Does the Perfect Product exist?

So we all know that one of the hardest things about being a Product Manager is trying to get the product to the market - preferably with most of the required features and in the same decade as the target launch date.

Product timing is critical - often it is better to be in the market with a less than perfect product, getting customers involved and committed than still be in the labs working and missing the opportunity - although a poor offering can do incalculable damage to our product and our brand.

This inevitably forces us to make tough product decisions and compromises on what is in and what is out. We would all like the perfect product, but, in practice we try and define what is good enough. We need to review the product requirements and categorise (in reality recategorise) them into features that are key to the functionality, for example product differentiation and leadership, competitive positioning, key customer commitments (but see this post on balancing customer influence on a release) and usability. There will be many other features, that make sense for the overall product offering, but will not gain customers nor will they loose customers and so sometimes they will just have to wait for the next release.

These calls can be tough and it can take a brave PM to stare down the boss and the market. When Apple introduced the iPhone it was revolutionary (touch screen etc), but at the time it missed some of the key features of a phone that traditional phones already supported (network technology and speed.) Some poor PM in Apple had to make the call and say those features could wait. In this case it worked.

Sometimes, however, the choice is less successful and worse some minor features get delayed from release to release without a solution. So following on from my analysis of Nike getting some marketing issues wrong - here are some thoughts about a place were Google gets it wrong.

Briefly, when you build a website, two of the key stages in launching it are to submit the site to the major search engines together with its sitemap.

Now when we built this blog we built it on a Google platform, and naturally assumed that submission to Google would be automatic. Not so - a few weeks on and we realise that we seemingly need to submit and that the submission is from a different set of Google tools and not the blog control panel. Even more frustrating, building the site map probably isn't automatic and doesn't always work the way they say. Or maybe it is automatic - depends who you believe - the Google support guy on one of the forums or the official instructions. Worst of all - this saga seems to have a history judging by the support forums and QA pages.

So given that these tools are for the general public - the user experience could have been so much smoother. Maybe there is a very good reason why submission isn't automatic - but it is hard to see why this couldn't have been properly explained and a couple of items included in the blog set up wizard. True in this case they didn't loose me as a customer, but they almost did see me checkout a different blogging platform.

To wrap it up - we need to compromise on our dreams for our products, failure to do so can ruin our chances to get market share, but, we need to make sure that we don't compromise too much. We need to listen to our customers and fix the things that we missed or omitted the first time round, failure to do will also ruin our market share in the longer term.

Product Management - The Longest Race - Part 2

In a recent blog (here) I discussed the product management and marketing lessons that could be learnt from the recent Nike 10K night race in Tel Aviv. I discussed the event planning (impressive and complex) and the event objectives (which were probably significantly more than just a fun run).

In this blog I will discuss some of the results of the event.

As a runner I can say I had an amazing time, and that on the whole this was an impressively run event.

However, the main question is what did Nike think? What KPI's did they set in advance for the event (number of runners? low number of problems? set up/clean up time? News minutes? Facebook group members?) Were their targets met? More importantly were the targets the correct ones or were they chasing the wrong things - were they were focused on their own issues and not on being customer centric?

During the course of the race itself there were other aspects of product management in action. Every once in a while there were music and water stations, we can consider them to be product features, helping the customers to enjoy the experience more, to engage with them - what will make them happy customers that will come back next year and recommend to their friends?

On the assumption that they plan to run a similar event next year, how, are they acquiring data and how are they planning to review and improve?

On the subject of next year we can consider product extension; will they feel the need to enhance the offering - perhaps by offering a shorter or longer version or by diversifying into a cycle race or triathlon? Perhaps there is a market for more than one event a year?

There were strict rules, we were all supposed to wear the official race shirt and run the course in an orderly manner. There were a few people who ran but I guess hadn't registered, and so ran in their own shirts and there were a few who wanted to stand-out and so ran in other shirts (last year's race etc) - on the whole this caused no problems to the runners. However, we can certainly view them in the context that the product was excellent, but, that it wasn't perfect - it was fit for purpose. Of course, since we mostly followed the rules, then we were complying with a certain standard, specification or protocol.

The race had a strict delivery schedule - it had to be ready on time and it had to work adequately well on the night. So part of the secret here is in team work and execution. The PM&M can have designed the perfect race, but if his project team didn't get the water in the runner's hands or publish the results then the product experience would have been irrevocably tarnished in the eyes of many of the customers.

So in conclusion I had a good run that evening and I believe that the experience was shared by the vast majority of the runners; I suspect that Nike felt that it was a success, but, that they have some points to improve or change in the next year. Overall this was a fine example of the craft of product management and marketing.

More importantly, I hope that by looking at an event that is outside of our day to day we can see the implications of strong product management leadership on all aspects of product design, management and marketing in general.