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Blog Articles
Principles of Product Portfolio Planning
Over the last several months I have been working with some clients to revisit how they do product portfolio planning. Essentially the process they use to determine where to invest and how much. I’ve discussed the purpose and the common frustrations with how product planning is done in most software product companies, as well as explored the root causes of these frustrations. We’ve looked at several specific techniques, and we’ve considered the lessons we can learn from the VC industry, incubators, and some companies that have demonstrated the ability to perform this well.
The Two-Week Rule
I need to interrupt my series of articles on product portfolio planning because over the past week I learned of three completely different companies that all had fairly disastrous product results for the same core reason: they delayed talking to customers until it was too late.
Watch Cable TV and Read People Magazine
My husband and I were watching the Daily Show the other night on our DVR, fast forwarding through commercials as we usually do.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the text "Palm Pre" and yelled, "Back up!" to my husband. I hadn’t yet seen the Pre and was interested in Palm’s latest ‘Hail Mary.’
Lessons from Amazon
Several people pointed me to this great little talk by Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. If you haven’t watched this yet you should. I thought his talk did a great job highlighting a few key points that pertain to my current theme of product portfolio planning and I wanted to emphasize them here: