• “The hype right now (for social marketing) exceeds the reality”
• Survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.
• “It (social media) could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive, or even grammatically incorrect”

In fairness to the article, there were some counterpoints offered that painted the efficacy of social media in a positive light. But, it was clear from the tone and title of the article that the goal was to cast a dark shadow and heed warning to small business owners that social media/marketing was not all that it’s cracked up to be. My reaction is simple; nobody ever said that social marketing was easy (at least no social marketing strategist worth their salt). Social marketing (done right) promises value and nothing valuable is easy to obtain.

As I’m reading this article I’m reminded of Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin in which he talks about the difference between an invaluable (or “linchpin”) employee and an average “punch the clock” employee. One of the big differences is that the invaluable employees are willing to put themselves out there, take risks in order to build their skills, experiences and ultimately their value. They don’t yield to all the pre-defined “rules” of the game, they create their own game. They aren’t overcome by the “lizard brain” (i.e., the innate tendency of humans to seek safety and not expose oneself to uncomfortable situations). They are truly distinct in their ability to provide incredible problem solving abilities through a passionate attitude and “fail fast” approach. Yes, fail fast. Learning through failures and using failures as a means to grow is one of the key characteristics of a linchpin. It’s not easy to be a linchpin. It’s not easy to be “special”. However, the payoff for linchpins is that they have the freedom of calling their own shots because they’re in short supply. The market for their services will never go away, even in a recession. In fact, recessions probably make linchpins even more valuable because of what they can bring to the table relative to average employees.

Why does this matter? Well, if you’re a company that is content with being average then social marketing is probably not for you. Social marketing definitely has its risks, and it’s definitely not easy, no doubt. Like Mr. Chiagouris said “It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive, or even grammatically incorrect”. This is true and obviously comes from the perspective of a business that is satisfied with status quo, content to just plug along and not ruin its conservative returns. And that’s just fine. But, if you want to be a truly “special” company, one that stands out from the rest, one that’s largely immune to economic downturns, and one who’s competitive advantage comes from difficult-to-replicate culture and customer relationships, then social marketing offers you an invaluable opportunity. It will not be easy; it will take a well thought out strategy, organizational coordination and lots of time and effort. And you WILL make mistakes along the way. However, if you stick with it through thick and thin you might find in the long run that your company has become a market “linchpin”. What’s the ROI on that?

1. The non-technical small business owner looking to quickly and easily create/launch a functional, half-way decent looking yet obviously templated Web site. Intuit addresses this segment with a pure SaaS (Web) solution that allows the selection of templates, basic navigation, layout, controls, content manipulation and a way to easily publish. Pretty basic and simple stuff with a dead simple user interface.
2. The fairly technical small business owner (or brother/father/friend/etc. of) that needs a platform to aid in creating a unique/customized website without having to sling HTML, Javascript and CSS (this is me). For this segment, Intuit offers a more powerful, desktop IDE application that allows the user to build a site from scratch (with the option of starting with templates) using various WYSIWYG drag and drop features and property editors as well as more advanced facilities to integrate features like forms, social widgets, multimedia and custom HTML/JS code.

Being that I fit pretty comfortably within the second segment, I ended up using Sitebuilder to develop my brother’s website and was pretty impressed with the results. Now, the resulting website is admittedly not the “crown jewel” of sites (www.aquasphereconsulting.com). But, considering that it only took me about 8 hours to put together a custom layout, decent design and populate the site with existing Aquasphere marketing content (not to mention, secure a new domain and publish live), it was well worth it to me. Plus, I was able to easily migrate the site to my brother’s permanent account and he can use Sitebuilder’s nice IDE to enhance and mantain the site going forward. I look at it as a good foundational site that can built upon over time as his company’s marketing needs evolve.

Here are some of the pros and cons of the tool based on my experience:

Things I liked (in no particular order):

• Copy and paste across pages remembers the placement from the source page
• Easy to use form control libraries and “on action” hooks
• Nice image gallery widget
• Nice page element alignment tools
• Easy to adjust page layers (e.g., bring element to front/back, etc.)
• Migration path from one site account to another (this came in handy because I essentially created the site on my trial account and needed to transfer it to my brother’s account)
• Ability to use WYSIWYG to place/define custom HTML snippets (I used this to integrate the 3rd party “AddThis” social sharing widget on the site)
• Easy of securing Web domain, hosting, publishing and business email addresses (NOTE: The Web domain is yours and can be transferred to a different service provider in the future if desired)

Things that need work:

• Getting vertical spacing between elements consistent across browsers was irritating.
• Table layout isn’t supported (this currently makes the home page look like s*#t on a mobile browser and there are small layout differences across desktop browsers)
• No ability (that I could find) to create global elements that applied to every page (e.g., same appearance and placement for stuff like hero banners, global navigation, footers, etc.)
• Proprietary format for page files that doesn’t lend itself nicely to exporting to zip and deploying on a different Web server (wonder what the migration path is if you no longer want to use Intuit for hosting…I’ve yet to explore that scenario)
• Social plug-in tools could be much richer. For instance, they could offer a social sharing widget that allows visitors to easily share the site via various social media channels. I had to embed my own (AddThis) social sharing widget using Sitebuilder’s custom HTML/JS code embed facility.

Something I probably don’t have to mention (but will anyways) is that this tool is not targeted to the web design/development purist that likes complete control, frowns upon WYSIWYG and has the time/inclination to develop a site using traditional IDEs, debug, hosting and design tools. If this is you, you’ll be disappointed by this product simply because it doesn’t try to compete with the pure Web development IDEs. I used to be this guy but as I’ve transitioned away from a software development career and my responsibilities/obligations outside of work have changed (e.g., family obligations), I don’t have the extra time and sharp Web development skills that I used to have. So, if you’re like me and need to get a decent small business Web site up and running quickly with some reasonable abilities to customize, you should definitely try this product out.

How about you, have you tried this product or one like it? I’d love to hear your story.

• Networking, networking, networking – Never under-estimate the power of a strong professional network, especially in these turbulent economic times (see Gopal Shenoy’s reason #2 on “7 Tips on How to Survive a Layoff”). This is the perfect venue to meet fellow Austin PMs and bolster your professional contact list.
• A chance to build your reputation (and presentation skills) – Since ProductCamp is run exclusively by the participants, all topic sessions are made possible through volunteer efforts by whoever has a good idea for a topic. This is a great opportunity to showcase your “stuff” and build your presentation skills at the same time.
• Free crowdsourcing from some of the best and brightest - Where else can you get immediate and diverse expert feedback on that PM riddle that’s been eating at you for the past 6 months? This is where PMs come together to share war stories and best of breed problem solving methods.
• Collaborative learning environment - With many different session topics to choose from, there are bound to be several of interest that offer you an ability to expand your PM knowledge. The sessions are collaborative and the learning comes from the conversations that ensue.
• Pimp your company - Are you a small start-up in the Austin area trying to build up your reputation and consumer awareness? ProductCamp gives you the opportunity to chat it up (and even present your own session) with some of the most connected technology professionals in Austin.
• A cure for the post-SxSW blues - Like New Year’s is to Christmas, this day-long Saturday event will be your cure for the blues after the SxSW interactive festivities have passed.
• The venue - If you haven’t been, the new, luxurious AT&T Conference Center on the UT-Austin campus is fantastic and worth the visit!
• It’s on a Saturday - This one might be a double-edged sword but at least you can plan ahead and be relatively sure that the plans won’t be pre-empted by a long-running meeting or customer emergency (no guarantees against re-scheduled T-ball games or a surprise visit from the in-laws).
• It’s all FREE! - Well, almost. There’s no attendance fee. The only thing that the ProductCamp Austin organizers ask is that each attendee volunteers/participates in a lightweight way (e.g., volunteer at sign-in desk, lead a session, bring ideas, etc.) such that the entire event is a worthwhile experience to all involved.
• You’ll be glad you went - For all the reasons listed above and more, I promise you that it will be one of the more productive Saturday’s that you’ve spent in a while.

So, what do you think? Did I miss anything? Are you going to ProductCamp Austin 2010 (Spring edition)? Hope to see you there

Yes, the iBook feature is compelling (ala Kindle) and the native games may catch on with the gamer crowd but the value proposition didn’t smack me in the face like the iPhone or iPod did when they were first launched. One obvious target is students and teachers who may choose the iPad as their digital learning/teaching device given the apparent tight partnerships with book publishers (e.g., lugging around text books will be a thing of the past) and the iWork productivity suite. Macworld had a good article a few days ago that spoke to the potential of the iPad for helping businesses perform services like patient care, selling houses, restaurant service, interior design, and roadside assistance.  Maybe, but it’s not like the iPad is a cheap alternative to existing domain specific devices that serve some of these industries. The article also proposed that the iPad consumer market is the technologically challenged population who are currently intimidated by the complexities of contemporary computers. Perhaps.

Whatever the case may be, given the commentary I’ve been reading (and based on my own reaction), the value proposition (i.e., pain addressed) is not immediately clear to many which is not a good start. Of course, I’m probably not part of the target segment(s) so maybe it’s OK that I don’t get it. But, for those that are part of the target segment(s), Apple better hope that they’re immediately realizing how this device is going address a very painful, very real problem or the iPad might be in for a long haul. The keyword is “real” because if the iPad solves an unrealized or non-obvious problem, then uptake will be dreadfully slow (aside from the early adopter crowd) and selling the thing will be very difficult. The eternal challenge for a company like Apple is always keeping innovation in sync with the needs of the market. Hopefully we didn’t just get introduced to the Newton 2.0.

Bottom line:  social marketing != <insert popular social network here> account

Now don’t get me wrong, establishing an legitimate corporate presence on these social networks is essential and a great start to your social marketing initiative. However, in order to reap the significant rewards (e.g., customer engagement, advocacy, loyalty) that a savvy “social marketing” strategy promises, there has to be a higher-level integrated strategy that ties all these accounts together in a meaningful way. In other words, don’t simply treat these social networking accounts as checkmarks in your social marketing initiative checklist.

First, very few companies (if any at all) have successfully leveraged any one of these social networks individually and turned it in to THE social marketing strategy. This strategy might make sense for your company if there is a CLEAR AND OBVIOUS match between your target customer and the primary segment that frequents a particular social network, but almost definitely not. One reason that this fails is because it’s difficult to establish a customized context on these channels that aligns with your goals and objectives (you have goals and objectives right). For instance, even though you can create a customized Facebook application or create a custom YouTube channel, you’re still operating in a controlled environment which makes it difficult to take over the space with a branded experience. Can you imagine the shortcomings if one of the hugely successful branded social marketing sites like  Starbucks Ideas or Dell IdeaStorm had to replicate themselves solely within a Facebook Fan Page?  Another reason this doesn’t work is that you’ll be hard pressed to find all the necessary functionality within just one of these environments that will suit all of your needs from an engagement integration standpoint. For example, you might be able to syndicate branded content within a Facebook app or Fan Page, but what about integrating engagement tools like ratings, reviews and being able to track/report those engagements?

Second, each of these social networks is valuable in their own way but each also has glaring gaps that prevent social marketers from being able to hang their hats on just one or two. Twitter is great for creating/receiving quick bursts of information, but you’re limited to 142 characters per engagement. Facebook has 350 million members and great application/integration platforms, but in the end your limited from a branding, security and application capability standpoint. YouTube is the obvious video channel, but what about everything else? With LinkedIn, you’re dealing with a very attractive demographic (high income, white collar) but in the end really only serves one purpose to most people when they need it; career networking.

Most companies who have been successful social marketers use these social networks as tools to supplement an overall social strategy. This usually includes leveraging these social network accounts together within a central destination hub (i.e., branded online community) that brings everything together in a meaningful way. For a stellar example of this, check out National Instruments’s community centered around their LabView product line.

So, my recommendations are:

• Use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as helper tools within an over-arching social marketing strategy
• Consider leveraging your presence on these social media sites within your own central destination hub where branding, engagement integration and measurement is much easier
• Funnel meaningful content generated on the social networks into the community hub but also leverage community content within the individual social networks as well (e.g., use your Facebook Fan Page to syndicate branded community content and drive traffic back to the community site)

Am I leaving anything out?

“Blowing Up” – How Nassim Taleb Turned the Inevitability of Disaster Into an Investing Strategy

This story addresses the complex system principle that prediction is impossible and surprises are inevitable. Gladwell  explains that based on historical patterns, the U.S. stock market experiences a movement of five standard deviations from the mean every three to four years. If the stock market followed a normal distribution curve, the odds of a five standard deviation movement would be once every 7000 years! Clearly the stock market (a complex system) does not follow a normal distribution curve and is in fact, quite volatile.

Gladwell chronicles the investment strategy of Nassim Taleb. Taleb has a very unique investment strategy of betting on sudden, inevitable (but low probability) market catastrophes instead of the common strategy of betting on gradual, higher probability market advances over a long period. He understands that it is a futile effort to try and use historical/current market information to predict the market future because there are countless volatile variables to consider that vary in unpredictable ways. Instead, he chooses to admit “he knows nothing” except that there will be sudden collapses that occur, and when they do he will be there to profit from them. Taleb’s lone strategy is to buy mass amounts of cheap “out-of-the-money” put options because they are the best mechanism for profiting from the low probability (but inevitable) market “blow ups”. Not only is his strategy fascinating (especially WRT the principles of complex systems) but so is the emotional tolerance he must have to be successful with this method. Basically, on a day-to-day basis he watches a fraction of his massive out-of-the-money put options mature and turn worthless, effectively watching his portfolio gradually disappear by slow death. He goes through this day after day, week after week, month after month. Imagine having to watch as your mega-million portfolio bleeds to death day after day, and meanwhile having to maintain the confidence (and emotional fortitude) that at some point in the future a cataclysmic market event will occur which will make it all worth while. I know I couldn’t do it!  Needless to say, Taleb made a fortune during the Fall of 2001 and during the 2008 – 2009 financial crisis. This story reminds us that unlikely (and sometimes unwanted) surprises are bound to occur when it comes to complex systems like the stock market. The best we can do is be prepared and adapt quickly.

“Connecting the Dots” - The Paradoxes of Intelligence Reform

This one highlights the importance of learning through collaboration and open lines of communication when trying to navigate the unpredictable nature of complex systems. Gladwell describes the flawed approach of collecting more information when trying to gain more insights as opposed to doing more with the information that’s available. He cites 911, Nairobi, Pearl Harbor, and others as tragedies that could have been prevented not if we had more intelligence, but if we had better collaborative analysis on the information at hand. The article goes into some depth about the lack of intelligence sharing in the past between the “rival” FBI and CIA, and the Army and Navy. Basically, intelligence that was thought to be worthless to one organization could have been a gold mine of intelligence if shared across organizations. In the wake of September 11, Gladwell suggests that the solution is not to simply increase intelligence gathering and create heightened warning systems. The solution is to share information and take a collaborative approach so that different organizations with different perspectives have a chance to draw conclusions which will result in enhanced learning and thus better decisions.

“Blowup” – Who Can Be Blamed For the Challenger Explosion? No One and We’d Better Get Used to It

This last story illustrates how minor fluctuations in “normal” events can add up to produce major (and sometimes catastrophic) unforseen events. The focus of the story is on the Challenger explosion where a faulty “O”-ring was the official cause, but where the real culprit was NASA’s overly systematic procedures for calculating risk factors. This culture bred conformity (and not critical thinking) in making a series of inaccurate and compartmentalized risk assessments leading up to launch day which in turn led to one of the saddest days in the history of the U.S. Gladwell also cites Apollo 13 and Three Mile Island as examples of lots of small, seemingly inocuous, things that in total produced one really bad result. I walked away from this article reminded that all the planning and post-mortem analysis in the world will still leave significant gaps in our ability to predict the results of complex systems.

All in all, the book is great and I’d highly recommend checking it out

Along these same lines, organizational change is often an un-enjoyable experience, especially for the person(s) trying to affect the change. This experience can be made even more un-enjoyable when the change is effectively “forced down people’s throats” (something president Barack Obama is keenly aware of these days). In my experience as a product manager, I can attest that this is 100% true. I’ve written before about the emergent property of business environments and the fact that business organizations will naturally react/change to account for disturbances in the environment. I believe that the key in influencing organizational change is to facilitate an emergent change as opposed to forcing a change through brute force. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t perfected this method (not even close), but based on my experience here are my pithy tips for going down that path:

Pre-requisites (work to establish these first)

• Trust in your abilities by company leaders – company business leaders must have trust in your abilities or your proposals for change will likely meet a quick demise.
• Open lines of communication among groups – the business environment must be such that opinions/input from different business groups flows naturally and respectfully
• Executive sponsorship – don’t ever try to instantiate significant change in the organization without an executive sponsor or two (preferably from your own group)
• Some degree of openness to change - this isn’t to say that everyone should be open to swift and drastic changes, but there should be an openness across the company to changing for the better.

Step 1 – Act as the Visionary

• Understand the current process/situation – make sure that you have a good handle on the current process or situation before presenting your vision for change (this will help to gain trust)
• Communicate the vision/goal – educate business leaders on the task at hand with supporting background information and use metaphors wherever possible to help provide clarity.
• Lay out a loose time frame for arriving at a solution – it’s always good to throw out a time frame or date to shoot for so that everyone involved can adjust their focus accordingly

Step 2 – Act as the Facilitator

• Bring business leaders together to solicit feedback and input – Get all key stakeholders together for a series of collaborative discussions on attaining the goal/vision.
• Provide the guardrails – Allow input to flow and a solution to develop by guiding the discussions to ensure they don’t veer off course.
• Interject and provide guidance as appropriate – When appropriate, provide your assertions in a tactful and constructive way.
• Be patient – The first discussion may seem chaotic as people provide input and try to understand the vision(s) presented. You’ll find that the discussion (or series of discussions) will eventually fall into a groove (with your guidance) as the smart people involved will start to hone in on solutions.
• Don’t be spooked by an apparent “loss of control” – The whole point of this exercise is to make the other business leaders recognize the problem and let them feel like they’re coming up with the solution (which they are in a sense). This can sometimes feel like a loss of control for the leader (e.g., product manager) trying to implement the change.

Results

• Immediate “Buy In” – Since the group leaders across the organization were involved in creating the emergent solution for change, the change will feel more subtle and leaders across the business will be immediately “bought in”.
• Few surprises – Again, since business leaders were a part of the solution there should be little or no surprises when it comes to rolling out the change (always a good thing).
• Better solutions - By bringing together the best and brightest in the company, the design of solutions will be better for it.
• Less backlash – Because of points 1 and 2 above, the backlash of the change will be minimized and your subsequent life as the change agent will be positively affected

The Good

• Getting the right people on the bus - I think it was Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” that preached about the importance of having “the right people on the bus”. The “right people” not only speaks to the experience and accolades of each team member, but more importantly the right attitudes and the trust in your team to adopt and execute on your philosophies. McDaniels clearly understands this as he got rid of Jay Cutler (on the surface because of his questionable attitude), has replaced almost every assistant coach from a year ago, has made no bones about the fact that it’s his way or the highway regarding the Brandon Marshall situation and has brought several people into the organization that he trusts from his days with the Patriots (e.g., Jabar Gaffney). I think the Cutler situation actually goes deeper than attitude though. Don’t get me wrong, Jay Cutler is extremely gifted athletically and has a helluva an arm. Cutler has the kind of talent that is extremely valuable in a “down the field” passing offense like Mike Shanahan’s. However, McDaniels doesn’t need Cutler’s kind of talent in his passing offense which is more geared towards screens and slants than 40-yard post patterns. Thus, Cutler wasn’t a perfect fit for McDaniels’s style of offense and was therefore expendible given Cutler’s price tag. The importance of having the right people on the team reminds me of a story told to me by an ex-Dodgers GM who is still a prominent front-office figure in MLB. The Dodgers GM role was his first MLB GM role and he only lasted about a season. When he started, he elected to keep the majority of the support staff from the previous GM’s tenure because he didn’t want to make too many waves. He told me that if there was one thing he could do over again that might have made a difference, it would’ve been cleaning house and bringing in his own people. People that had the right attitudes and shared his beliefs. McDaniels wasn’t about to make the same mistake.
• Showing confidence in yourself (even if some of it is a facade) - Confidence is an interesting thing. The more confidence you project, the more confidence your team has in you which further builds your own confidence. On the other hand, not projecting confidence can have an opposite and cyclically detrimental effect. One thing you can say about McDaniels since joining the Broncos is that he’s projected the utmost confidence in his plan. In fact, his over-the-top moves this past offseason have been so “odd” on the surface that they’ve actually contributed to his aire of confidence. Whether this confidence is justified or not is yet to be determined.
• Making the tough decisions - See examples above. McDaniels is obviously not afraid to make the tough decisions for the sake of  (in his mind) making the team better. Business leaders (e.g., product managers) are constantly faced with tough, complex decisions. The ability to think strategically, pragmatically and divorce yourself from emotion and other factors that might muddy the waters are essential to making the “right” tough decisions. We’ll see iin the coming months whether these tough decisions were in fact the “right” ones.
• Making sure the team understands how your aligning decisions - McDaniels wants to win, bottom line. Evidently his players know this, understand it and are bought into it. They know that everything their coach does aligns to winning and nothing else. I think this is a subtle but crucial difference between mediocre business leaders and top-notch leaders. Mediocre business leaders will make decisions and simply expect the team to buy in based on implied trust. Top-notch business leaders build trust by aligning their decisions with a high-level, transparent framework so that the team understands the logic behind decisions made.

The Bad

• Taking some time to observe and learn before you make drastic changes - I’ve written before about the concepts of complex adaptive systems and how they apply to business environments. One of the key principals is that you must have the proper information (and information flow) before you can make effective business decisions. Because of the haste that McDaniels exhibited in making some of his questionable moves (especially the Jay Cutler trade), I’d have to give him low marks for having an appropriate “lay of the land” view before executing what could turn out to be franchise-changing decisions.
• Enabling clear lines of communication to encourage information flow among the team - Related to my point above, McDaniels obviously rubbed a lot of people the wrong way right out of the gate which limited his ability to facilitate clear lines of communication through trusted relationships. In his eyes, he may of been making moves in the best interest of the team, but it’s never a good idea to potentially alienate a team with hasty, strong-armed decisions that may damage your chances of building trust among the team.
• Building trust – Building on my last point, McDaniels’s inability to establish a trusted relationship with Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall has already cost the team a Pro Bowl, franchise quarterback and may end up costing them their remaining best offensive player in Marshall. I’m not saying that Cutler and Marshall were worth keeping at all costs, but the one similarity between the Cutler situation and the Marshall situation is that both players cited a “lack of trust” as a major reason in requesting a trade.
• Letting go of your ego - Humility is an often overlooked, but invaluable quality in strong business leaders. Humility tells the rest of the team/organization that you’re human (like them) and that you may know a lot but you don’t know everything. It tells the rest of team that you need them in order for you to do a good job. It subsequently makes team members feel more connected to their leader. Josh McDaniels is 33 years old. This is his first head coaching gig. He’s got a lot to learn. But, thus far his stubbornness and ego has apparently gotten in the way of humility and I believe this has been detrimental to the young coach’s initial reputation.

The Broncos are going into Week 3 of the 2009 season at 2 – 0.  Although their wins were against two of the NFL’s lowliest teams of the past decade (Cincinnatti and Cleveland), and there’s been a bit of luck involved, the Broncos are actually showing signs of improvement over last year. In particular, their run defense which was ranked dead last in 2008 is 10th in the NFL and they’ve given up the 2nd fewest yards overall in the first 2 games of the season. Their running game is also showing signs of returning to the glory days of old when they used manufacture different 1,000 yard rushers like Apple continues to churn out the latest and greatest digital gadgets. It’s hard to say at this point whether McDaniels has fooled everyone with his heavily scrutinized moves or if he’ll be proven the next Bill Belichick apostle to fail miserably as a head coach. One thing that’s clear however is that he’s exhibited both good qualities and not-so-good qualities in his quest to perfect the Broncos “product”. I just hope that he know what he’s doing .

The first step (this actually comes before the prioritization process) is to make sure that before “crowdsourcing” ideas from relevant business units, you’ve defined the key pieces of criteria that will be used to assess the opportunity attractiveness of each idea. Making this information available beforehand will help your colleagues determine which ideas might be winners (and thus submitted for consideration) and which ones should be left out of the discussion. For instance, here’s a list of potential “opportunity assessment” criteria that might be used:

• Severity and Breadth of Problem Addressed – How painful and widespread is the current problem that this feature/enhancement will address?
• Alignment w/ High-Priority Business Goals – How significantly will this feature/enhancement contribute to achieving one or more of the company’s top business priorities?
• Alignment w/ Key Product Differentiator(s) – How will this feature/enhancement strengthen one or more of the product’s key differentiators?
• Alignment w/ Product KPIs – How much will this feature/enhancement help to improve product key performance indicators?
• Target Market Segment Fit – How good of a fit is this feature/enhancement for the product’s target market segment(s)?
• Market Size – How much demand/interest will there be within the target customer segment(s) for this new feature/enhancement?
• Competitive Differentiator – How does this feature/enhancement help to differentiate the company’s product from the competitors? Is it a stop gap, thought leadership, best of breed, etc.?
• Timeliness - How important is it that the feature/enhancement be implemented immediately?
• Implementation and Delivery Feasibility – How much confidence do you have that the company is equipped to implement/deliver/support this feature/enhancement with existing available resources?

Once the ideas are submitted, business cases have been pitched, and all the appropriate evaluation information has been collected (based on your set of pre-defined criteria), you’re ready to start your prioritization process. Now, there’s obviously many ways to “skin a cat”, but this is an approach that I like to take:

1. Assign importance weights to each piece of assessment criteria – For instance, use a scale of 1 – 5 (1 = somewhat important and 5=very important) and rate each piece of criteria based on its importance to assessing the overall product opportunity. For instance, you might assign a 5 to “Alignment w/ High-Priority Business Goals” and a 2 to “Competitive Differentiator”. The point of this is to separate out the really important criteria from the less important (but still important) criteria. So, try to use the whole rating scale.
2. Rank each enhancement/feature idea on each piece of assessment criteria – Rank each idea (e.g., 1 – 3, where 1 = low and 3 = high) based on its potential contribution to each piece of assessment criteria. For instance, if the idea addresses a very painful, widespread problem then it gets a 3 out of 3 for “Severity and Breadth of Probem Addressed”. If the idea will not provide competitive differentiation, then it gets a 1 out of 3 for “Competitive Differentiator”.
3. Calculate an “Opportunity Score” for each idea – For each idea, multiply each assessment factor’s weight by the idea’s corresponding ranking and create a summation (e.g., if an idea ranks 3/3 for an assessment factor that has a weight of 5/5, then 3×5 = 15, and this is added to the next ranking/weight product for the idea, and so on until all opportunity assessment factors have been accounted for pertaining to the corresponding idea). If you have 10 pieces of criteria (weighted 1 – 5) and you’re using a scale of 1 – 3 to rank ideas, your max opportunity score will be 150 per idea.
4. Estimate the cost of implementing each idea – I like to use “Low, Medium, High” for estimating cost just because at this point (i.e., before significant discovery and definition) it’s difficult to get an accurate estimation on cost. Also, make sure you’re considering not only development cost but also delivery and support costs involved.
5. Sort the ideas by opportunity score and develop priority segments – Once you have the ideas in order of priority based on this quantitative analysis, it makes it easier to focus additional analysis on a smaller group of ideas in order to finalize the priorities. For example, you might segment the list into 3 or 4 equal buckets based on the opportunity scores so that you can dedicate more time to further consider the priorities for the high-priority bucket.
6. Optimize priorities as necessary – By no means am I saying that this opportunity score is the end game. The accuracy of the results will only be as good as the factors in the model, and obviously there are many factors that the model may not account for. For example, if there’s an idea that has already been promised to one of your biggest clients by next release, then it’s likely you’re going to put that idea at the top of the list regardless of its opportunity score. The estimated cost (#4) may also trigger some changes in priority (e.g., an idea with a high opportunity score and low cost might be moved up the priority list, and vice-versa). The bottom line is that at this point you should be making slight changes to priorities and not doing things like moving the idea with the lowest opportunity score to the top of the list.

You’ll likely need several iterations of implementing this methodology before you start getting in a groove, but the nice thing about this methodology is that you have a very logical, well thought out process to point back to in explaining the resulting product roadmap to key stakeholders within the company.

Thoughts and feedback are welcome

I’ve been reading up alot lately on strategies and tactics for effectively integrating customer input into product strategy. Both “Customer-Centric Product Definition” by Sheila Mello and “What Customers Want” by Anthony Ulwick are both excellent resources. At the same time I’ve been heading up an effort to enhance our PM process and documentation at Powered, and realized that a customer focused strategy is also highly relevant in crafting your documentation practices and standards. There are loads of books, articles, blog posts, etc. out there that will provide guidance on how to write the most formal, comprehensive MRD, PRD or (<insert PM document here>) that anyone would ever want. Although impressive, I’ve found that many of these examples are geared towards PMs at large companies where available resources to write documentation are abundant and where these documents in many cases must stand alone in communicating product release information to their intended audience. Small company PMs typically have less time to devote to documentation (due to resource constraints) but will likely have the luxury of a much more intimate business environment where day-to-day relationships among the colleagues involved in the product release are stronger. By “day-to-day” relationships, I mean that frequent face-to-face conversations, communication and thus stronger information flow is generally apparent at smaller companies as opposed to large companies.

So, what I’ve found is that for small company PMs where resources are limited, it’s critical to define exactly what level of product information is required by your colleagues before you go off and over deliver based on the “gold standard”. For instance, at Powered we’ve adopted a much lighter PRD in conjunction with higher fidelity design mock-ups that encapsulate user interactions within click-through PDF decks. The developers love this combination because it gives them more visual, interactive requirements and I love it because the time savings is immense. At the same time, we’re not sacrificing the quality of the information that is being conveyed. Because of the fact that small company cultures make it easier for employees to obtain information informally through face-to-face conversations, IMs, etc., it’s likely you’ll be able to get away with providing less dense (but still highly effective) documentation and supplement any gaps with informal conversations when need be. The key is to define what the documentation requirements are based on your customers’ (i.e., colleagues’) needs and only provide what is required without wasting cycles on extraneous “features” (sound familiar). This mindset will free you up to focus your time and energy on true product strategy efforts which is where the product manager is paid to make a difference .