New product releases often miss the mark. Product and Marketing Managers try to "spin" engineering- or field-driven features, but poor product design is obvious to everyone. To make matters worse, each department - or each rep - develops their own idea of what the product is and how to explain it while marketing and product management scramble to prepare demos, analyst presentations, whitepapers, and other materials. How could you expect a successful launch with this approach?

Market Maps can turn this problem around by giving designers, developers, testers, marketers, SEs, sales people, and senior managers a clear picture of the target users and buyers. With this picture in hand, downstream activity becomes simpler and more effective.

In this session, Alan will describe Market Maps and provide the steps for developing them using real-life examples to illustrate. He will talk about the difficulties that can arise and suggest ways of overcoming them, with a particular emphasis on the personal/political challenges.