Associate Peter Hanschke is an Ottawa-based product management specialist. His post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
I’ve seen this situation far too often.
The engineering team and product management decide on what the next revision of the product needs to be or, in a new product introduction case, what the new product will be. The development team goes through its process to define how to build the features or product and starts a large development cycle.
There is always a great deal of interaction between engineering and product management, but, sadly, marketing is left out. I’m not sure why; maybe they feel that marketing won’t “get it.” Instead, the development process winds through the last test phase without any input from the marketing team. When all the critical bugs are fixed the product is released. It is at this point that marketing gets the product information thrown over the wall with the unrealistic expectation that it will create an immediate miracle. And then everyone wonders why the press release, the collateral, the web site, and so forth are so late in coming.
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This post is by Associate Peter Hanschke, an Ottawa-based product management specialist. Peter’s post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
Up until now I’ve talked about getting to your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and creating your Market Validation Plan. To re-cap, MVP is your product with the minimum set of features and capabilities to satisfy the needs of your early customers. The key is to make sure that the features and capabilities are connected to provide use cases that address the needs of your target market. In other words, your MVP cannot be a disjointed set of features.
The Market Validation Plan is needed to provide a framework to get validation from the various markets you are targeting. Make sure that you include potential customers, analysts and experts related to your target markets and also others who sell non-competing products and services to your target markets. Asking “would you buy this” and “how much would you pay” are essential questions to have answered. (BTW – don’t be shy about asking for an order … you may end up with your first!)
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This post is by Associate Peter Hanschke, an Ottawa-based product management specialist. Peter’s post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
Here’s the situation: Your development team is busy creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You have people off in all directions trying to secure some funding. But do you have a Market Validation Plan? Furthermore, are you executing this plan along with all the other activities? In other words, is this an activity that you are currently performing?
As the name suggests, a Market Validation Plan (another MVP for those who like TLAs) is about reaching out to your target market to determine whether:
- The market likes your product or product concept
- The market is willing to buy your product when you have it ready
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This is the first contribution to this blog by Associate Peter Hanschke, an Ottawa-based product management specialist.
By Peter Hanschke
Congratulations! You finally got some money to hire one or more developers or you found enough time to start developing your product on your own. You look at the list of features and capabilities that your product needs to satisfy the needs of your target market and it is huge. You do some rough calculations and unfortunately the number of hours to implement everything is well beyond your financial runway or your market opportunity window. So how do you pick which features to do first?
Let’s first define a Minimum Viable Product. An MVP is simply the minimum set of features that provide the initial value to the user of your product. It is crucial that this first incarnation of your product must show your value differentiation. In other words, not only must it provide that initial functionality for your first users, it also needs to show off why your product is different or unique in the market place.
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By Peter Hanschke
