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Product Management Calendar
I am being asked to setup a "Product Management calendar" in which I specify "monthly and annual duties of a product manager". This is to include monthly development project forecasting, monthly "product status reports" and annual product roadmap planning and budgeting. I am really struggling with this request as I believe a product manager should continuously analyze and adapt to product changes, whether in the market, available technology or design features. This is not simply a once-a-month or once-a-year exercise. Further, I do not want to create too much structure around daily activities that limits the ability to react to opportunities for meeting with customers.
Steve Johnson wrote an article about "Time for Product Management" that addresses part of your question.
As we teach in our seminars, there are a few things that should be done regularly...
Product Management Day (one dedicated day a week) for the strategic work that we never seem to have time to do. This includes market sensing activities where we visit customers and potential customers onsite. Win/loss interviews with recent evaluators. Reviewing and analyzing our metrics about how we're doing in the market and the impact of our operations on profits (quality, technical support, development, marketing programs, and sales operations). Transferring knowledge about what we know to the executives, development, marketing, and sales.
Here are some suggestions on how often to do some of these activities.
- At least once a week, we ought to go through the new inputs for product enhancement suggestions (from a variety of sources) and distill them into problem statements.
- We should do at least one onsite interview per month with customers.
- We should do at least one onsite interview per month with potential customers.
- We should do at least one win/loss interview per month with recent evaluators.
- At least once a month we need to review our metrics (internal and external).
- At least annually we ought to report a "state of the product" to management.
- At least quarterly, we should review our delivery priorities based on market facts. This might include a review of the market requirements documents and product roadmaps. Use facts to report how you're doing against the plan (good communication back to the organization is important).
It is important for the organization to provide data to the product manager. But also, product managers should proactively report what's going on, where plan expectations are not being met, and show the organization where you are successfully executing on the plan. Show the value of product management.
If you've looked at the activities in the Pragmatic Marketing Framework, you know there is a lot of work associated with defining and marketing technology products. 37 different activities. The frequency of many of the activities really depends on how frequently you build new products, how you launch the products, and how you deliver your products. For existing products, how often you release new functionality.
Answered by Barbara Nelson
