What is Amazon's approach to product development and product management?

 There is an approach called "working backwards" that is widely used at Amazon. We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.

For new initiatives a product manager typically starts by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product. The target audience for the press release is the new/updated product's customers, which can be retail customers or internal users of a tool or technology. Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

If the benefits listed don't sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then perhaps they're not (and shouldn't be built). Instead, the product manager should keep iterating on the press release until they've come up with benefits that actually sound like benefits. Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).

Below is a basic template for the internal press release, a primary artifact of the Working Backwards process. I've added a few tips on writing each of the sections, and then included an example press release I wrote for a fictional product. I hope these will help you get started working backwards from your own customers!

A few notes on using the template above:

• Title - This is a standard press release title. I like this general format: [COMPANY] ANNOUNCES [SERVICE | TECHNOLOGY | TOOL] TO ENABLE [CUSTOMER SEGMENT] TO [BENEFIT STATEMENT]. You can browse company investor relation websites to get other examples of press release titles and subtitles.
• Subtitle - The subtitle just frames the main announcement in a different way or provides another element of detail.
• Date - This is the date you could potentially launch the product. Safety tip: If you add a date and then review your press release with an exec, they're likely to cache this date and think the product is going to actually ship on the date. Make it practical, just in case.
• Intro paragraph - Provide a crisp 3-4 sentences that reiterate and expand on the title with a little more detail on the customers served and what is being launched.
• Problem paragraph - Lay out the top 3-4 (max) problems for the customers your product or service is intended to serve. Describe each problem briefly and talk about the negative impact of it. Resist the temptation to start talking about your solution. Keep this paragraph focused on the problems, and make sure the problems are ranked in descending order of how painful they are.
• Solution paragraph - Describe how your product/service elegantly solves the problem. Give a brief overview of how it works, and then go through and talk about how it solves each problem you listed above.
• Quote by leader in your company - Pick a leader in your company and make up a quote that talks about why the company decided to tackle this problem and (at a high-level) how the solution solves it.
• How the product/service works - Describe what a customer has to do to start using the product/service and how it works. Go into enough detail to give them confidence it actually solves the problem.
• Customer quote - Create a fake quote by a fake customer, but one that sounds like it could be real. The customer should describe her pain point or the goal she needs to accomplish, and then how the product you launched enables her to do so.
• How to get started - Provide a URL or other information on the first place a customer should go to get access to the product/service.

If the press release is more than a page and a half, it is probably too long. Keep it simple. 3-4 sentences for most paragraphs. Cut out the fat. Don't make it into a spec. You can accompany the press release with a FAQ that answers all of the other business or execution questions so the press release can stay focused on what the customer gets. My rule of thumb is that if the press release is hard to write, then the product is probably going to suck. Keep working at it until the outline for each paragraph flows.

Oh, and I also like to write press-releases in what I call "Oprah-speak" for mainstream consumer products. Imagine you're sitting on Oprah's couch and have just explained the product to her, and then you listen as she explains it to her audience. That's "Oprah-speak", not "Geek-speak".

Once the project moves into development, the press release can be used as a touchstone; a guiding light. The product team can ask themselves, "Are we building what is in the press release?" If they find they're spending time building things that aren't in the press release (overbuilding), they need to ask themselves why. This keeps product development focused on achieving the customer benefits and not building extraneous stuff that takes longer to build, takes resources to maintain, and doesn't provide real customer benefit (at least not enough to warrant inclusion in the press release).

Here’s a mock press release to show you how it all comes together: 

CIRCULERT APP ALERTS SHOPPERS WHEN THE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES THEY WANT BECOME AVAILABLE OR DROP IN PRICE

If a product or service isn’t available today or at the right price, Circulert helps shoppers buy it later, for less.

SEATTLE–January 1, 2021 - Circulert, a Seattle company, today launched a new application for iOS and Android that notifies users when the products and services they want or need become available for sale or drop in price. 

Many items consumers want to buy aren’t available today, or the price might not be quite sharp enough to prompt a purchase. If there’s a specific brand of clothing you like, you have to keep checking retailer websites so see if they’ve released a new line, or spend time looking through a slew of daily emails from every retailer you’ve ever shopped from to find the one email that tells you about new products you care about. How often have you found out that your favorite band is playing a show in your town after all the tickets are sold out? How often have you picked through “web specials” of your favorite clothing line when they go on discount, only to find that the only sizes still available of that one product you love are XXL of XXS? Too often.

Circulert solves these problems by telling you when you can buy the things you want, or buy the things you want at the price you want. No more work. No more missing out. Circulert learns about the products and services you care most about, and then sends you only the notifications you want. You can choose the notification style or frequency, or view a feed of recent alerts. You are in control. At launch, Circulert can send you availability or price drop notifications for products like clothing, music, or books from your favorite brands, artists or authors. Circulert can also tell you when your favorite band schedules a show in your town, when a flight between you and your long-distance partner is a screaming deal, or when the price of that sweet new tech bauble drops below the amount your spouse is likely to notice on the credit card statement.

“Our goal with Circulert is to take the hassle out of buying things later,” said Ian McAllister, creator of Circulert. “There are tens of thousands of retailers on the web selling everything imaginable. Circulert helps consumers filter out the noise and all the stuff they don’t need, and helps them get the things they do need at the best price, saving them time and money.”

To try out Circulert, go to Circulert.com and download the app for iOS or Android. Connect the app to your Amazon, Ticketmaster, and other online accounts, and then review the suggested alerts. Circulert will then send you only highly relevant notifications when the items you want are available at the right price. You can star items that you want to get back to easily, share them with friends and family, or follow through and buy them.

 “I absolutely hate missing out on a great deal,” said Clare Keating, a nurse in Seattle. ”To make sure I don’t miss out I used to have to hit my favorite websites every few days. With Circulert, I found out about great deals right away and never miss out.”

If you want to save time or money (or both!), visit circulert.com today.

Ian McAllister

https://tinyurl.com/3s24xncn

The 7 Strategic Phases of the Product Development Lifecycle

 

The strategic phases of the product development lifecycle is a sequential set of steps encapsulating a given product’s entire life cycle. The first step is ideation. The last step is plotting how to sunset a product. Many different skills, methods, tools, and stakeholders are involved in various aspects and phases.

The only true consistent figure in this process is product management. Product managers take the reigns as early as product definition and concept vetting. They bring it to life, nurture its growth, and ultimately put it to bed one final time.

The 7 Strategic Phases of the Product Development Lifecycle

Before diving headfirst into any of the strategic phases of the product development lifecycle, it’s essential to understand all the steps. While mostly discrete activities, they do build on each other. A faulty foundation can result in a wobbly, flawed future.

1. Product Concept Development

This initial phase might be the most fun and creative stage in the product lifecycle, and it’s the most critical. Businesses come up with lots of ideas. So only the most promising projects must get the traction and resources they deserve.

So, once there’s an initial idea internal folks are excited about, it’s time to employ some of the available tools and techniques for some quick market validation. These tests give the team confidence they’re onto something with real promise.

A key step in this phase is product discovery. This process gives the product team a much deeper understanding of the problems potential customers face and the user personas the solution can target. Without a solid foundation of who the product is for and which of their pain points it solves, there’s little hope of finding product-market fit.

Armed with a good idea and a solid understanding of the key problem, the concept is then fleshed out while gathering additional information.

2. Competitive Analysis

If a company has stumbled onto a great idea, it’s likely they’re not the only ones to have this epiphany. That’s why the next step is surveying the landscape. You do this to see how the product concept compares to what’s already available or under development.

The goal here is to understand the other options potential customers already have. Sometimes there will be a direct competitor with a relatively similar offering. There may be broader solutions that include similar functionality to the product in question. An effective competitive analysis must include completely unexpected, less-than-elegant workaround solutions potential customers use to solve their pain points.

This includes using spreadsheets for building product roadmaps, authoring code in a plain text editor, or building animations in PowerPoint. People often use the tools they already have at their disposal. Changing those behaviors may be just as important and challenging as taking on direct competitors.

3. Market Research

Still not done with homework! Now that the business has a handle on how its solution fits into the scene, it’s time to see if its differentiated approach to solving user problems holds up.

Market research typically involves both qualitative and quantitative research. Surveys and aggregated data can indicate trends, help calculate the total addressable market, and serve as valuable input to the prioritization process.

Meanwhile, qualitative research can help product teams get to the “why” at the heart of the solution. Using focus groups, interviews, and other in-depth research methods. These methods add both color and a sense of humanity to the research and development process. An added benefit is that they challenge assumptions.

4. Minimum Viable Product Development

The tail end of the market research phase may also entail developing a Minimum Viable Product. An MVP is functional for gauging the reaction and interest of likely buyers. It only includes the most vital features and functionality based on the business’s understanding of which user stories customers need most. It is laser-focused on solving core problems.

During MVP definition and development, the team may begin employing prioritization frameworks. MVPs determine which items would deliver the most “bang for the buck” and must be in place for the initial product offering. Frameworks focused on core functionality versus product line expansion are a good fit at this time. Examples include the jobs-to-be-done framework, which ensures the business is building products customers actually want and use.

By getting something to the market quickly, the company can validate its concept and generate user feedback. This is crucial during these early stages. It serves to inform for adjustments to perform key tasks at launch, and the value proposition and messaging matches the offering.

5. Introduction and Launch

With “Version 1.0” about to become a reality, it’s time to take this idea to market. Even if it still bears a “beta” label. The hard work of generating awareness and demand often starts well before the “download” link goes live.

The product marketing team should be generating demand and building some buzz for the offering in anticipation of the release.

Using A/B testing on different messaging and price points to build up a list of interested parties and validate the value proposition’s efficacy. Press and analysts are briefed in advance and given product demos. This seeds the media market with coverage when the grand unveiling occurs.

A robust mechanism for soliciting, collecting, aggregating, and analyzing user feedback must be in place at launch. Asses the first impressions and the efficacy of different campaign messages and tactics. The results inform plans and how to allocate resources for wider promotion and growth.

Employing product analytics and customer research, product teams can begin measuring product-market fit. If gaps are identified, they can be added to the product backlog in preparation for future prioritization and product roadmapping activities.

6. Product Lifecycle

Mature products enter a new phase of existence. Typically, this is a cycle of iterative improvements and modifications. Interspersed with more significant expansions (or removal) of functionality and capabilities.

At this point, the product roadmap becomes indispensable. As processes mature, release cadences are established, and the focus shifts to enhancements and growth. KPIs, goals, outcomes, and objectives will evolve throughout the product lifecycle. It will shift based on both the success and struggles of the product as well as the organization.

While rarely boring, this is the most predictable and routine phase of the product lifecycle. Suppose the product continues to find traction and adequate growth while establishing profitability. This phase may last for years, if not decades assuming the product remains viable and there’s a persistent market for it.

To synchronize strategic objectives with resource allocation and development priorities, structure a product roadmap using themes. Themes are excellent to ensure efforts remain focused on what matters most. This method still gives the implementation team some latitude in an Agile development framework.

7. Sunset

All things must end. For some lucky product management professionals, this never happens on their watch. However, statistically, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll have to say goodbye to an entire product or major component at some point during their career.

This isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it’s just an inevitable part of the strategic phases of the product planning process. It’s a phase in which you are retiring a product due to a superior offering’s arrival. Another reason is a dwindling need for a particular solution. This is because the problem is no longer acute enough to warrant a product.

But wrapping up a longstanding offering has many implications. Using a checklist can ensure all the aspects are properly addressed during the wind-down period.

https://tinyurl.com/2p8x4w2h

The Five Most Common Mistakes in Product Development and How to Prevent Them

 

By JANA PAULECH

New products fail all the time. On average, about 40% of the products launched by organisations fail to meet their intended objectives.

Some quotes put this higher – even up to 95% – but 40% is what empirical evidence indicates (see Castellion & Markham 2013). Even if this is an underestimate, that makes product failure an even bigger issue for organisations.

“Now, hold on a minute,” you might say. “Isn’t product failure just the inevitable cost of product innovation?”

To that, I unequivocally say NO!

Developing and launching a product only to have it fail is the complete antithesis of the ‘Fail Fast’ innovation motto. You have just invested thousands of work hours and millions of dollars in developing and launching this product. In no way, shape or form is that fast.

On the other hand, a high volume of failing ideas (i.e., ideas killed before they are developed or launched) should instead be thought of as the signpost of strong product innovation. Conversely, however, we are not failing enough ideas.

Even if we took the oft-quoted “95% of products fail” (most commonly attributed to Clayton Christensen) to mean “95% of ideas fail”, then that means we’re still taking far too many ideas through to production and launch.

Estimates indicate it takes about 3000 raw ideas to make one commercially successful product (Stevens & Burley, 1997), and in some industries much more. In reality, most companies are reviewing and failing ideas several orders of magnitude less than this.

We are not failing enough ideas, and we are launching too many failing products.

Something is occurring in the broad spectrum of product development between thought and launch, leading us to keep making the same mistakes.

Below is an attempt to categorise the five most common mistakes seen in product failures with the benefit of hindsight (and maybe a sprinkling of common sense).

#1 - A Lack Of Customer Benefit

A product or product improvement needs to provide genuine benefits to a customer. These benefits will come from solving a deep problem a customer has.

Product Management 101 is ‘problem before solution’, but it still appears the message is not getting through, as too many products and product improvements are launched without a real benefit to customers.

Think of the last time someone said “we’ll put AI/ML into this”. A secondary concern is whether these benefits are enough to justify the cost. But no amount of cost-cutting or even a freemium model will solve the failure point of delivering no benefits to customers.

Juicero is a widely mocked example of a product that provides no benefit. A Wi-Fi-enabled juice dispenser that presses juice from single-serve packets is an example of a technology solution searching for a problem.

In 2017, when a Bloomberg article showed the packets could be more effectively squeezed by hand rather than with the $400 machine, this was the last blow in a 4-year journey that saw investors lose over $200 million to this failure point.

#2 - Inadequate Customer Research

A product or product improvement needs to fulfil an unmet need for a sufficiently large group of people who are willing to pay for it.

If PM 101 is ‘problem before solution’, then PM 102 must be ‘who will pay and why?’
This lesson is still frequently forgotten, as evidenced by the most common answer to the question “Who is your product for?” still inevitably being “Everyone”.

General purpose products rarely succeed, and product managers need to do the research upfront to identify whom they are solving a problem for, whether are there enough customers who want this solved, and if they will pay to have it solved.

A recent survey estimates that less than half of product development ideas are validated with customers at all, which still doesn’t guarantee that the right questions are being asked to identify a suitable target market or willingness to pay.

Segway is a well-known example of a general purpose product that no one actually needed. Most people’s transportation needs were already sufficiently solved by the current methods of transport – foot, bicycle, motorcycle, car, etc. – yet Segway touted it would solve all individual transportation needs.

In other words, this is a target market equalling ‘everyone who moves’. In reality, its use was relegated to low-volume, niche transportation cases in urban settings like police, postal services and tourists.

#3 - No Clear Differentiation In Market

A product needs to be sufficiently different enough in a buyer’s mind to sway them to purchase.

In a world where your product is never the only solution to a problem, you are asking a customer to choose you over another solution that may provide similar benefits.

It may be that even if your product has no direct competitors, the competitor is customers ‘doing things the way they have always done things’, which offers much less activation energy to change than ‘doing things with your product’.

One final consideration is how your product will differentiate within your own product portfolio.

Coca-Cola C2 was a costly lesson in product differentiation within a portfolio. It was marketed as having the same Coke taste but with only 50% of the calories, and was targeted at a young male demographic concerned by calories but not interested in the perceived femininity of Diet Coke.

As it turned out, the benefit of fewer calories wasn’t distinctive enough from the current Coke offerings to sway behaviour. Low sales – primarily the result of the cannibalisation of Coke & Diet Coke sales – led to the discontinuation of the product in less than 12 months.

A year later, the more differentiated “zero calories, full flavour” product, Coke Zero, was launched successfully, making C2 a short but costly lesson in product differentiation.

#4 - Poor Design & Execution

A product or product improvement needs to be ready to meet customer demand & expectations at launch.

Untested or faulty products diminish the product’s reputation over the long term, and it may never recover. Worse yet, faults may do long-term damage to the organisational brand if it goes against a customer perception of brand quality, safety or security.

Unlike previous failure points, a successful launch can precede a product failure if a product fails to scale to demand. Performance issues or delivery delays can harm a product’s commercial success even if the original product is not faulty.

Windows Vista is a well-known punchline for how not to design and develop a software product. A host of compatibility and performance problems lead to a revolt in even their most loyal customer base.

This discontent even allowed their competitor, Apple, to monopolise – making the situation appear even worse with their advertising campaign featuring “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC”.

While some issues with Vista were able to be solved, the Vista product never recovered its reputation and arguably cost Microsoft some of its reputation too.

#5 - Ineffective Product Marketing

A product or product improvement needs to create positive sentiment & awareness in the customer’s mind at launch.

There are about 30,000 products launched every year, so getting mindshare at the critical time of launch is imperative. The most common issue here is a lacklustre launch due to a lack of forward planning and support.

A poorly planned launch is unlikely to make the news (in fact, that is the point), but worse yet is product marketing launches that make the news for all the wrong reasons.

Launching products at the wrong time or with the wrong message may cause reputational damage. The saying “no publicity is bad publicity” doesn’t hold if significant customer loyalty, positive sentiment or goodwill is lost.

Airbnb’s campaign for ‘floating world’ stays launched amid Hurricane Harvey, which flooded large swathes of the USA. This is a great example of poor timing.

Sony launched the PSP white console with a print advertisement featuring an angry-looking woman dressed in all white grabbing the face of a terrified black woman alongside the words “White is coming” – never a good message.

How To Avoid Making These Mistakes

So, now that you’re aware of the five most common mistakes made in product development, how do you avoid making these mistakes?

It all comes down to having a process that focuses on addressing these failure points before they can derail your product development.

Most Lethal Failure Points Occur In Product Discovery

It is important to note that of the five failure points above, some are inherently more lethal to the future of a product than others. If you have a product that solves a deep problem for a defined target market and delivers true benefits, it may be able to outlast some hiccups with execution or product marketing to grow over time.

This assumes that those issues don’t fundamentally debase the customer perception of the product or organisation’s brand.

However, the converse is not true.

No amount of flawless technical execution or product marketing will save a product that solves no problems, provides no benefits, and has no customers.

This means the most critical thing that can be done to avoid these product failure points is to cover the ‘product thinking’ basics every time:

• Who is the product for?
• What problem does it solve for them?
• What benefit does it provide to them?
• What benefit does it provide to us (e.g., will they pay)?

Validating these basics with real customers rather than assuming that you know what the customers want avoids stacking the case with false data. Finding and talking to customers will help validate if you have the right target market and if the problem is one they want to be solved and would pay for.

Your Product Process Should Focus On Checking
 For Failure Points

If most product failures could be avoided by sticking to the product thinking basics, then why do we still launch so many failing products and fail too few ideas?

The most likely culprit is the lack of a repeatable and structured product process that emphasises the basics of product thinking and embeds checks for product failure points along the way.

A successful product management process should:
1. Test for each of the product failure points during the process.
2. Provide structured decision points when an idea can be culled or continued.
3. Provide a common language for stakeholders to understand how decisions are made.

Dividing your product management process into phases or stages can help to identify failure points and provide a common language for where an idea is in the process.

Ensuring the most lethal failure points are tested early also helps assess more ideas and reduces any sunk cost or anchoring bias.

Take the Brainmates product management process for example, which occurs over three phases:

Innovate Phase

A structured process for innovation & discovery that focuses on testing many ideas fast. This phase is key to avoiding the most lethal failure points. Structuring product thinking – for who, what problem, what benefits and positioning – into this phase and testing with customer research will help to remove bad ideas early. The majority of ideas should be removed in this phase. Remember, for every successful product, there are about 2999 failed ideas. We need to fail more ideas earlier in our product management process.

Design Phase

A phase focused on deep ‘as is’ current state customer understanding. The aim is to identify real problems for real people, and guardrails to guide solution design and development. Guardrails should be focused on the customer and market needs required to solve the problem, rather than what can be delivered by a specific date. Prioritisation of these guardrails can reduce scope creep in the final phase.

Implement Phase

A phase to focus on preparing for product launch and testing solution readiness against the design phase guardrails. A common understanding of customer and market guardrails across the solutions team means solutions are tested throughout development and avoid poor customer outcomes on release. Product managers spend the majority of their time in this phase preparing for a successful launch in collaboration with their marketing colleagues.

Fail More Ideas To Launch Fewer Failing Products

In summary, failure will happen – but failing where others have failed before doesn’t have to!

Having a process that focuses on avoiding the most common failure points is the best way to avoid making the same mistakes and minimise the cost of failure to your organisation.

Weed out the most lethal failure points early with a process focused on the basic elements of product thinking – who is our customer, what problem are we solving and for what benefit (for us & them). Most ideas will fail the test, which is to be expected with strong product innovation.

The final failure points can then be avoided with strong customer and market-centric guardrails for solution design and development and increased focus across product and marketing on preparing early for launch, because you can never be too prepared.

https://bitly.ws/3frjQ