SaaS - Changes and Challenges to Product Management

This is a kind of continuation of the last topic on SaaS and Product Management. A few days ago I had talked about some of the changes product management role and function will need as s/w product space morphs itself into SaaS model (from current license model). I am obviously being optimistic here and making a big presumption that licensed product model will indeed gravitate to SaaS. Well most of the predictive statements are made with certain presumptions, so I guess I am safe making one here.

In the current product management practices, we mostly hear (and hopefully follow) about two drivers of product delivery. One is 'time to market' and second one is 'time to value'. Both of these are key to stay focused on delivering certain value (read features) to customer (and market) within certain timeframe for certain convenience.

Product management discipline has used 'time to market' driver on many fronts. It has been used to decide specific things about roadmap. It has been used to make s/w delivery process agile. It has also been used to create 'interlocks' of different functions of s/w product development more effective (read tight). The second one, 'time to value' has also been used to drive various key elements of product development and delivery. It has been used to drive 'delpoyment specific' features. It has also been used to simplify adoption of the product.

In the new world of SaaS, when feature and capability will be delivered through different channel (Hosted Model), both of these drivers 'time to market' and 'time to value' will have somewhat different meaning. Or at least they will need to be dealt differently. The hosted s/w product (feature) and continuous contextual connectivity with customers will change the dynamics of 'time to market'. As of today roadmap decisions are primarily driven from capability and capacity of organization to deliver (engineer the product). Customer priorities have a big role in making roadmap decisions but organizations' willingness and readiness to deliver (read capability) takes a precedence. A lot of time, there is a synchronization issue in 'what customer is saying', 'when product management listens to it' and 'how decisions of roadmap are taken'. This synchronization issue is largely a result of inefficiencies in 'customer interaction processes', 'customer reach', 'collection of information', 'compilation of information', 'organization (engineers) desires' and 'business viabilities'.

In current licensed world of s/w products these synchronization issues are largely caused by 'incontextual communication'. A lot of time is spent on relating 'what customer is saying' to 'what features are available' to 'what features are needed' to 'what roadmap is needed' to 'what roadmap can be built and supported' to 'what is feasible given the business condition' to 'what engineers want to do or are capable to do'. Different communication and conversations captured/done at different times and leading to different conclusions and decisions need to be interrelated before a sensible life cycle for product can be drawn and managed. Humans and organizations by nature are not very smart at collating different conversational threads to make unified and sensible decision.

My expectation is, world of SaaS should/will change it. The communication from the customer for the product (for support, need, enhancement request, desire, wishlist and fancies) should be through the SaaS platform and should also be connected to the business platforms of s/w companies. Product managements communication to customers (on variety of things such as survey, satisfaction check, feature input, etc) should also be through the SaaS platform. Since it will be an in band communication within the context of product/features, which are being used, it will not need to go through herculean efforts of synchronization (to make meaning). And hopefully will result into huge reduction of s/w companies time to 'figure out what is needed and is worth building'.

Now this kind of facilitation by SaaS platform does wonders to time to market. When customer is talking to vendor through the product (features) it is using on the SaaS platform, all (or most) communication inefficiencies will be gone (well hopefully). Similarly when Product Manager will have an in band channel of communication with the customers, where he can exactly say 'what is being done in the next release of the product' using the feature interface of SaaS, the communication overheads will be gone. A major part of 'time to market' today is not subjected to building the solution (s/w feature), it is because of 'communication and information compilation' and 'use of right information' issues in the eco-system of the product. A good amount of reduction of 'communication and information compilation' will have substantial impact on the 'time to market'. The meaning of time to market will change. There will be a shift in how people think about 'time to market'. From simple calculation of time it takes to engineer a solution and then time it takes to launch it to markets, 'time to market' will be subjected to streamlining of contextual information coming from customers to business processes and platforms of a s/w company.

The major pitch change in the world of product management will be - from 'we are listening' to 'customer is saying enough'.

For now this will do, next time I will cover how 'time to value' will have a major change.

Product Management Role in the evolving world of SaaS

I have been missing in action for quite sometime, more than six months now. And I do have an explanation. I met with an accident, which kept me confined to the bed for some three months and then recovery routines for another three months.

But I am back and this time with a topic, which may be of general interest to a wider audience. This time I want to comment on changing world of product management in the face of new product paradigms such as SaaS, Cloud Computing and On Demand Features. Though SaaS (On Demand Applications) have been around for many years, there has been some noticeable traction in the past two years. You can find many startups focusing on SaaS as their primary model than usual license sale (I wanted to say brick and mortar). While industry is going through the shift of delivering features to customers with the help of a hosted environment than a licensed bundle, what new challenges to product management and marketing will be posed?

Will it be the same old world, where you focused on customer interaction, feature compilation, validations, roadmap building, positioning, customer life cycle handling and post sales product life cycle management?

Yes and no. Product management and marketing will still need to do what has been tradinally expected and needed but they will need to change some of their practices for good. Let's see how.

In the old good world of licensed products, customer interaction (for positioning, advertising, evangelism, sales support, feature validations, beta management, etc) was through traditional ways of customer visits, direct calls, surveys, managed support websites and customer invitations to vendor showcase (solution centers). A lot of collection of feedback from customer was based on 'conversational state'. Customer provided the input, feedback, criticism and support based on their overall perception of 'how things are'. A lot of that was based on customers' working/experience with the product, while they were in their own environment (facility) and their overall feeling about the product (feeling about quality, feature, etc). Customer had an opportunity to provide the feedback only when he was specifically talking to someone not when he was working on the product.

In the new world of product offered through SaaS, there is an alltogether different opportunity for product managers to get real time feedback (I call it in band feedback) from customers as they work on the product. Product managers will need to build product interfaces (specifically help and query part of it) so that a customer can submit their quries, concerns, feedback, criticism and suggestions while they work on a specific flow/feature of the product. And that capability in the SaaS platform needs to be built without taking away simplicity and ease of use of the product. In different words, this capability needs to be built without being intrusive to customers function/interaction with the product.

This one possibility will change everything in the way products (and their interfaces) are specified and thought about. Product management will need to think way beyond traditional boundaries of feature specification and their correctness (from ease of use, flow, navigation point of view).

There are many other complex challenges, which will come in the way of product managers, when SaaS becomes the mainstream delivery medium. This specific post covers one aspect of the change, I will cover other aspect of change later in other posts.

Indian IT Products' World : Product Management vs Project Management

In a geography, which has just started learning the art of product management, the conflicting stance between product management and project management is interesting. Many a times a person who has been given product management role walks up to me and complains about engineering teams not letting him 'in' in their sacrosant world. On occasions product manager would be shooed away by project manager on important things such as dates, delivery schedule.

So what is the resolution to difficult situation of a product manager. He is neither welcome in the engineering team because he is the market facing guy, who needs to collect requirement and convert them into product specifications nor he is welcome in the world of dates, schedules, slippages and delivery because that is held by project managers (or engineering managers).

Is this a phenonmenon more common in Indian IT world or is it universal issue?

Usually these are common problems, which are universal in nature. The corporate language for these would call them territorial battles. But in India this kind of problem is aggrevated further because many of the product managers themselves have been project managers, domain specialists or delivery managers in the previous jobs. The new area of product management, which their organization is trying to understand is anyway volatile. They become even more sensitive to these issues. A person who came from the project management, delivery management and/or domain specialist roles finds it very difficult that the information, which was his own yesterday is no longer available to him (or influenced by him). This transformation from being an insider of engineering to an outsider of engineering is not an easy one.

Engineering on the other side has its own fears and apprehensions. A new role, which is by definition closer to customers and is by definition more glamorous is not simple for them to adjust with.

As product management role matures up in the industry and people playing the role and people dealing with role become more and more clear about it, synergies will establish. Product managers who came from a far removed background will need to develop their lateral infleucing skill sets. They will need to use their product, market, industry and commercial knowledge to establish lateral relationships with engineering groups. Product managers will need to earn the respect of their peers as their mentors on product.

Engineering teams will also need to understand that market ownership of a product is different than engineering ownership. They will need to realize that someone who spends majority of his time on finding customer needs, working market dynamics, studying segments, strategizing new opportunities for product and detailing commercial viabilities is a friend. He can assist engineering build a relevant product. And he can do that only if engineering teams let him 'in' in the world of technology.

The synergies will need to be created if Indian IT industry wants to capitalize on new opportunities related to s/w products. Question is, if this will be an short battle or a long tough one.

Product Management from India : Is there a need?

India has amassed wealth of domain expertise over the last 20 odd years of exceptional growth of s/w services industry. This expertise is being widely used in s/w services organizations to standardize and package their services offerings. The cost of delivery of s/w services can be lower when domain expertise of organization is leveraged to create standardization of delivery in verticals. Many of the organizations have built their knowledgebases and CoEs to leverage the accumulated domain expertise to lower the cost of delivery. This obviously has resulted into better margins and more competitiveness for s/w services organization.

A big question looming large in IT industry is about movement up in the technology value chain to a customer. From s/w services to product offering is one of the natural transition every services company can think of. Though the path will be difficult and sometime outright complex. There are two factors. First is a natural synergy and business dependency of indian software services majors on the large product organizations. Most of the services organization will find it difficult to foray into the world of s/w products without risking their relationship with existing large product vendors. Second is around product management competency in India. As of now services organizations have built domain expertise but have not taken the step to leverage the domain expertise into Product Management expertise.

As companies will find their margins shrinking (strengthening rupee and several other factors) and competitiveness eroding (price pressures), they will need to find an alternative technology value chain. If we presume one of the areas companies may look at is direct s/w product offering or some different form of product offering (such as SaaS, MSP, etc), what will be key challenges. One of them, which comes to the top of my mind is shift from back end domain expertise gathering to proactive interaction and planning which is needed for the product space.

Most of the accumulated domain expertise in services organization is a result of years of interaction with customers, investments into knowledge pools and solution architecting into verticals. Is this expertise something, which can be leveraged to build product management competency? Probably expecting a complete shift of existing domain experts into product managers will be wishful thinking. Product management as an area of expertise calls for specific market foresights and interaction capabilities, which are not common in other professionals of IT industry. Companies, who will really be keen on capitalizing in opportunities in s/w product areas will need to make some significant investments.

Some of these investments will be in building/shifting competencies in-house, where existing domain experts pool can be leveraged to take on the responsibilties of product management. Other investments would be in establishing innovative channels of communication and interactivity between the 'would be' product managers and customers. Cost would be a big factor here. The challenge would be around creating the connectivity between product managers stationed in India and customers world wide and keeping the cost low.

As some of the alternatives to license based product buying will emerge, more services companies will be enticed to the world of products or product like services (read SaaS and MSP).

The need to create the competency of Product Management in India is knocking the door.