time how am I delivering more value and sharing it with your marketing friends so they then know how to tell this story in a compelling way

Poll #2 – How Often Do You Release New Features?

Roger Snider | 43:40–46:30
all right so let’s pause again and check in with our audience and see you know get a bit little bit understanding of how often are you having product releases that have a major or minor feature upgrade so let’s open this poll here we go

all right we need the next poll I think there we go awesome okay so are you doing continuous releases or are you having an MVP or a 1.0 coming up um you got major new release coming up or maybe none of the above oh a lot of people in continuous so far that’s pretty awesome pole open for just a moment longer

all right let’s share the results

Roger Snider | 46:30–47:30
so a lot of folks are now in continuous release mode this is awesome then we’ve got yeah this is this is a trend we’ve seen uh grow quite a bit over the last few years you know particularly in SAS software obviously if you’re releasing a hardware product you’re probably not releasing it continuously

Robyn Brooks | 47:30–48:20
um but uh but it is great to see more um SAS software providers move towards continuous releases um then the challenge becomes in making sure that you’re still telling a story a periodic story with those releases right so don’t get lost in the fact that maybe you are continuously delivering value that’s good but be able to sum up some of the value over a couple of different releases and then be able to have a nice bigger story story to tell that’s very important as we were just describing right

Introducing the Product Outcome Canvas

Roger Snider | 48:20–52:00
okay so how do we’ve talked about the need to be strategic we’ve talked about making sure that your user is the hero of your story and that you are connecting the dots between company goals and satisfying your user’s needs how are we going to organize all of this right and so what we propose is that you use something called the product outcome canvas all right and the product outcome canvas uh is an outgrowth of earlier tools called like the lean canvas and we’ll talk more about that a little while in terms of the comparison but here is the the blank product outcome canvas and what I’m going to do now is kind of take you on a guided tour of the product outcome canvas

so we start with this blank canvas and then we’re going to fill it in and I’m not just going to uh try to read all of this text to you but we’re going to go over the key elements of the product outcome canvas right so at the top obviously you’ve got the name of the product and the date that you are presenting the latest information about this the first thing I want to say about the canvas is this is a living document you’re going to start with this document all the way back when you’re first conceiving of a new idea or you’re working on say let’s say a point release where you’re going to have some new benefits that you’re going to be able to offer right so with those new benefits you’re going to want to be able to express the story and this canvas will help you do that right so this is the date that we are are are doing this update of the product outcome canvas but remember it’s going to be a living document that you continue to evolve over time with each subsequent release some of these elements will change like you know what are the key features but the overall benefits of the product shouldn’t change a lot over time all right so let’s dive in a little bit deeper

Defining MVP and MLP

Roger Snider | 52:00–53:00
I notice we’ve got a question Robyn should we take that question

Robyn Brooks | 53:00–54:00
yeah I was gonna mention somebody actually asked what does MVP mean and I realized we didn’t actually Define that

Roger Snider | 54:00–56:00
no that’s a really good point right so minimum viable product MVP there’s also MLP minimal lovable product that people like to use as well and MVP is the smallest amount of a product that can deliver meaningful value so there may be a hundred things that you want to do I mean let’s say we’re talking about reporting because we’re going to be talking about reporting here right there’s probably a dozen things you want in that reporting capability but what’s the one thing that if you just delivered that and delivered it more quickly you could improve your customer’s life you could help that hero progress on their Journey so that’s why we talk about the minimum viable product the minimum lovable product uh because you want to get things out more quickly these days customers expectations are rising that they’re going to be a seeing a continuous flow of value instead of I want to develop all 12 of those capabilities and then I’ll release it right that’s the older kind of waterfall style of releasing products these days we want you to get valuable increments out on a regular basis and the MVP is the beginning of that Journey so I hope that helps if you have a follow-up question please go ahead and pop it in there

Walking Through the Product Outcome Canvas

Roger Snider | 56:00–64:00
all right so let’s return yeah yeah so first off we want to think about our customers so what’s the problem all right our client leaders are not using our dashboard enough all right we want them to be using them at least you know three times a week but they’re using them less than one time a week right so we’ve got to provide more value to make this dashboard something that becomes indispensable more valuable for our customers so this is a problem that we’re seeing okay we’re seeing this problem now this is our problem but we’ve got to think about well what’s the customer’s problem as well and we’ll dive more into that in just a moment all right

so one thing that I want to talk about is how do I build up my hypothesis right so we talked about a problem right how am I going to solve that problem okay let’s talk about then solving the problem and we say you should form a hypothesis because we don’t want you to just immediately say oh this is a great idea I’m going to go build it no we want you to come up with an idea hypothesis of what would help solve our customers problem make their lives better but then we’re going to test that remember hypothesis if you remember your high school science a hypothesis is something you’ve got to test right so we like to use this format by doing something we expect this outcome and that is based on these facts all right so it’s important to remember we’ve got to do things is based on the market research that we’ve done our understanding of our customer right our understanding of the market problems so our hypothesis here is by adding a weekly goals versus actuals view to the dashboard we expect that dashboard to increase in usage from less than one time a week to than more than two and a half times and the reason we believe this is because our survery results are showing that this is the problem our customers are having they can’t track how are we doing actually versus the goals that we set on a weekly basis right so they’re missing this feature we’ve heard that from sales we’ve seen that from our survey results right we also know that when a leader uses the dashboard more they’re more likely to share it with their executive and that’s going to increase executive usage right so we’ve done research on that point as well and then lastly the more Executives use the product the more likely the contract is to be renewed and so we’ve got data that proves that as well okay so all of this connects the dots between our customer’s problem our problem of low usage and how that’s going to actually lead to more Revenue better subscription Okay so we’ve developed this hypothesis now we plug that hypothesis into our product canvas right so I’m not going to read it to you but you already saw it that’s plugged in there now okay

and now what we want to do to the point that Robyn made earlier we’ve got to partner with our marketing folks and help them better understand the value that we’re going to offer so we write what’s called a positioning statement and this positioning statement says the who what and why okay we’re going to help our client Executives better track hitting Financial targets okay this is a heavy industry project tracker it’s a real-time dashboard and we want to help non-technical users and unlike the other guys product that’s with togp stands for well unlike the other guy product ours comes with a specific focus on industry users right the particular needs that they have versus any run-of-the-mill industry we’re focused on that particular industry and the fact that they need to track this stuff in days not months okay so you’re probably starting to get a sense that like a lot of onepage formats of documents this document is very dense and being able to present all of this information in a single page format circulate it with leadership social ize this have conversations before you seek approval to move forward with a product is immensely helpful and if anyone is starting to feel lost don’t worry we actually have some other tools that’ll actually help you uh start to scaffold your way into this nobody’s able to sit down and fill this out there’s lots of depth of research that you’ve already done or still need to do things that you need to validate before you get to this final product we just wanted to walk you through what this looks like but if you’re starting to feel like you’re a little overwhelmed don’t worry hang with us we’re g to get there

Roger Snider | 01:04:00–01:07:00
absolutely good point so notice what it says here about positioning you want to go confirm that alignment right so you’ve written this positioning statement like I said share it with marketing but go share it with sales go share it with Partners go share it with some customers you know oneon-one loyal customers that are already you’ve already got their ear and you are able to work with them uh and get feedback yeah if you solve that problem that would be awesome okay or I kind of like to tweak that a little bit whatever it may be but use this positioning statement to test your understanding of how well you could solve the problem and whether it’s a problem your customers want solve

now we talked earlier about storytelling right so we want to be able to write up some stories that help us better understand our customers needs and better Express to our development teams as well why there’s value in what they’re doing one of the other things I find really valuable with this canvas is is a great communication tool for everybody to get the bigger picture the whole why of their product Engineers love to code they love to build products physical products as well but they they would love to know more about the whole big picture of how their customers are going to win as a result of this work so tell some stories so we provide slots here to be able tell the story of of you know and there’s an emotional telling here right it says finally yay Fred’s actually happy now right so it’s not just the nuts and bolts of getting the work done you want emotional aspects to the story as well right so that Fred feels satisfied and now he’s so happy that he wants to share this with his CEO and remember don’t forget the buyer person some we want to be telling their stories as well understand the larger context of how your products get used so we have a story here about Claire as well okay

now of course there got to be key features right but notice how that’s not not the big part of what we’re presenting here remember my PRD that I showed you back in the day it was all about features right features are just the the outputs that are going to lead to these desired outcomes and our emphasis is understanding our customers needs understanding our corporate goals and focus on those outcomes right yeah you got to have the features so we do talk about them there they are what are the key things that we’re going to put in into the product right but you’ve got to tell the bigger story and and really put your emphasis on the customer’s problems and how it’s going to help the company Advance as well so be focused on outcomes not outputs

now next up we talk about risks and this is something also that product managers don’t necessarily spend as much time on so that’s why we put an extra slide in here and this is going to help you because you want to make sure that you are being honest with yourself about all the potential problems that could come up right is it going to be about resources not being available is it going to be about a new technology that we have to acquire that we may not have access to is it a risk that the competitor is going to get out in front of us but write this all down and then share it with others and folks will help you they will help identify hey have you thought about this have you thought about that or yeah you know that is a risk but here’s how we can mitigate that risk here’s how we can help solve that right and if you’re more intellectually honest if you don’t you know and I did this earlier in my career it’s like I’ll put my blinders on there’s no problems here it’s all happy happy Glory right no if you go into these conversations with a canvas that shows you thought through all the potential problems you’re going to definitely be more well respected for your honesty and for the hard work that you’ve done to be able to understand what are the challenges and having a plan to address them right so that’s why you kind of put a extra emphasis here on make sure you fought through the risks it’s a team sport go get help of it as well okay let’s keep going so we put the risks in here right this time of year lots of vacations coming up so that’s a risk right have we really planned out a plan that successfully and can execute on time given how many folks may be out of the office all right so good we’ve been thoughtful about that

Poll #3 – Who Presents Business Cases?

Roger Snider | 01:07:00–01:10:00
all right now again I want to check in see how you all are doing and understand a little bit more about well who presents what we call business cases at your company so think about this canvas this canvas is a way to present a business case so let’s start the poll and understand whether or not you’re kind of in the driver’s seat here are you the one that presents this maybe it’s your boss that presents the business case or it’s only the executives that do this kind of work or if you’re honest and I want I want to see an honest answer maybe you’re not using business cases okay and when I say business case like a lean canvas or our product outcome canvas are a way to do that okay so don’t don’t discount Al canvas if you’re using one that counts okay all right let’s see how we’re doing getting some answers in here

oh good this is actually encouraging I remember the day Robyn when um it was only the executives that presented business cases right or it was the VP of product management and I remember in my career I I strove to really make it about the product manager put them front and center to make these presentations so I’m glad to see and this is a this is a shift I think um and it depends on the organization and the industry um but uh but I’m I’m encouraged uh by the by the split I’m seeing so far we still have a few more votes trickling in and then we can take a look at these results

Robyn Brooks | 01:10:00–01:11:00
yeah but nearly half yeah let’s share the whole results but nearly half of the of the business cases are being presented by the product managers themselves that’s a fantastic shift from 15 years ago loving

Roger Snider | 01:11:00–01:12:00
absolutely the ownership is being pushed down to the person who’s actually responsible for the success of the product excellent great

Project & Product Boundaries, Outcome Tree, and Success Metrics

Roger Snider | 01:12:00–01:18:30
all right so as we are building our business case let’s get that screen out of the way we should be thinking about how can we be successful how are we going to measure success and how are we going to also be responsible for when things go wrong and that’s what we call the project boundary boundaries project boundaries are very powerful because they enable the product manager to be able to own their outcome and as long as they’re inside the boundaries they run the show of course you know it’s a whole bunch of work with a project team and you’ve got your extended product team and all your participants but the product manager as long as the whole product is staying inside these boundaries can just continue to be successful and effective the boundaries are also an opportunity when something goes wrong or something needs to change then you’re out of boundaries that’s when you go back and present this case again and in fact an just ask this question you know when do you present your case right good question right you present it early and often is what I like to say remember I said you kind of open up this canvas and start filling it out when you’ve got the idea of your next release and you put out that idea you may have more questions than answers but at least the Cannabis helps you kind of look at the whole landscape figure out what you know and don’t know and get helped to fill it out now there are going to be key decision points when you’re getting close to like you’ve got a real good handle on this and now you’re going to ask for a bunch of resources to actually go build this next release that’s a key moment that’s when you’re going to present your lead canvas present your business case and get approval then as you’re advancing if you get out of your boundaries that’s again another moment where you want to present you want to say something Ron

Robyn Brooks | 01:18:30–01:21:00
yeah I was just going to say that the um the boundaries the project boundaries section is extremely helpful because let’s say you do have a product um that has multiple releases you know you see this sometimes with larger software products you you might be responsible for a certain part of the product someone else is responsible and you’re always competing for resources this is the best defense I have seen and I have had as a product manager when you have someone fly in uh with a a brand new deal that you’re going to get the sales is really excited about it but we have to have these three features well now if you lose resources on this project this initiative this feature that you’re building that has already been approved now this is out of bounds and you can go to your leadership or if you have a product Council or product L table it goes by lots of different names but if you have an a body a governing body in your organization that makes these decisions you can say okay we have to build these three features because we’re getting this big deal for sales this is what it’s going to cost right and making those decisions really transparent to leadership helps them make better decisions so you’re not accountable for delivering features with less resources than it actually takes to deliver them

Roger Snider | 01:21:00–01:23:30
right great Absolutely yeah so when and you know business conditions change if there is a circumstance that does require this sh at least you able to have an intelligent conversation where you can make tradeoff decisions and understand what the trade absolutely yeah very very true so here in the boundaries we’ve got the product outcomes right we already talked about the fact that we want to in increase Fred’s usage right and then we’re also going to see that Claire starts using it more often right so those are the product outcomes that we’re looking for we’re going to be clear about what winning looks like what does success look like all right we’re going to have numbers and we’re going to make sure that we build into the product to be able to measure those numbers upfront that’s another thing that i’ I’ve seen happen is like you build the product you get it out there and even in the MVP you don’t have any way to track success so MVPs should still have the underlying instrumentation to be sure that you’re on the right track you’ve got to be able to answer that question up front so don’t overlook the needed instrument your product and in you know for physical products that means being able to survey your customers right or if there’s a software element to your physical product being able to watch that part of its usage so it’s not just software you always have to be able to be cognizant and thoughtful about how am I going to measure success right

and then to the point as that an asked earlier what am I asking for it’s clear now that I need these things for me to be successful I need a development plan and I need an increased marketing budget right those are the things that I need to be successful right and then there’s this connection of the business outcomes right and I want to actually use a slide for that okay so let’s go in here we call this the product outcome tree and this tree is a great visual for being able to connect the dots between what is it that my Company’s trying to accomplish that I believe my product can help solve so if this is the goal we want to reduce churn right then what product outcomes can I execute we’ve been focused on this one here the increasing usage of the dashboard but there are going to be others and that’s why it’s a treat right there’s going to be other things that are going to be on this list of things that are outcomes that could help contribute to the overall success that we’re looking for and then what is the output of course you need to have those features right here are the actual outputs that we’re going to add to the product but we want to make sure that we’re connecting the dots so that everybody sees is this story arc right of being successful and how are we connecting those dots right so this outcome tree helps you connect those dots visually it’s also another great tool to communicate this to the rest of the company and so Executives can see how things are being built and why it’s important to support a particular release and your development team can see oh cool if I build this stuff this is how I’m helping the company get better this is how I’m helping our customers be more happy and successful okay

MVP KPIs, Timing, and Staying Strategic

Robyn Brooks | 01:23:30–01:27:30
all right so those boundaries then are the business outcomes we already kind of talked about these the product outcomes right the success metrics and then the ask those are the things that really need to be in here okay so now real quick Roger we had a good question come in uh that I wanted to to talk about we actually have a few which is great I think we’re gonna have a good discussion um so someone asked would it be equally right to say that product product boundaries or project boundaries stands true and I think this is a good point because we always talk about oh product managers aren’t project managers and that is absolutely true they are different but when you’re talking about a release or an increment it is actually helpful to talk about that as a project opposed to the overall product now this could be different at at different organizations you may already have a term that you use you may talk about this as a product in increment this may be a release this may be um you know an initiative there are lots of different words you can use so make sure that you’re you’re you know staying true to kind of how you do it at your organization if you have a system but if you don’t then this is a good way to start because it helps to clarify what a project is versus what the product is

um and uh and keeping these boundaries in mind as you go through that process

Roger Snider | 01:27:30–01:31:00
absolutely so yeah if if your project conditions are getting out of bounds that affects these these product boundaries as well so great question and yes they are absolutely intertwined good question good so are there other questions we should talk about or keep going

Robyn Brooks | 01:31:00–01:34:30
um I did have uh one more that probably is relevant uh as we’re talking about here um so and there’s another one too so where are the interim kpis if you deliver MVP first what are you looking for to determine if you’ll move ahead with a 1.0 um obviously this is an example so some of the timing may seem tight especially if you’re working on a different type of product that this would be but success metrics is a broad term for things like what kpis are you going to measure not every organization uses kpis and okrs many do and this is a good place to track them but you do need to have a sense of what does success look like for this project or release or increment um and uh that’s a a good place to capture those right so good question

Roger Snider | 01:34:30–01:38:00
um in our example we’re we’re planning on being able to release in December and we’re hoping to get these results by February right so with the ultimate goal of reducing turns so we recognize that there’s a knock on there’s a Cascade here right if we can start getting usage to increase by February then hopefully then by Q2 we’re actually seeing the knock on effect of now the turn starting to go down so we are showing that this takes time and there’s a Cascade and our example wasn’t MVP our example was a 1.3 release so we already have some of those kpis in place we monitoring them we’re seeing a problem hey usage of the dashboard is not as high as we want so we’re going to add these new capabilities to be able to address that problem go out and measure it right so great question we are absolutely going to monitor first The increased usage and then expect that that increased usage will lead to higher customer sat and ultimately lower ter but we recognize that’s going to happen over say a six-month period right from the time we releasee this product we’re going to release hopefully in December we won’t see the end results the top of the outcome tree until maybe Q2 right so we are cognizant of that for MVP to that original part of the question yes there should have been research being done and you don’t have data to instrument yet you’re not out right but you should be doing customer interviews surveys working with sales getting all the data you need to prove that you have a good hypothesis of how you’re going to solve that problem before you launch that first MVP great question I hope that helped in the answer

all right let’s keep going we a few more to talk about right so the ultimate goal here is getting back to the point of our webinar we want to stay strategic and using this canvas although there’s a lot of detail in it will provide you with the ability to in one page look at your product strategy understand the problems you’re trying to solve for you and your customer the hypothesis of the solution that you’re going to take to the market and how you’re going to measure success and if you’re out of bounds then this is a tool that you can use to go back and and have that discussion about what are we going to do next in order to solve these problems right so in one picture this can happen now one of the questions I’ve had before is okay this is a lot of information but and it’s only one slide what about all the details yes you do have to do a lot of background work and some companies will require you to show your work right with the details underneath fine right there may well be you’re either using a tool like jira or aha or product plan product board to have all those details but this allows you to summarize and crystallize in one slide what it is you’re trying to accomplish and connecting those dots from the business business outcomes and product outcomes down to the things that you’re going to deliver of course you have to have more detail but this slide helps you summarize all of that so those was a question earlier about hey do I do I do this before the PRD yes you want to get this understanding of the from a business perspective why are we building this product what’s the hero’s journey what’s the story I’m telling and then get into the details of how we’re going to solve it but stay in the problem space first then start working on what are going to be those key features I need to deliver this okay

one more that I want to point out is and and Robyn kind of talked about this earlier this is not something that you just sketch out in an afternoon right you’re going to be doing things like framing the problem right you’re going to work on understanding the customer’s problem first then you’re going to build this hypothesis then you’re going to go take a positioning statement and test it out right and so forth you’re going to conduct story boards right you don’t actually have to build anything yet you’re going to try to understand that customer Journey with a storyboard and these are examples of all the tools all the work you’re going to do to build up to being able to fill out this product outcome canvas

Comparing Product Outcome Canvas to Lean Canvas

Roger Snider | 01:38:00–01:41:00
all right so let’s go we got a couple more yes so we wanted to just give a little bit of history and comparison right the lean canvas was first originated way back in ‘ 05 Alexander AER Walder there were others as well who helped build out this concept of a lean canvas we have built on top of that we build on the shoulders of giants and but we’ve put more of an emphasis on understanding your customer’s Journey understanding your personas and their problems the stories that you want to generate so that’s why we’ve added this Persona stories to our canvas uh but let’s be honest right so this is an area that we emphasize a little bit more sure but let’s be honest if you’re using a lean canvas already way better than not having a full big picture view of what’s going on now we want you to use our product outcome canvas because we think it does bring a better PM perspective to things but if you’re using a lean canvas you’re already way ahead of the curve so that’s awesome

Robyn Brooks | 01:41:00–01:42:00
the idea is really to distill a lot of the work that you’re doing as a product manager into a format that is uh concise and easily digestible so uh whatever format you’re using is great um but uh but we do find that this is uh this has been an iterative process where we’ve developed this uh outcome canvas to really highlight and focus on the outcomes you’re going to achieve uh with the product or increment you’re delivering right

Recap and Leadership Pack Offer

Roger Snider | 01:42:00–01:45:00
right absolutely great Point all right so let’s get back to the original story right our story for you as a product manager is to become more successful by working on things that align to the product strategy and the overall company strategy being able to build up that story and make news something that you can be proud about and the customer and the company will be excited to hear about achieve the plan and then get promoted right ultimately that’s your success plan as well right so we’re going to have some time for Q&A but before we do that let’s talk about our special offer so today we’ve talked about all the various pieces you need to do in order to be able to build up your product outcome canvas and our leadership pack which is free for download is available to help you with a few of the templates you need to then build up to the product outcome canvas in addition to that if you signed up for the webinar you will be receiving the product outcome canvas itself as a followup to this webinar so watch for that email that’s a follow-up email and do provide us feedback we would love to see that but that will also be where you can get the blank outcome canvas and an example of how to fill it out and then the leadership pack will give you more of a tools you need in order to be able to do the groundwork in order to be able to fill out this product outcome canvas

Robyn Brooks | 01:45:00–01:48:00
all right thank you Roger these are all templates that are included in our um uh product management Playbook right and the Playbook is available for purchase for $500 it’s also included in our optimal product management course um so you’ll be able to see on our website we’re actually having a big promotion a big sale right now so you can capture that at a discount we’ll talk about that a little more at the end um but there are quite a few templates that really help you scaffold your way into uh the density of that product outcome canvas available in the full Playbook

Poll #4 – Interest in Training and Next Steps

Roger Snider | 01:48:00–01:50:00
absolutely great so let’s launch our next poll and then we’ll ask we’ll entertain some more questions we’ve gotten from our audience so we’ll get the poll launched and we’ll let that kind of run in the background if you will as we then start taking some glasses questions additional questions and we’ve had fun answering questions throughout but are there more we need to answer now’s your chance throw up other questions that you may have

Q&A and Closing Remarks

Robyn Brooks | 01:50:00–01:55:00
all right so we have a question from David in which of the is this use go ahead oh yeah in which of the ways is this useful for a product manager who owns outcomes and does not need to seek approval for a new product or feature set or project or give delivery dates so first of all I know that sounds like the Holy Grail right you are an empowered product manager and I appreciate it when organizations do Empower their product managers but I would strongly encourage you to still use tools to show your work like Roger was saying earlier because it’s actually going to help you defend the decisions that you have been empowered to make so you can retain that uh that ability

um because I have seen it happen when organizations have product managers and they’re trusted to continue to move the product forward um but after a change in leadership or an organizational restructure the product managers are asked to sort of defend some of the decisions that they’re making this will set you up for Success when that happens um so we still recommend using this and really focus on um you know as far as in which ways is this useful focus on your process right there may be portions of this that you need to double down on there be portions of this that you can use a lighter touch um if you’re in a sper organization or you’re really empowered to do these things but it’s still important to uh walk through each of these steps if if not for any other reason just to prove to yourself that in fact you’ve got a handle on the value that you want to deliver and you know that that value you’re delivering your customers is going to help your company advance in its goals as well definitely absolutely I realized I started answering questions before we talked about these things so Robyn tell us more

Robyn Brooks | 01:55:00–01:59:00
ah here we are yes um we are having our biggest sale of the year um all of our courses between now and uh November 27th are 23% off in honor of 2023 so this is a very deep discount we don’t often offer this kind of deal on our training um so wanted to make sure that you’re all aware that we are offering that promotion right now and again uh we have a few upcoming dates for optimal product management which is a course that walks through all of the steps you need to take in order to build up to this type of outcome canvas and a decision to build a release we also go into road maps and how to get through a successful beta process in release planning so really walking through the full product blueprint um and product management process so several upcoming trainings um if you would like to have Roger walk you through all of those things um sign up to come see him in San Jose uh in January

Roger Snider | 01:59:00–02:02:00
absolutely but my cohorts of my friends Joe and Ryan and Tom are all fabulous so if it’s better for you to be in Texas or you want to go on live online because we offer live online courses as well uh then Ryan is your man and Joe golly is is helping out in the midwest with Milwaukee as another location to go visit so we’re it’s been great actually this year we’re seeing a nice mix of folks wanting to get back together in person in order to work together to learn how to their their craft as a product manager but we still have the live online capability as well if it’s more convenient for you so we have both of those available and that’s encouraging uh and I’m looking forward to being in a public setting uh in January that’s awesome

Robyn Brooks | 02:02:00–02:06:00
all right so we have a few more minutes and a few questions I think right so we did have a question that I believe was answered in the chat will the recording be available to attendees yes you’ll have access to the recording and as Roger mentioned access to download our free leader pack as well as the outcome canvas template including some instructions and an example will be circulated to all attendees as well

Robyn Brooks | 02:06:00–02:10:00
excellent so a couple more good questions here with a remote team would you suggest having this information saved in a shared location so people can access it any time yes with an asteris so as Roger mentioned you’re probably going to be making updates to this uh canvas over time so what I have found is really useful is either saving a readonly copy or a pdf version of the canvas and making it available on SharePoint or Confluence or a shared Drive um so that you’re able to circulate it um with without having someone else come in and accidentally make uh significant changes to your template where you end up losing uh some of the value that you’ve delivered there so absolutely the purpose of this document is to be a reference and to circulate it and to share it and get feedback and help promote uh stakeholder alignment absolutely so PDF snapshot should be available to everyone right so folks can always be up to date on what’s going on and then if you have a product review board that’s where you’re going to be presenting the PowerPoint and getting updates and being able to answer questions live uh and hopefully there’s recordings of those as well for product team to be able to watch very very helpful

Robyn Brooks | 02:10:00–02:13:00
I also wanted to answer a great question here uh why curious why the online course is three times the length um we have found based on feedback that three days in person is pretty manageable but three full eight hour days on Zoom is is less manageable so when we do the live online course we spread it out over more sessions that are shorter

Roger Snider | 02:13:00–02:16:00
yeah so it’s over a longer period of time but it’s the same amount of instruction right so you just do either a three hour or 4 hour a day instance of the course live online because that’s just more manageable for folks to be able to to absorb the material and take time to understand it over that period of Time Versus in person where there’s more interaction and more chance to to get up and stretch and talk and have uh good conversations during breaks so that’s why we do it that way and like Robyn said it’s based on feedback right it’s really important to uh as as product managers we’re always listening to our customers to understand what their needs are

Robyn Brooks | 02:13:00–02:19:00
yeah we also find that some people choose to live online because of the flexibility of having a few shorter sessions right that that’s a lot of times as product managers we can’t completely leave our work behind for several days so having those shorter sessions is also helpful for that reason so yeah as Roger said listen to feedback from your customers and make adjustments

Robyn Brooks | 02:13:00–02:22:00
absolutely well thank you all for attending today we hope you found this valuable stay tuned for your copy of the product outcome canvas in email download the leadership pack and join us for an upcoming training we would love to help you continue to advance in your career as a product manager so that you can become more focused on satisfying your customers remember that Hero Journey your customers of the hero satisfying your customers meeting business objectives and advancing in your own career have a great day

Roger Snider | 02:22:00–End
excellent thank you everyone