Software Product Management

Annotations:

• Product management is the discipline and role, which governs a product (or solution or service) from its inception to the market/customer delivery in order to generate biggest possible value to the business

1. SPM Competence Model
   1. Requirements Management

      Annotations:

      • Requirements management to deal with the content and administrative data of each individual requirement. Requirements management entails the activities of gathering, identifying and revising incoming requirements and organizing them by keeping in mind dependencies, existing core assets, product lines and themes. The continuous management of requirements outside of release and consists of three focus areas.
      1. Requirements gathering

         Annotations:

         • concerns the acquisition of requirements from both internal and external stakeholders. 
      2. Requirements identification

         Annotations:

         • Identifies the actual product requirements by rewriting the market requirements to understandable product requirements, and connecting requirements that describe similar functionality
      3. Requirements organization

         Annotations:

         • structures the requirements throughout their entire lifecycle based on shared aspects, and describes the dependencies between product requirements.
   2. Release planning

      Annotations:

      • Release planning to deal with the set of requirements of each release. Software release management is the process through which software is made available to, and obtained by, its users. covers the spm capabilities needed to successfully create and launch a release. 
      1. Requirements prioritizing

         Annotations:

         • pPrioritizes the identified and organized requirements. 
      2. Release definition

         Annotations:

         • Release definition selects the requirements that will be implemented in the next realize, based on the prioritization they received in the preceding process.  It also creates a release definition based on the selection. 
      3. Release definition validation

         Annotations:

         • is performed before the release is built by the development department. It focusses on the validation of the release definition by internal parties. 
      4. Launch preparation

         Annotations:

         • prepares the internal and external stakeholders for the launch of the new release. Issues ranging from communication to documentation, training and the preparations for the implementation of the release itself are addressed. 
      5. Build validation

         Annotations:

         • is performed after the release has been realized by the development department. It focuses on validation the built release before it is launched. 
      6. Scope change management

         Annotations:

         • handles the different kinds of scope changes that can occur during the development of a release
   3. Product planning

      Annotations:

      • Product roadmapping to deal with the different releases each products has (also called roadvmapping). Roadmapping is a populair metaphor for planning and portraying the use of scientific and technological resources, elements and their structural relationships over a period of time. Product planning is focused on the gathering of information for, and creation of a roadmap for a product or product line and its core assets.
      1. Roadmap intelligence

         Annotations:

         • gathers decision supporting information needed in the creation of the product roadmap. 
      2. Product roadmapping

         Annotations:

         • deals with the actual creation of the product roadmap itself. 
      3. Core asset roadmapping

         Annotations:

         • concerns the planning of the development of core assets. 
   4. Portfolio Management

      Annotations:

      • Deals with the products in the product portfolio. Portfolio management covers decision making about the set of existing products; introducing new products by looking at market trends and the product development strategy; making decisions about the product lifecycle; and establishing partnerships and contracts.  concerns the strategic information gathering and decision making across the entire product portfolio
      1. Market analysis

         Annotations:

         • which gathers decision support information about the market needed to make decisions about the product portfolio of an organization.
      2. Product lifecycle management

         Annotations:

         • concerns the information gathering and key decision making about product life and major product changes across the entire product portfolio
      3. Partnering & Contacting

         Annotations:

         • focuses on establishing partnerships, pricing, and distribution aspects in which the product manager is involved. 
2. SPM Maturity Matrix
3. Product Manager
   1. Responsibility
      1. Product requirements
      2. Release definition
      3. Product release lifecycles
      4. Multifunctional product introduction team
      5. Business Case

         Annotations:

         • Business succes is the succes of the product manager with his team
      6. Requirements management
      7. Product launches
   2. Balance
      1. Projects
      2. People
      3. Politics
   3. Business succes
      1. Winning product and business case
      2. Conquer markets and grow market share
      3. Deliver value to customers
   4. Product Management

      Annotations:

      • Explanatory factors for this positive impact of product management have been explained and coined tinto guidelines towards successful product management
      1. Business objectives and accountability
      2. Mastering requirements
      3. Managing risks and uncertainty
      4. Leadership and teamwork
   5. Collaboration
      1. Marketing
      2. Sales
      3. Engineering
      4. Finance
      5. Quality
      6. Operations
   6. Stakeholders
      1. Internal stakeholders
         1. Company board

            Annotations:

            • Responsible for the definition and communication of strategy, vision and mission to the rest of the company
         2. Research & innovation

            Annotations:

            • two core responsibilities: 1. doing research to new opportunities for product innovations 2. Finding ways to incorporate improvements or new features into the existing products
         3. Services

            Annotations:

            • responsible for the implementation of the software products at the customer organization
         4. Development

            Annotations:

            • The execution of the release plan
         5. Support

            Annotations:

            • stands for the helpdesk to answer questions and for small defects repair
      2. External stakeholders
         1. Market

            Annotations:

            • an abstract stakeholder. standing for potential customers, competitors and analysts. 
         2. Partners

            Annotations:

            • abstract stakeholder. Implementing partners, who implement the product at a customer. Development partners, with whom product components are developed, and distribution partners, selling the product.
         3. Customers

            Annotations:

            • often have new feature requests in the process of closing the deal or during the usage of the product.