Jim Holland, Michael Hopkin,
Scott Sehlhorst, and Rich Mironov
Friends To Product Management 
About the Webinar: RYMA's Holiday Special, December 23rd webinar was presented by Jim Holland, and joined by Michael Hopkin, Scott Sehlhorst, and Rich Mironov. Join us for a year in review, as we Celebrate Product Management. In this season of friendship and relations, we bundle up from the cold and let our thoughts of gratitude move toward the shared experiences of Product Managers everywhere.
This has been an eventful year indeed, at RYMA and around the world. Some of our friends to product management will drop by and reminisce about the changes we've experienced this year. In fact, a new group in Facebook, The Product Management Drama, has formed for us to share in the human drama that as Product Managers each of us share in. Please join and become a part of the community.
We'll preview some new research, and look at what's in store for Product Management in 2010, and the years to come. Please grab some warm apple cider, egg nog, ginger bread, or whatever, and join us in this celebration of product management at the close of 2009.
Results tagged “Career”
Down Load Slides Here
About the Webinar: Ryma's January 27th webinar was presented by Mike Kallet. Problem Solving, Decision Making, Creativity, and Innovation all have a common foundation that consists of "Thinking".
Critical Thinking is a way of thinking and looking at situations in what we call "manual" mode, as opposed to our everyday "automatic" mode. Mike Kallet, CEO of HeadScratchers will provide an understanding of what critical thinking is, why it is important, and present several critical thinking techniques that you can immediately implement when solving problems, making decisions or tasked with creating something innovative.
Critical Thinking Skills can be applied to:
• General problem solving and decision making
• New product ideas and creation
• Improving Productivity
• Short and long term business strategies
• Competitive strategies
• Managing people and situations
• Improved development processes and quality
• Improved operational efficiency
• Crisis Management
• Revenue generation and cost reduction strategies
• Customer care improvement
• P&L Management
With the Benefits of
• Faster and higher quality decisions
• Creative solutions to problems and strategies
• Higher productivity and quality
• Being better prepared to tackle daily problems
• Avoiding mistakes and recognizing opportunities
• Leading others to "Think"
About the Presenter: Michael Kallet is a technology and operations executive with 30 years of experience in leading teams that created numerous award winning products and services spanning computer and communications technologies and markets.
In 2004, Mike started HeadScratchers, a company focused on training Critical Thinking for Problem Solving, Decision Making and Creativity. Its mission: To help people become better "HeadScratchers".
Prior to forming HeadScratchers, Mike had a 25 year career spanning the software, internet and telecommunications industries. His accomplishments range from creating award winning products such as Harvard Graphics to running ICG a half billion dollar communications company, as COO.
Presenters: Roger L. Cauvin
& Lisa Crymes
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About the Webinar: RYMA's October 14th Webinar was presented by Roger Cauvin and Lisa Crymes. A recent hot topic and debate was sparked on Twitter during the recent PMV webinar "Why are there so few great product managers? A CEO's perspective", by Barbara Tallent. This webinar was a follow-on to that discussion.
A product manager's value to a company stems from an understanding of the users, buyers, competition, and problems in the market. But what makes a good product manager? The goal of this presentation is to discuss the issues and differences of opinions around domain expertise and if it's really required to be a successful product manager.
Key Ideas Explored:
- How important is prior knowledge and experience in the domain or industry?
- How important is the ability to quickly and thoroughly acquire this knowledge?"
- Can you be credible in your company or in front of customers without domain experience?
- Can to much domain experience actually dilute an objective opinion?
Background Reading: Industry Experience: How Important Is It?
Roger L. Cauvin Roger has seven years experience in strategic marketing, most recently as the principal product management consultant at Cauvin, Inc. With clients ranging from software development companies to real estate developers, Roger develops strategy by immersing himself in markets and applying established marketing principles. His strategic advice drives all aspects of product development marketing, including requirements, positioning, and messaging. Roger writes his thoughts on product management in his blog (cauvin.blogspot.com), and he is the author of two popular articles that appeared in the on-line marketing periodical, MarketingProfs.com.
He began his professional career as a software engineer in 1990, holding technical leadership positions at several companies before developing an interest in requirements and the strategic aspects of marketing.
Roger is an Austinite and lives in the heart of downtown. He received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy, along with a minor in Computer Science, from the University of Texas in 1990.
Lisa Crymes Lisa is a Director of Product Management with Emdeon. She is an experienced product management professional with extensive background in healthcare, including over 12 years of Healthcare IT experience. Lisa is an active member of Georgia's Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), currently serving as the Chair for the Education Committee, and is on the Board of Directors for the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) through the Product Management Society.
Lisa received her MBA and Bachelor of Arts in Management from Shorter College in Rome, GA. www.Emdeon.com
ValWorkman: @MikeBoudreaux If you can't participate in today's #PMV discussion feel free to contribute in the LinkedIn CoP http://bit.ly/10cnGz
evans_anna: RT @StewartRogers: RT @ValWorkman: Today's noon ET #PMV webinar http://bit.ly/1O1q2Y is a continuation of the debate on industry experience!
evans_anna: Key Strategies for Service Management Success in Today's Economic Environment http://bit.ly/IGWuX #pmv #prodmgmt
pganza: RT @ValWorkman: Today's noon ET #PMV webinar http://bit.ly/1O1q2Y is a continuation of the debate on industry experience
HakanKilic
: RT @ValWorkman: Today's noon ET #PMV webinar http://bit.ly/1O1q2Y is a continuation of the debate over how much industry exp #Prodmgmt needs
MarcJMillerPM: RT @HakanKilic @ValWorkman: noon ET #PMV webinar http://bit.ly/1O1q2Y debate over how much industry exp #Prodmgmt needs
L3N: Attending #pmv with @valworkman w/presenter @rcauvin Is Doman Expertise Critical to be a successful Product Manager? Lisa on Twitter too?
phanschke: Listening to the #PMV webinar http://bit.ly/1O1q2Y.
MikeBoudreaux: I'm attending @rcauvin discussion: "Is Prior Industry Experience Critical to be a Successful Product Manager?" http://bit.ly/1wMmOR #pmv
evans_anna: Wikipedia on PM #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/1wS7Os
BstnMelody: Listening to the #pmv discussion around necessity of prior domain experience for #prodmgmt
evans_anna: Great advice on what is needed to be a PM #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/3vAgZg
evans_anna: What is Deductive Reasoning? #pmv #prodmgmt #management http://bit.ly/B1n3b
ken_hoffman: #pmv Attending a webinar on whether domain experience is important to being a successful product manager. http://bit.ly/41noDC evans_anna: Palmer, Alaska HS student on Deductive Reasoning #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/S5MsL
evans_anna: Great interview with Aziz Muza #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/ohGfY
MATSIS: Listening to "Is Doman Expertise Critical to be a successful #prodmgmt; - Rymatech - #PMV Webinars http://bit.ly/2cMKsfevans_anna: 7 Traits of Successful PMs -Michael #pmv #prodmgmt #ceo http://bit.ly/VmAQE
jidoctor: #pmv - but, if the #prodmgmt role is about ;learning, doesn't coming from the outside often allows for grt lrning w/ no bias?
Brittanyherrera: Product Managers primary role is to understand the market & report that to others in the company #pmv #business #leadership #management
evans_anna: Link to PM best practices #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/1uIfzm
evans_anna: PM News continually updated #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/3pcsaJ
jidoctor: #pmv - w/ 20+ yrs in same industry, while knowledgeable biased to inject your own bias & may not listen? not all #prodmgmt ppl can keep out
ValWorkman: RT @jidoctor: #pmv - but, if the #prodmgmt role is about ;learning; doesn't coming from the outside often allows for grt lrning w/ no bias?
evans_anna: Diplomatic opinion on what PM is #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/3JEFUo
mack_mccoy: Am I the only one experiencing major audio problems on the #pmv domain knowledge webinar? I'll give the phone a try instead of streaming.
Brittanyherrera: As a Product Manager-proactive learning is best #pmv #leadership #business #management
jidoctor: #pmv - can't you learn the industry basics from all from research & w/i company, and apply >#prodmgmt skills to bring "new" learning?
evans_anna: Good insight on what function PMs perform and importance to CO #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/42qOuN
BstnMelody: #pmv the most ignored aspect of #prodmgmt is the strategic end - where you learn by getting out & talking to your market
evans_anna: Bitpipe's definition of PM #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/36LVQ4
L3N: "Most neglected parts of product management are the strategic parts" @rcauvin #pmv #prodmgmt
MikeBoudreaux: Learning types: accretion, transmission, acquisition, emergence illustrated in Knowing Knowledge - Google Books http://bit.ly/3LHffM #PMV
evans_anna: PM jobs - quietly #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/13GPyj
phanschke: I'm experiencing audio problems on the #PMV domain knowledge webinar. Using the Internet for audio ... not the phone.
MarcJMillerPM: #pmv - #prodmgmt who who relies on past experience is creating product designed for the past. Current cust research is more important
jidoctor: wrote a blog on this topic before CEO #pmv webinar...http://bit.ly/fQo9J...this is a long running "battle" in #prodmgmt and #hr discussions
evans_anna: SVPG blog articles on PM #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/21Xhgl
mack_mccoy: @phanschke I switched to the phone and it's working perfectly now. #PMV
evans_anna: the PM's toolkit #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/zxXlj
BstnMelody: #pmv - Is @rcauvin saying prior industry experience is or isn't necessary?
MarcJMillerPM: #pmv - #prodmgmt who who relies on past experience as cust is creating product made for the past. Current cust research is more important
bhaskarsinha: #pmv Lisa's voice is clear
evans_anna: Teams' exp. is more important than individual experience? #pmv #prodmgmt
haigtweets: RT @evans_anna: PM jobs - quietly >#pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/13GPyj #pcs09
jharmer: #pmv Another version of that pyramid Roger was discussing http://bit.ly/5IIV8 evans_anna: How to be good PM see comments #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/184lTX
jidoctor: #pmv #prodmgmt - agree w/ @rcauvin that a good balance of skills & domain is ideal, but also very rare. so, where place priority?
leminade: #pmv I can't agree more that job descriptions want industry experience for #prodmgmt and yet fail to list "inquisitive" requirements
evans_anna: PM's handbook #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/bKwAQ
evans_anna: Blogs and more on PM #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/15kPwV
jidoctor: #pmv - different types of ppl gravitate towards dev role than #prodmgmt...for a reason! not everyone can facilitate and/or LISTEN
mack_mccoy: Good post! RT @jidoctor: wrote http://bit.ly/fQo9J on this topic before #pmv webinar...this is a long running "battle" in #prodmgmt #hr
BstnMelody: @jidoctor I place priority on skills set. #pmv I still argue industry info, lingo, etc can be learned
evans_anna: Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques paperback #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/37GMZx
BstnMelody: #pmv Love comparison of #prodmgmt to therapist. We draw out information from customer.....
jidoctor: #pmv - imho, easier to teach a #prodmgmt pro about the industry then to teach a dev-focused how to listen w/o designing the sol'n
evans_anna: Improve PM? #pmv #prodmgmthttp://bit.ly/dvAKI
BstnMelody: #pmv you want to be context agnostic when interviewing customer. Totally agree! Don't even mention your product!!!
evans_anna: RT @Brittanyherrera: Product Managers primary role is to understand the market report that to others in the company #pmv #prodmgmt
MarcJMillerPM: #pmv Agreed, industry experience is important; puts PM in same context as customer. However what does PM do when they want to chg industry?
phanschke: #PMV Communication ... listening, extracting, probing, etc. ... are a key skill set for PM's - regardless of industry.
BstnMelody: #pmv Understand problems of customer, rather than ask them what they want (they want a faster horse).
phanschke: @BstnMelody implication is that PM's have to be great listeners. #PMV
jidoctor: #pmv RT @BstnMelody: Understand probs of customer, rather than ask what they want (they want a faster horse). [JD] my point exactly!
luiscerda: #pmv If you can't sell yourself in a interview, are you a good prodmg?
BstnMelody: #pmv Signing off. Every1 agrees u need 2 understand market. Prior industry def helps, but not hearing why necess. Its not. Can be learned.
MikeBoudreaux: W/o domain experience, PM likely asks inquisitive questions about mkt needs rather than making assumptions based on past experience. #pmv
MarcJMillerPM: @luiscerda #pmv a good salesman can sell themselves. A good PM listens. A PM delivering product customer doesn't want EOLs the product
evans_anna: 7 Traits of Successful PMs -Michael #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/VmAQE (expand)
Brittanyherrera: If a process is in place 4 being a successful PM,the process should guide the student 2 B successful. #pmv #leadership #business #management
MikeBoudreaux: Good point @rcauvin - Mix of industry experience and strong product management skills in organization is an ideal situation. >#pmv
L3N: Agree 100% RT @MikeBoudreaux: Good point @rcauvin - Mix of industry experience & strong #prodmgm skills in organization ideal #pmv
phanschke: @MikeBoudreaux absolutely right. #PMV
phanschke: Signing off the #PMV webinar now.
evans_anna: What is Deductive Reasoning? #pmv #prodmgmt #management http://bit.ly/B1n3b
evans_anna: Critical steps in conceptualizing and conducting multilevel research. #pmv #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/391THi
Brittanyherrera: Product Management vs. Product Marketing: Management is inbound, Marketing is outbound #pmv #leadership #business #management
L3N: Is it me, or is the audio constantly cutting out of #pmv ?
luiscerda: Agree! #PMV Product positioning is a strategic activity that should sit with #prodmgmt.
MarcJMillerPM: @L3N audio is fine for me #pmv
MarcJMillerPM: RT @Brittanyherrera: Product Management vs. Product Marketing: Management inbound, Marketing outbound #pmv #prodmgmt #business #management
L3N: RT @Brittanyherrera: Product Management vs. Product Marketing: #prodmgmt is inbound, Marketing is outbound #pmv
jidoctor: >#pmv- hiring w/ domain exp=hiring from competitors? might not be the best move unless comp is leader in mkt! why do u want their mistakes?
StewartRogers: @L3N been fine for me #pmv
Brittanyherrera: Webinar notes: If you only rely on experience you are not likely to have a different product #pmv #management #business #leadership
leminade: #pmv hiring a #prodmgmt with domain experience could be hiring from competitor but it could also be hiring from customer.
MarcJMillerPM: #pmv http://bit.ly/13NUfJ - how to become a product manager #prodmgmt
lisacrymes: Thanks for the great audience twitter and chat feedback on #pmv webinar
Jeff Lash
Product Manager
Sendouts
About the Webinar: Effective product management is more than just visiting customers and writing requirements. Good product managers posses certain traits that allow them to excel in their roles. While it may seem that some people are just born with these abilities, most have them in some degree and just need to learn how to express them effectively. This presentation will cover ten important traits that good product managers possess and offer specific suggestions on how to emphasize your natural traits while addressing those that do not come as naturally.
Speaker bio:
Jeff Lash is in charge of product management at Sendouts, a leading provider of recruiting software and applicant systems for recruiting and staffing firms. Previously, he spent several years working in product management and user-centered design for Elsevier and also practiced user experience design for companies including Elsevier, MasterCard International and XPLANE. Jeff also runs the popular product management blogs How To Be a Good Product Manager (www.goodproductmanager.com) and Ask a Good Product Manager (ask.goodproductmanager.com). He has presented at numerous conferences include Software Marketing Perspectives and the Information Architecture Summit, and has written articles for publications including Boxes and Arrows and Digital Web Magazine. Jeff also presented the popular webinar "Ten Tips for New Product Managers" as part of the FeaturePlan webinar series in August 2007.
Brian Lawley, President, Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA).
Looking to move your career forward and get a promotion or a great new job offer? In this webinar you'll learn tried and true methods, tips and strategies for advancing your Product Management career. From finding a mentor to working more efficiently to learning how to manage your boss more effectively, this presentation will give you the knowledge and insight to get on the fast track.
Speaker bio:
Brian Lawley is the President and Founder of the 280 Group, a Product Management services firm that provides consulting, contractors, training and templates. He is also President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. During his twenty-year career in Product Management he has defined, launched and marketed over fifty successful products for companies such as Apple, Symantec, Adobe, Palm and dozens of startup and mid-sized companies.
Mr. Lawley is the Author of the Book "Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques, Tips & Strategies for Product Management & Product Marketing." He was nominated for the Product Management Excellence Award for Thought Leadership by the Association of International Product Marketing & Management in 2006 and 2007. He is the editor of Product Management 2.0, a newsletter and Blog devoted to excellence in Product Management and writes guest articles for many other publications.
He frequently speaks on the topic of Product Management and has been featured on CNBC's World Business Review and the Silicon Valley Business Report. Mr. Lawley is a Certified Product Manager (CPM) and Certified Product Marketing Manager (CPMM). He earned an MBA with honors from San Jose State University and Bachelors Degree in Management Science from the University of California at San Diego with a Music Technology minor.
Jeff Lash, Product Director, Elsevier.
Starting off as a product manager for the first time is an exciting and challenging experience. New product managers can easily be overwhelmed with the position, with so many different responsibilities to learn all at once.
This Webinar will cover ten helpful tips for new product managers, providing specific practical advice for those new to the product management role or thinking about moving in to product management. Experienced product managers will benefit as well, as these tips can serve as good refreshers and useful pointers for those who are taking on additional or different product management responsibilities.
Speaker Bio:
Jeff works in product management at Elsevier, a publisher of scientific, technical, and medical information. He is Product Director for MD Consult, a leading web site providing clinical reference information for physicians and medical professionals. He also blogs about product management at How To Be a Good Product Manager. Prior to working in product management, Jeff was a member of Elsevier's User-Centered Design group and also practiced information architecture and user experience design for companies including MasterCard International and visual communication firm XPLANE. He has written articles on product management and user-centered design for Boxes and Arrows, Gain: AIGA's Journal of Business and Design, and Digital Web Magazine.
Rich Nutinsky Instructor, Pragmatic Marketing.
Product management serves many functions in a company, including understanding the market, defining requirements, articulating the marketing message, and supporting sales. The priority of product management activities is often a reflection of where product managers reside in the organization chart. Is there a difference when reporting to Development, Sales or Marketing? This session will introduce the many roles of product management and explore the impact of organizational dynamics on the role using results from the annual Pragmatic Marketing product management survey.
Speaker Bio
Rich Nutinsky brings over 18 years of experience in the software industry, including 15 years in product management. He has implemented the Pragmatic Marketing Framework for a number of companies and launched several successful software products following this market-driven methodology. He's now an instructor for the top-rated courses Practical Product Management®, Requirements That WorkTM and Pragmatic RoadmappingTM as well as onsite workshops.
Rich's background includes executive, managerial, and individual contributor roles in professional services, consulting services, sales, software development, product marketing, product strategy, analyst relations, and product management. Rich has extensive experience as an independent consultant, helping companies like Microsoft, ATT, Dupont, NEC, GE, and Siemens improve product strategy, product management, and marketing processes.
Prior to joining Pragmatic Marketing, he was VP of Product Management and Development for Arasys Technologies. Rich brings a wealth of startup, mid-size, and large company perspectives from his experiences at varied firms.
Alyssa Dver, CEO of Wander Wear Inc., founder of Type @ Consulting.
Outstanding Product Managers have oxymoronic personalities - they must be confident but open-minded, highly organized but flexible, evangelistic experts but tremendous listeners. The skill set required to be a successful Product Manager can be overwhelming. Yet some Product Managers stand out as examples of having "it". What is "it" and how can any Product Manager get "it"?
In this session, Alyssa will discuss seven common habits of highly effective Product Managers. Focusing on straightforward actions and general practices, participants will leave with practical ways that they can significantly improve job effectiveness and satisfaction.
Speaker Bio:
Alyssa's book, "Software Product Management Essentials" won praise from dozens of organizations and experts. She consults to a variety of organizations and presents to groups including AIPMM, Massachusetts Women in Technology (MassWIT), American Institute of Strategic Management (ASMI), American Marketing Association (AMA), and the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA).
Alyssa is the CEO of Wander Wear Inc. (www.wander-wear.com), a company that develops information and products to prevent kids from getting lost. Prior, Alyssa was CMO for SEDONA Corporation and has held senior management positions in software companies of all sizes based in the US and in Europe. She is the inventor for patent pending lead management software that is installed in over 300 financial institutions around the world.
Alyssa has been published in BusinessWeek, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine and many others. She has contributed to numerous books and publications as an expert in product management, marketing, entrepreneurship and various technologies.
Linda Gorchels, Director, Executive Marketing Education, University of Wisconsin
I hope no one ever told you product management was easy! Most product managers face some "predictable" barriers, challenges and pitfalls. But they are survivable. This session highlights some of the more common obstacles, and then provides tips on coping with them.
Speaker Bio
Linda Gorchels is a member of the executive education faculty of UW-Madison's business school, where she has conducted training for over 10,000 corporate executives from across the United States and globally. Her position as program director requires responsibility for designing, staffing, and managing 30+ professional development seminars in marketing each year. In addition, she has facilitated strategic planning sessions for several organizations (public, private and non-profit), and has provided counsel in pricing and product management implementation.
An award-winning author, Linda received the Excellence in Thought Leadership distinction in 2006 from the Association of International Product Marketing & Management for the 3rd edition of The Product Manager's Handbook (2006). This book and its companion, The Product Manager's Field Guide, are recommended reading for many groups. These two works, along with her co-authored book The Manager's Guide to Distribution Channels, have been translated into multiple languages. Her articles on a variety of strategy and marketing topics have appeared in the Journal of Product & Brand Management, Business Marketing, Marketing News, the Journal of International Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, the Academy of Marketing Studies Journal and Engineering Management Journal.
Hugh Richards, Product Point Group - Many key operational functions (CEO, CMO, etc...) within software companies understand the need for the product management function, but ultimately do not have a clear approach to measuring it.
What are the approaches and elements of how a product management function can be operationally measured? While exploring standard marketing processes, the presentation will focus on:
-The key elements of company strategy and process that enable the product management function to succeed
-The difference between the solution vs. product roadmap
-Executing coordinated programs - the role of product management amongst the programs
-The changing information management role of product management as the company, delivery mode, and products change
-Examining the measurable elements of product management functions amongst the operations of the company
-Measuring key value - how to gauge an important, but moving target
Several techniques for measuring the product management function will be explored with an aim of sharing of techniques across various types of companies, styles of product management, and how the function is adopted- in some cases across multiple departments.
Speaker Bio
Hugh is the MD for Product Point Group (www.productpointgroup.com) - and a regular speaker in the product marketing/management community. Hugh has held roles in operations and product management at QuIC Financial Technologies, Selkirk (now Thomson Financial), and SunGard Data Systems; Hugh has been responsible for strategic and tactical product management, and customer/partner development for risk technology products. Hugh brings over 15 years of experience in the software operations business, championing product operations for technology solutions and managing complex multi-level product lines. Prior to vendor software management, Hugh has also led in the risk management departments of investment banks including BZW and NatWest.
Kev Coleman, VP Product Management, Experion Systems, Inc. - Discussions of product management are often abstracted from the developmental stage of the business in which product management activity takes place. The success criteria for product management as well as its associated organizational constraints evolve alongside transitions in business developmental stages. The webinar intends to introduce product managers to a model of the corporate life cycle and illustrate differences in requirements collection, competitive positioning, distribution influences, and product success criteria for each stage in the life cycle. The webinar will conclude with suggestions regarding how sensitivity to life cycle theory can enable product managers to be more effective in their specific business contexts as well as better manage positive and negative life cycle transitions.
Speaker BIO
Mr. Coleman oversees strategic planning for Experion Systems core product offerings, data research, and intellectual property. Mr. Coleman has served as the conceptual architect of product lines serving numerous industries including banking, health insurance, and wealth management. His product lines have garnered praise including a designation as a "must have" banking technology in a 2004 Forrester brief as well as the "Best in Show" award presented by the CUNA Technology Council during the 2002 BAI Retail Delivery Conference. Prior to joining Experion Systems, Mr. Coleman worked in Product Development Management at Information Resources, Inc. His projects there included the development of commercial software utilizing on-line analytical processing (OLAP) technology on complex multidimensional databases as well as the leader of various Year 2000 remediation efforts. Mr. Coleman has also worked as a rapid solutions consultant for Fortune 500 companies and as a product data management specialist in the avionics field. Mr. Coleman holds several degrees including graduate degrees from Yale University and Duke University.
Please excuse the poor audio quality, there was a technical difficulty during the recording.
Aviv Handler, Principal, Co-Herence - The primary determinant of a software house's valuation multiple is its scalability. As Product Managers, we strive to make our companies as scalable as possible so as to increase its valuation multiple. In this talk the following questions will be examined: 1) How can we measure scalability and link it to our company's valuation 2) As Product Managers how do we demonstrate our own value add? Proving these attributes is the key to evolving the Product Management profession.
Aviv Handler has been in the technology business for 17 years, and has held a variety of product strategy and management roles in companies such as Sungard Data Systems, Iris Financial and KW International. Over his career he has worked with products at various stages in their lifecycle, from inception through to moving sets of users to a new generation product. He has extensive experience of taking disparate requirements and projects, and turning them into a coherent product set. He has reengineered product management processes, from development to sales with product management forming the core of operations. He has also introduced business analysis functions. These processes have prepared the companies for growth and successful exit. The products he has brought to market include a credit risk management system, a new version of an energy trading system and an electronic fixed income front office as well as numerous others. Mr Handler has also made use of his technical background to direct a cross product integration initiative and was an early stage member of the FpML initiative. A regular speaker at industry conferences, he has published many articles in industry journals. He holds a Computer Science degree from Imperial College, University of London
Steve Johnson, VP Pragmatic Marketing - Product management is often ill-defined and misunderstood in typical technology companies. Yet the role can be one that propels the company to the next level of performance. Rather than running the business like a hobby, effective product managers focus on the business aspects of defining and delivering products to market. Steve Johnson will explore the strategic role of product management using the Pragmatic Marketing Framework. The session will also include action items for reviewing and assessing the product management role at your company.
Steve Johnson is an expert in technology product management. He works for Pragmatic Marketing® as an instructor for the top-rated courses "Practical Product Management™" and "Requirements That Work™" as well as onsite courses. He is a frequent presenter for various technology marketing forums throughout the North America and Europe, author of many articles on technology product management, and is the webmaster of http://productmarketing.com -- a website devoted to technology product management.
Steve has been working within the high-technology arena since 1981 with experience in technical, sales, and marketing management positions at companies specializing in enterprise and desktop hardware and software. His market-driven orientation allowed him to rise rapidly through the ranks from Product Manager to Vice President. In his various marketing roles, he has launched 22 product offerings. Steve draws heavily on his marketing and sales experience in both direct and two-tier distribution, while his quick wit adds an element of fun to his courses.
Moderated by John Billman, Microfocus with Panelists: Seth Nesbitt, Amdocs Laurent Seraphin, Borland Charlie Wade, Nortel - How to structure the Product Marketing/Management function is a recurring question for nearly every high tech company. Who performs the tasks of gathering product requirements, analyzing competitors and creating product positioning; Product Managers - Product Marketing Managers? And where should the Product Marketing function sit in the organization Marketing, Engineering etc.? This can make a big difference in the way products are developed and the market orientation of the company.
Through the use of case studies and extensive survey data, this meeting of the UKPMF will look at how different organizations structure their Product Marketing/Management organizations and what are the implications for strategy, organizational development and the market orientation of the company.
TRANSCRIPT
John Billman:
This is a session that we have actually wanted to do for some time, first of all, to have the format of a panel discussion. We're going to have major presentation from Seth [see later Webinar for this]. He has been studying our topic on the organization of product management and product marketing. Then we are going to have three different case studies, one from myself, then one each from Laurent at Borland and Charlie, who is online from Nortel. These are going to be quite concise. We are really just going to be telling you about how product management is organized in our organizations and how it has evolved to be that way.
Then after those presentations, we will have a discussion with Q&A. We could discuss, maybe, what is the best organization for product management, how can we learn from each of these different organizations, what are your experiences, and what are your needs, and so on. We can just chew over these ideas together.
John Billings, Micro Focus:
Slide:
I'll give you a quick word about Micro Focus, to introduce you to a bit of a background, so that you can see our product management organization in context. We are a medium-size company, with about a hundred fifty million dollars in revenue. We have four hundred ninety employees. We are very global. Our biggest market is the US, but we are a British company and we are based in the UK. Our employees are roughly evenly divided between the UK and the US, with a smattering in other European countries, Japan, and Australia.
Our business is Cobol and legacy development and deployment of software. We have a traditional base of people creating and building Cobol-based applications on mainframes. That has expanded to people developing mainframe applications including DB2 with our tools and deploying them back to the mainframe. And more recently, people have been migrating those legacy applications from the mainframe and from many other platforms.
In terms of size, our customer base varies from "one-man-bands" to large corporations who buy several hundred seats from us. And it varies from a traditional financial organization through to a small software house building farming software, or something like that, providing an important part our customer base.
When you are talking about a company that is looking to migrate from a mainframe to Windows, you are talking at a fairly high level, the C-level. But a lot of our contacts, especially in those smaller companies, have been with very technical individuals. So, as product managers, you are often talking at many different levels to different individuals in many different types of organizations and geographies.
Slide:
Here is just a quick overview of the evolution of product management at Micro Focus. In fact, it doesn't go that far back, and that's why I think the last question [in Seth Thomas, about companies that have no product management function] was quite interesting. We had no product management or product marketing function whatsoever. I can remember it. That was in the late 1990s. And until the late 1990s the majority of the functions that we would now classify as product management were actually done out of Development. I suppose that we are a relatively technical company. So that fits into some of what Seth was saying.
Different individuals in Development had different focuses. But there was no one with the actual product management role until approximately 1998. The senior management and founders of the company would set a high level direction. They would have strategy meetings with the lead development managers. And then the development managers would go away and decide what went into the product. There was no such thing as marketing requirements documents or external analysis. Features and so on went on quite well. But there wasn't any kind of formal external requirements gathering.
Perhaps we could do that because we had some quite simple value propositions that we were delivering on. A lot of the new things that we had to deliver were driven by the technology. And there may well be companies, not necessarily tiny companies, who are still in that position today. We certainly needed to move away from that.
The late 1990s saw our attempt to start to establish a product management structure. And, initially, we developed two roles: product management and market management. The principles were roughly based on Pragmatic Marketing. The lead came out of our California office, which was really following the best practice that was emerging in the US at the time.
We found that while we started to fill the product management role, particularly from individuals who had been in development and support, that we struggled a bit with the market management. The market managers also struggled a bit with the technology, since they had not been brought from that background. We never actually successfully filled that team, although we did have a couple of good individuals.
Eventually product management became established, around the year 2000, at Micro Focus. We have a VP of Product Management who reports to the CEO. And we basically created a simple product manager, now who has the product director role. We don't have anyone who is a product-marketing manager. And we don't have anyone who is a market manager. So, we are slightly against Seth's statistics here, since we are a little bit bigger and, by the proportion, we should have that slot. But we have a set, instead, of product managers.
The product management team has eleven people. One of the things that may be useful to discuss afterwards is not only the role of the team, but also the size. How many product managers should you have for how many developers? Or, how many product managers in relation to revenue? And so on. Certainly everyone on the product management team at Micro Focus feels that we need more. But I don't know how we would weigh up against the industry average. And that might be quite an interesting exercise or study.
We have core PMs. And I'll talk about our responsibilities a little bit, in a moment.
Slide:
This is a slide that one of my colleagues put together. We don't have formal job titles, just a list of responsibilities, actually. We put this together to explain to Sales what we do, particularly to new joiners coming in. You'll see that it very much shows the role specifically, which here divides into internal and external-facing items straightaway. And all of the product managers in the product management team have some product responsibility, which means that most, although not all of us, will do both of these "facings." I myself certainly do write MRDs and work on customer problems and enhancements, work on the product strategy and the product roadmap. But I also spend a lot of time supporting pre-sales activities, customer visits, marketing events, seminars, Early Adopter Programs and Betas. I also work on sales and support-line training, collateral. I work on alliances and partnerships a little bit. And I also do gathering requirements, as well.
Slide:
We embody these functions in the same individual, in the majority of cases. It's a good thing. And Seth's study, which I had the advantage of seeing before, set me to thinking, "How does our organization work? Is this something that we want?" And, "Does it work quite well?" Personally I believe, and I think this would go for the majority of our individuals, that the role can be very effective when it is combined. Many product managers enjoy doing at least elements of both. Certainly I find that they contribute significantly to each other. The value and contribution that I can make to marketing documents is enhanced significantly by the customer contacts that I have. Whereas the "evangelizing" that I do about the product is also enhanced significantly by all of those conversations that I've had with engineering about where things are and what we're doing and why, and how we are doing them.
Of course, those functions effectively could be split. But, in many ways, you would lose something. That doesn't mean that a combined organization is not without huge challenges. And Seth has outlined some of them. But I think that it has significant advantages, as well.
But it's not necessarily quite as simple as it appears. If you look at us, we have eleven individuals. Every single individual in that team does a different balance between product marketing and product management.
Actually, we have at least two individuals now who have almost no, what I would call, "formal product" responsibility. They are primarily dealing with programs and partners and evangelizing. So they are probably eighty to ninety percent "outbound." We have an individual who does nothing but our alliances and alliance directions. He, again, is primarily outbound.
We have another individual here with some product responsibility, but it is for things like standards, and so on. That is probably quite unique to us. Things like the Cobol standard are concerns that we need to worry about. That is perhaps a role that could be argued as belonging in the development organization. But for historical reasons we have it in PM.
We have a VP of Product Management. He has no direct responsibility. But he spends a lot of his time on "outbound" activities, actually. Then we have probably six or seven of the group, like myself, who have to divide our time.
And here is an interesting point, as well. I think the conventional view is the one that I have certainly heard Pragmatic Marketing put forward, which Seth also articulated. This is that the arrangement means you spend more and more time, perhaps, on working with engineering at the expense of outbound activity. I would say that we have been evolving over the last two years in the opposite direction. I certainly spend far less time on working with engineering than I did a few years ago. And I think that generally, with most of our PMs, we have deliberately tried to evolve to be more outbound-facing.
And you see that evolution in that Marketing Requirements Document. We won't necessarily write "near specifications" in a Marketing Requirements Document. (What consists of a good MRD and how it should be done, I think, would be a whole evening in itself.) But we tend to try to stick to a rule of writing a genuine marketing requirement and allowing our engineering group to define that solution.
We are also working on ways in which we can optimize how we interact with the engineering group. Clearly, if you just let that lie, you could spend your whole time reviewing solution documents and status calls from engineering. You become almost a pseudo-part of the engineering team and you do nothing but kind of consult with and try to help engineering. In product management that function can consume a lot of time. So you have to manage that process. You have to work and gain the right feature managers and solution managers in engineering who can help do at least some of that process. Then the product manager, if he likes, can just do the representation of the outbound side in that, which they need to do. And I think that we have been gradually moving towards that. We're spending less time on engineering, as well.
But there are, certainly, challenges. One that Seth mentioned I have right now. Right now on my plate I am writing marketing requirements and documents for my next version and I'm preparing for the launch of this version, which is in its final rollout. That is a challenge and is a prioritization difficulty. This is the real difficulty of combining one individual into both roles. And there can be conflict. There are certainly engineering calls that I'm not on because I'm at an event. In our company culture, the outbound stuff wins. Perhaps that is why this can work for us. I think if it were the inbound one, you would need another individual whose priority was outbound work. At least, in our company, we have got Engineering, whose priority is inbound work.
There's another thing that I wanted to touch on. And in this case it is leading into our next presentation. Micro Focus is a very global company. We sell basically the same product across the world. We do localize it and translate it for Japan. I, in fact, am the only person in product management who has any geography-specific responsibility. For historical reasons, I deal with all of our Japanese products. But most of my time is spent on my global product level. We are all essentially filling global roles.
That, again, has advantages. We see the whole market. We can see the differences in requirements from the territories. For example, take Cobol-J2EE support. That is very popular in Germany and Japan. Here in the UK and in the US, I-Net support would be a greater priority. I'm simplifying most of this. There are often territorial differences that a global view helps you to account for. The disadvantage is that there is a lot of travel. There is a lot of being in different time zones. There are certainly problems with that. Essentially, to some extent, we have coping strategies for single product management. We have some individuals who have a different balance. We vary our time. We perhaps shifted the role from engineering for that.
But, on the whole, for Micro Focus we have found that a single, global team is working here. That's it for me. I think we'll move on to Laurent, from Borland, for another case study.
Laurent Seraphin, Borland:
Thank you, John. I think what I'm going to try to present is a "coping strategy" for an organization that is about twice the size of Micro Focus. That is probably why we had to muddle a bit with that.
To set the scene and make sure that we know what we're talking about, I'll give a couple of words about Borland. It's not so much that I'm trying to get you to buy anything from us, but just to understand the kinds of problems that we might have.
Slide:
We are a fairly old company, certainly by Internet standards, twenty years. We have about three hundred million in revenue per annum and a thousand, three hundred employees. We have a huge set of products, in terms of the variety of products. Some of them are brand names that you might have heard of. Most of them are mass-market products. Others would be classified as more enterprise-class sized products.
We have all these constants that make the problem quite difficult. Historically, we have evolved from having product management being with product marketing, to being split and reporting to engineering, to marketing, et cetera, very much the way that Seth explained. More recently what happened is this. And I think that the structure we have in place right now is essentially the backup from the fact that I really didn't want to move back to the US. I wanted to stay in the UK. So I had to craft a new way of handling product management and product marketing, et cetera.
Slide:
The solution comes from the backdrop of experience in other companies. These solutions are are internal to Borland, because we do see a gap, no matter whether product management and product marketing are reporting to the same entity or different entities. You always have a gap, at least in the kind of size of company that we are talking about here. There is always a gap between product management and product marketing and engineering. Those three entities tend to be not very customer and more "market" penetrated. Yes, they are interested. But certainly they do not spend enough time with their customers or the company's customers.
That is where the idea started to be rolled out in the company. And there was also the trend of having a matrix. We would have an extra layer in the region and in the field reporting to the sales organization, of product managers/product marketers. It went well because at that time, about five years ago, Borland was moving very heavily into new markets such as China and Japan, et cetera. Actually, Japan was an old market. But it was fitting well with the company's strategy, which also meant that we had new problems of representation that I mentioned earlier.
So, I think the "coping strategy" that we have is to have that additional layer, underneath the traditional product management, product marketing and engineering. We have this additional layer that is going to make the three different "siloes" work one with another and work in the interest of the customer and in the interest of the market. And this is the thing that I would most strongly advocate, not only from my own experience in Borland, but also in other organizations.
As a matter of fact, it's a strange group of people that we have, both in Europe, in Asia-Pacific and Japan and North America. We call them "PLSMs," or Product Line Sales Managers. The PLSMs are reporting to the sales organization. They have a great deal of influence over product management and product marketing and engineering. This means that, when we do see that things are falling through the cracks between product management, product marketing, and engineering, because we bring the revenue in, we have a lot, a great deal, to say to make sure that the right connections are reestablished.
So, we report to Sales. We are regionally bound. We are instrumental in the field/corporate relations. We tend to work in a time horizon of three months to eighteen months. We tend to be essentially operational and tactical. But we do have, again, a lot of things to say when it comes to the strategy and the direction, and the bigger, three, four, or five-year type of decision.
We are fifty percent outbound and fifty percent inbound, very much down to what I was saying earlier. The truth is that it's probably more at 60-40, but again, that will depend on whether you are launching a product or whatever activity you are doing at the moment.
Listener:
Two quick questions: Where do product management and product marketing report? And, what is the ratio of PLSMs to product managers? Just to get an idea.
Laurent Seraphin:
The first answer is that product marketing is reporting to Marketing. Product management one year has been reporting to Product Marketing and the next year to Engineering. And Engineering is reporting to Engineering, right? But, no matter which structure you have, whether you are in an odd year or an even year, you still have a gap between the two organizations. Again, the value of the Borland "coping strategy" is that, if you have that layer underneath, which is extremely customer and market-oriented, you can get the three to pull together and make sure that the market is in mind. So, that's the answer to your first question.
For the second question, the ratio between product managers and PLSMs is one to five. For one product manager you are going to have one PLSM, in each of the regions of the sales operation. That is not the case for all products, but for the strategic products, that is the case. You have to understand that, yes, product managers or product marketers do have the opportunity to meet with customers. But the reality is that they can see only the "tip of the iceberg." Either this is going to be the "big, one-billion dollar opportunity" or it may be a big customer who has a problem that has to be solved now. I think it is very hard for an organization, certainly for one the size of Borland, to make the relevant decisions without seeing what is underneath, without seeing the market and without seeing the rest and what is underneath the tip of the iceberg.
That's why I think this is certainly a "coping strategy" that is working extremely well in my experience, not only at Borland, but also in other companies.
Slide:
What do we do? We work very closely with Sales and with Marketing and and Corporate. Again, there is a great deal of customer and market interaction. We are certainly involved in pretty much every single deal that is quite significant. But again, we are going to be able to go much deeper than what a corporate product marketer or corporate product manager would be able to. We are domain experts, so we do conferences, tradeshows, et cetera. And we do a great deal of things that relate to journalists and analysts.
I think, again, first of all, it is important for an organization to have a structure that enables you to have a way to solve and reduce the gap between product marketing and product management and engineering, if you have a split between the three different functions. And I agree with what Seth was saying. It's a question of maturity and the evolution of the company. So, that's a good thing to have. This does not mean that you are going to have different regions. Certainly that is not the experience that I have, that the different PLSMs from the different regions will crawl in different directions. It brings a lot of harmony within the product management function at the corporate level. And it enables you to solve problems very quickly and in a very, very pragmatic way. That's it for me.
Charlie Wade, Nortel:
Let's click on to the next chart. I'll give you a quick introduction to myself. I'm Charlie Wade. I've been with Nortel for a number of years, in a variety of different roles, but mostly in a product marketing, product management role, certainly for the last twelve years or so. I currently have the responsibility of running one of our business units in EMEA and I'll explain a little bit about that in a couple of shots.
Slide:
First, this is an introduction to Nortel, for people who may not know us. Basically, we are in the communications industry. Traditionally, unlike some of the other companies that have presented, we have a long, long history (which was actually celebrated three weeks ago - our 110th birthday). As you can imagine, the state of the business has changed quite dramatically in those one hundred ten years.
We are really in the business of communications, with voice communications, data and multi-media. We sell products like PDX systems and communications systems to small and medium enterprises. If you walk into a Pizza Hut, you'll see one of our systems in there. We also sell to enterprises and governments and to service providers. So, a lot of the mobile phone systems that you'll be using, wireless operators, ISPs and a lot of the packets that go across the Internet are powered by Nortel technology. We have a wide variety of technologies, all in the communications space. We do about ten billion dollars of revenue annually. We have about thirty-five thousand employees, as you may see there, of which eight thousand are in EMEA.
Slide:
We, obviously, are a very large company, with thirty-five thousand people. We clearly have a wide number of different product lines. Really, the one that we're going to talk about here is the one that I have specific responsibility for, what we call the "Enterprise Multimedia Solutions." This is a business that sells voice and multimedia communications solutions to enterprises and governments across the Europe, Middle East, and African region. AmDutch, for instance, is a customer of Nortel. We have a symbiotic relationship there. All of the AmDutch communications are run on Nortel technology, for example, as are also the houses of Parliament in the UK and various other places up and down Europe.
A typical solution consists of both the hardware and the software elements, and is increasingly software-based. You'll see, as we go through some of the evolution of the product marketing and product management organizations, that a lot of that evolution really has been because of, I believe, the change in the product mix and the fact that, as an industry, we have moved away from being very hardware-centric to very much more software-centric, these days.
So, the physical things you see in our solution sets are things like handsets on people's desks, for example. But there are a lot of softwre applications, such as voicemail and contact center software. When you call in to a contact center a lot of the back-end software that would fit there is typically developed by Nortel.
Our business model is mostly via systems integrators and telcos. VT Communications, for example, is a very large channel for our products. That does have a bearing on the way that you do product marketing and product management, in my mind. However, as I mention here, direct sales are increasing. The amount of direct sales contact, and therefore direct customer contact, has increased immensely over the last few years.
I'd like to formalize what product marketing and product management do. It is basically everything that resides as prior to the sales point. It's about formal feedback of market requirements to the product divisions. And it's, obviously then, going back out and managing that rollout and insuring that everything is ready to go that is required to make a product successful. That is, clearly, a lot more than just the product itself. It's the pricing, the training, and the whole bit of collateral that comes with that. That is a major part of the role. Then clearly, as well, that product expertise is shared with sales, the partners, at tradeshows, and so forth.
Slide:
I have tried here to condense a number of years of product management. I think that if Seth were to do a study of Nortel, he would probably find that most of the ways of doing product management have been tried and used within Nortel over the years. This gives a brief synopsis. Back in the mid and late 1990s product management really was part of the Operations Division. I think that was kind of part of the fact that this was a very hardware-based product set that we were selling. Therefore there was a requirement for the product manager to have a really good understanding of what drove the factory and the operations supply chain. This was very important at the time.
What I have tried to do here is, from my mind, to put some pros and cons for each model that we experienced. Clearly, when it was part of Operations, it was a very process-rich environment. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. But certainly, everything was done "by the book," with a very rigid set of processes, in terms of how you define products or requirements, when they were required, the level of documentation required, the number of gate-review and milestone meetings and so on that were required, with all the factory sensitivity.
In other words, while clearly customer requirements were important, I felt at the time that there was quite a lot of requirement to ensure that whatever you were developing and producing was also in good shape for the factory and that you weren't putting undue pressure on any supply chain or any particular manufacturing process or ordering process. As you expect in operations, it was really operational-excellence driven. It was really around making commitments, delivering on time and so on and so forth. I guess the flip side of that, what made it not so great, is that it wasn't market-sensitive. You had a bunch of guys, essentially, with their faces turned toward the internal mechanisms of the organization, as opposed to really looking with both eyes out into the marketplace.
There was a split between product management and product marketing. Without creating any bones about it, there was absolute friction between the two, as to who really was the leader of the pack, who was the product owner, who made the decisions, who didn't make decisions, and whether the decisions were being made correctly. Because of that there was a large function overlap. When you have these particular issues- people talked about a new word to me today, these "coping strategies - clearly, we didn't "cope" very well at that time. I guess the other thing is that the influence on R&D was pretty low, as well. Your influence was based on your operations front and not on your R&D and not on your sales.
That was one way of doing it. And I think that, as a hardware organization, it probably worked okay. In the next couple of years or so, from 2000 through 2002, most of the product management stuff was part of the global product divisions. As with most North American organizations, a lot of the R&D, certainly back in the early part of the century, would have been done in North America or offshore. As a regional organization, being part of a global organization, we certainly had some pretty good advantages of being much more influential. From a product manager's personal point of view, there were great career opportunities, as well, in terms of getting better understanding of a region, greater responsibilities in the product ownership and so on.
But again, one of the real issues was not being market-sensitive, not really understanding what is going on, and not being close enough to the market. It meant being more than one step away from your customer. Again, with a split between marketing and sales, there would tend to be friction. Clearly, one of the challenges for a product manager is that the market always wants something that you haven't got. You have got to try to organize the balance between what is the right investment to make and what sales and marketing require and think they need, trying to put that "strategic" hat on, though it is a very "tactical" hat every time. That also creates some friction.
So, for the last few years or so, we have been more aligned with the EMEA Sales Division. We have organized and pulled in Marketing and Sales and all of the product stuff into one organization. We have a tight marketing and sales alignment now. What I think we have found over the last few years is that we have a set of product managers who have a much better understanding of what makes the market tick and what makes sales people tick, and what makes our partners tick and what these groups really, really require as opposed to what they are thinking they require.
There is a greater revenue responsibility for being part of the sales division, as well. There is a direct link between a person at the head and a revenue contribution. That, in itself, gives responsibility, in terms of ensuring that everybody stays aligned to trying to make the right decisions for the business. There is less overlap. What we have also done as part of this is that, because you are all part of the same team with product marketing and sales, there tends to be much less overlap. You tend to be much more pragmatic. You get on with things. There are a lot fewer political conflicts going on, which tends to be a very-large organization "issue." But it is there.
These are the cons with that. Your influence with R&D is medium to high. It's not as high as it was if you were part of a global product division. But, because you have got revenue responsibility and you are closely aligned with sales, that tends to be not so much of an issue. The integration with operations is low. But, in our particular case, with a software basis, you don't really care about that, from our point of view. You have to take care of it, but it's not the most important thing on the list.
Slide:
My final chart shows what I would call the "current model," i.e., aligned to sales and what I would call "product management with teeth." That is what we have done in Nortel. We have gone to the next level, where we have designed and pulled together all the teams into one team. So, you have product management, product marketing, the solutions consultants, the specialists, and the specialist sales engineering people all in one team now. That really does allow us to break down a lot of the issues, in terms of responsibility. It gives us a distilled, defined role of product marketing and product management. There tends to be a lot less overlap, because you can go work out on a per-product basis what makes sense. In certain sub-sections of product in our portfolio we have one product marketing person and he is also the product manager as well. In other parts of the products we have multiple people doing specific roles. It's very sales-focused, with great market sensitivity. That's important.
A lot of people on that team tend to be actually targeted. It was an interesting step that we took. A lot of the people within that role actually have a revenue target that influences their wallet. That really does change behavior very, very greatly.
There is high-level influence on R&D, because you really are the guys who are "feeding them" in terms of the revenue. You are responsible for the revenue, therefore they do take care of you and they do listen to you very much.
Because you have this overall team, there is good level of career mobility and flexibility. If you want to go further towards sales, you can move into sales engineering or a specialty sales consultancy role. If you want more project management type skills, you can move into a product management role.
I guess the last point that I wanted to make is that what we have found in this particular model is that it gives some of the "high fliers" a real business responsibility. Instead of having product managers being responsible for a part of the solution we have the option now where it makes sense to give them much more of a responsibility to actually drive business, to be very, very close to sales, driving business, driving strategy, but also influencing back into the product organization for what need in the product to make it gain more market share and to satisfy customers at a greater level.
That is the "fifteen-minute" Nortel view of what we have done and what our experiences are. We have certainly found, in the last couple of years, that there is a role for two sets of people. But if you have an organization that allows that flexibility, it really does allow us to have, we think, a much greater market sensitivity, closeness to sales, and revenue responsibility. That gives us a lot more flexibility in the way that we take our products out to market. I think now we're done.