Technology Innovation Management Flashcards
(92 cards)
1
Q
What is the Product?
A
What the customer sees, values and chooses to buy.
Anything else is an element or component.
2
Q
What is Product Management?
A
Gathering Customer Insight
Define Product Strategy
Lifecycle Management.
Make sure company is building the right things and aligning the company around them.
There is no clear definition, it depends on the company, market, product, business model etc.
3
Q
What does B2B Enterprise Software refer to, and give example products?
A
Business to Business products such as Workforce Software, SAP and Salesforce.
4
Q
What do B2C products refer to, and give example products?
A
Business to Consumer products such as CuBase and Norton Antivirus.
5
Q
What does B2C Service refer to, and give example products?
A
Business to Consumer products where the revenue is not generated directly such as Gmail and Fortnite.
6
Q
What are Internal Products?
A
Company admin/management tools that customers never see.
Components of an ‘End Product’.
7
Q
What is the Agile Enterprise Product Process?
A
Breaks up development into sprints. From business strategy, creating requirements and stories, development, and releasing.
8
Q
What is the Product Management Strategy?
A
Which market segments are we targeting?
Which locations are we targeting?
What market problem are we solving?
How will company stakeholders make a return?
9
Q
How do you know when a product delivers value?
A
High impact (usually on revenue)
Low cost (of development and other)
Delivers on stated business outcomes.
10
Q
What are the product management report lines?
A
Depends on the company. Can be a branch off of Engineering, Marketing or Sales or even its own branch that reports to the CEO.
11
Q
What are a Product Strategies Workers skills?
A
Strategic thinker with long term vision.
In the clouds not in the weeds.
Innovative.
Analytical.
Business focus.
12
Q
What are a Product Managers skills?
A
Compulsive learner with mid/near term needs.
Customer focus and market driven.
Favourite word is Why?
Pragmatic.
Focused on delivering results.
13
Q
What is a Product Owner Workers skills?
A
Creative problem solver.
Collaborator.
Technically inclined and business grounded.
Practical.
Focused on execution.
14
Q
Do Product Managers have power?
A
No, they have perceived power.
They create nothing and have no control.
Organisational Maverick.
15
Q
What are the Executive Teams, Development, Marketing and Sales expected expertise?
A
Business, Market, Technology and Domain.
16
Q
What do Product Managers output?
A
Product Roadmap.
Company Behaviour.
17
Q
How do Product Managers make sales successful?
A
Understand urgent problems in the market.
Solve these problems.
Update sales and Marketing on the problems and how they were solved.
Sales use this when selling.
18
Q
How do companies gather insight?
A
Market research.
Customer and sales feedback.
Competitive research.
Product performance.
19
Q
How do companies analyse potential products.
A
Market analysis.
Developing propositions.
Business case.
Pricing
20
Q
How do companies give direction?
A
Product and portfolio strategy.
Roadmaps.
Evangelising.
Resolving issues.
21
Q
What are Inbound Activities?
A
Activities that help deliver the product.
22
Q
Can you give examples of Inbound Activities?
A
Writing requirements.
Supporting development.
Project and Supplier management.
Rollout and Trials.
23
Q
What are Outbound Activities?
A
Helping the business to sell the product.
24
Q
Can you give examples on Outbound Activities?
A
Launch (GTM).
Product Promotion.
Delivering Sales Support Material.
Supporting Sales Channels.
25
What are the stages of the Product Management Lifecycle?
Innovation, Analysis, Development, Go-to-Market, In-life and End-of-life.
26
What does a value proposition do?
The proposition is the wrapper for everything the company does in the market.
It describes the company, describes the way the company works, describes the products and services. How the products and services benefit the sector.
27
What is the DNA of positioning?
The beliefs, philosophies and principles that drive your business.
28
What is an elevator pitch?
Imagine you get in the elevator at a conference and a entrepreneur asks you what your company does. You only have so long to describe your company.
29
What is the elevator pitches structure?
For (TARGET MARKET SEGMENT) who have (PROBLEM YOUR PRODUCT SOLVES). (PRODUCT NAME) is a (PRODUCT LABEL) that (NAME THE BENEFIT YOUR PRODUCT DELIVERS).
Unlike (MAIN COMPETITOR), (PRODUCT NAME) has (MAKE "CLAIM" BASED ON YOUR KEY DIFFERENTIATOR).
30
What is marketing?
Activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service.
31
What is a stakeholder?
Have an interest in the business but do NOT own it.
May be employees or transact with the business.
Can gain or lose as a result of the project.
32
What is a shareholder?
Own the business.
May also work there.
Benefit directly from increases in the value of the business.
33
How are competitors analysed?
The market commonality and resource similarity would be put into low or high. If both are high they are direct competitors (cola and pepsi), both low they aren't competitors. If market commonality is low and resource similarity is high they are potential competitors (Caterer and a local restaurant). Otherwise they are Indirect competitors (Kadak and Sony).
34
What is Mendelow's Matrix?
A stakeholder mapping diagram of power vs interest. If both are high you should manage closely, both low you should monitor, power high and interest low you should keep satisfied and otherwise keep informed. Each of these are different stakeholder-management strategies.
35
What is SWOT Analysis.
Strengths, weaknesses (Internal) and opportunities and threats (external).
36
What is STEEPLE?
Social, Technological, Economical, Environmental, Political, Legal and Ethical
37
What are the features of a B2B product?
Large average sale - hundreds of thousands / millions.
Few customers - hundreds / thousands
Long sales cycle - month or years
Buyer != User
Targeted marketing
Small amount of quantitative data
Upgrading can be a big issue.
38
What are the features of a B2C product?
Small average sale - dollars / euros
Many customers - hundreds of thousands / millions
Short sales cycle - seconds or minutes
Buyer == User
Mass marketing
Vast amounts of quantitative data
upgrading not usually an issue.
39
What are product objectives?
To align with the business objectives.
Increasing revenue and delivering profit.
40
What is the product manager mix?
Ensure the right thing is being built through a deep understanding of the MARKET, BUSINESS and TECHNOLOGY.
41
What are personas?
Show who you are solving the problem for.
Buyers vs Users.
Understanding of users can help sales when talking to buyers.
42
Name some examples of prioritisation methodologies?
RICE - Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort
CD3 - Cost of Delay Divided by Duration
Common sense - Does it need to be completed for a certain event e.g Christmas.
43
What are the objectives of a product roadmap?
Align company and customers to your narrative.
Demonstrate process along key themes:
- Integration, Self service, Ease of use
Relationship with legacy/Incumbent Products.
44
What is the goal of localisation?
The goal of localization should be that your product appears to the user as though it had been designed in their country and culture and not imported from elsewhere.
45
What are the impacts on language regarding localisation?
There are many languages, dialects and variants. These have different characters with different text sizes.
46
What are the impacts of data representation on localisation?
Different ways of interpreting data. For example American dates (9/11 or 11/9), numbers (23456,45 or 23456.45) and times (5:45 or 17:45).
Time zone conversions.
Paper Sizes.
First and Last name vs Family and Given name.
47
What are the impacts on the law regarding localisation?
Data localisation - data created in their county must stay within their country.
Data Residency - Business states that data must be held in a specific location.
Data Sovereignty - Data is subject to the laws of where it is processed and collected.
Words can have different meanings in other languages.
48
What are the impacts of culture regarding localisation?
Colours have different meanings in different countries - Yellow good luck in Thailand but pornography in China.
Icons - Animals, Religious symbols
Maps and Borders differ in certain countries.
49
How to approach localisation?
Know your starting point - conduct a readiness assessment.
Build a plan.
Don't forget the "whole product".
Engage local resources.
Justify the expense.
49
How does localisation impact the market?
Markets should be evaluated in each country as they will differ massively.
Evaluate market size, competitive landscape, ease of doing business / culture, partnerships, existing customers, localisation requirements.
49
What is TAM?
Total Available Market - For example, the total market of global smart devices.
50
What is SAM?
Serviceable Available Market - Total market of similar apps.
50
What is SOM?
Serviceable Obtainable - Current market share of your app.
51
Name the different types of market?
Fragmented (Many similar sized competitors).
Consolidated (Few large companies dominate).
Local, regional, national (kippers, haggis, fish and chips).
Global - (Whisky)
52
What should you aim for your market to be?
Distinctive - different from others.
Large or able to pay.
Accessible.
Defendable - will you be able to keep them.
53
What ways can a market be segmented into?
Demographic - Age, gender, Income.
Geographic - Local, national, regional.
Psychographic - Activities, Personalities.
Behavioural - Benefits, usage rates, patterns.
54
What is the Agile Manifesto?
Individual and Interactions over Processes and Tools.
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation.
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation.
Responding to Change over Following a Plan.
55
What is the Software Development Release Factory?
Downtime costs.
Needs fed with stories at manageable rate.
Product increments delivered continuously through sprints.
Continuous feedback on quality and performance.
Throughput and efficiency of resources is critical.
Tight Scheduling.
56
What is the Software Development and Release Factory Production Waste?
Built the wrong things.
Built badly.
Not delivered when needed - late/slow.
57
What are market experts responsibilities?
Voice of the market.
Market entry business case.
Portfolio Commercial success.
Geo and vertical roadmap.
58
What are product experts responsibilities?
Voice of the customer and business.
Product-market fit-gap.
Product line functional success.
Product line roadmap.
59
What are solution experts responsibilities?
Engineering interface.
Estimation and planning.
Team success.
Backlog management.
60
What are User Experts responsibilities?
Voice of the user.
Iterative design with wireframes and prototypes.
Translate ideal and validated designs into product realities.
60
What job titles are given to market experts, product experts, solution experts and user experts?
Market experts and Product experts can be Product Directors.
Product Experts and Solution Experts can be Product Managers.
Solution Experts can be Product Owners.
User Experts can be UX Designers.
61
What are the Product Owners Responsibilities?
Primary responsibility is maximise the ROI.
Otherwise, create and communicate details of the product vision, have up-to-date knowledge of customer needs. Own, prioritise and manage the product backlog. Stakeholder engagement. Represent users, customers and internal stakeholders. Decide when things are ready for release. Drive product success.
62
What does the product owner do?
Gathers detailed requirements from customers, product management, sales and marketing.
Defines how the solution should behave and look like.
Creates EPICS, user stories.
63
What does the product manager do?
Market analysis and segmentation.
Identifies and appreciates opportunities.
Builds value proposition for customers and business.
64
What are a product owners attributes?
Focuses on business value.
Clearly communicates business problems.
Good relationship with engineering team.
Strong relationship with stakeholders.
High Quality User Stories.
Good product knowledge.
65
What are challenges a product owner faces?
Being honest with customers.
Devs choosing their own stories.
Business data to make good prioritisation decisions.
Working without communicating.
Combined PM and PO role size.
66
How do we make sure a user story is ready to be estimated by the team?
3 amigos.
These are the PO, Senior Engineer and Test.
The PO introduces the stories and leads the session.
Make a definition of ready with the team.
E.g understand why the story is needed, it is refined to the smallest possible size.
67
How do we know we are writing good stories?
INVEST
Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable.
68
How do we know a story is ready to be taken into the sprint?
Agree on a definition of sprint ready with the team.
E.g small enough, dependencies accepted, stakeholders identified.
69
How do we ensure that each team is aware of what the other teams are doing?
Holding a scrum of scrum where representatives of each team have their own scrum meeting.
70
How do we know when a story is done?
Create and agree on a definition of done as a team.
E.g all criteria met, passed code review, test plan exists, reviewed by product owner.
71
Why should you interact with stakeholders?
Build reputation.
Minimise objections.
Build understanding.
Help get buy-in to change behaviour.
72
What is a patent?
Must be different from anything else ANYWHERE.
Must be innovative - Not obvious to do.
Can be made or used and skilled person can recreate.
Excludes - Discoveries, methods of doing business, rules of a game, mental acts and COMPUTER PROGRAMMES.
E.G Memory chips, laptop hinges, processor cache and disk drives.
72
What is a trademark?
Name, shape, smell, words, software names, packaging.
Important for return sales, customer loyalty.
Identifies goods as originating from a particular trader or source.
Protection renewable ad infinitum.
73
What are designs in intellectual property?
The appearance of the whole or part of a product resulting from:
Colours, shapes, patterns, 3D designs (laptop), 2D designs (GUI, icons)
74
What is copyright?
Literary, artistic, dramatic or musical works.
Original source code is literacy work.
Copy automatically covers original works - no need to register.
First owner of copyright is the author.
Copyright can be assigned - only in writing.
75
Can you give an example of each type of IP in relation to apps?
Copyright - Source Code
Designs - GUIs, icons, characters
Patent protection - Chip architecture, memory disks, hardware.
Trade Marks - Name of the APP, character names
76
What are the different types of cost?
Fixed/Variable/Semi-Fixed
Opportunity cost
Capital/Revenue
77
Can you name the different types of income generation?
Seasonality and diversification - Ice cream in summer, gifts for Christmas.
One-off and ongoing income - Buy something once and have it forever.
Subscription model - Pay monthly or yearly, only have it while paying subscription.
78
How can you receive early funding for your company?
Grants from national and specific grant bodies - Scottish Enterprise, Innovate UK, charity or research funds.
Equity funding -Shares to investors who will inject cash into company during growth stage.
79
Can you name some digital accounting software?
Sage, xero, freeagent.
80
What is a MVP
Minimum viable product. Contains enough features so it can be deployed to validate its market.
Release early, release often.
80
What is a market?
A self-referencing group of buyers with a common set of needs (shared problem) and a willingness to pay for a solution.
81
What are factors that influence the SOM?
Country regulations - Safety, NHS.
Source of product content.
Distribution and Support network.
Localisation - Language etc
Innovation Phase (pre-chasm)
81
How can you make sure your market sizing estimates more accurate?
Validate data with multiple sources.
Factor in growth rates for multi-year projections.
How much room is there for the market to grow?
What is the level of buyer activity?
82
Can you name some sales channels?
Direct, web, retailer, wholesaler, distributor, original equipment manufacturer (OEM), Reseller, value added reseller (VAR)
82
What are the pros and cons to direct sales (in house sales team)?
Full control over sales process.
Direct access to buyers/users.
High cost.
Don't pay % to channel partners.
Difficult to scale.
High barrier to entry.
83
What are the pros and cons to channel sales (outsourced sales team)
Low sales, marketing and distribution costs.
Easier to scale.
Lower barrier to entry.
Less control over the sales process.
Between 30-40% paid to channel partner.
84
