Access Models
New Product Development Process (8-Part Series)
Learning, succeeding, and failing… again and again. These experiences of success and failure, across my many years in content-based product management for learning and research for the Higher Education market has informed this eight-part series.
Intro: 8 Steps for Developing Content-Based Products for Learning and Research
My focus is very specifically on supporting product managers tasked with building products that incorporate content, licensed or originally published, into learning and/or research solutions. My experience with bringing content and software and services together in solutions to support learners and researchers is what I consider to be the unique context and contribution of this series.
Part 1: Understand Your Strategic, Technical and Go-To-Market Context
New product development practice is simultaneously creative and grounded in the specific context of the business where you operate as a product manager. There are infinite problems and needs you will uncover in customer discovery, but relatively few of these will be an ideal fit to pursue for your company or organization. Content-based, technology enabled products, such as are the focus of this series, will only succeed if they are built to: 1. Fit the business strategy, 2. Can be supported by the existing technology powering the business and 3. Can be delivered by the organization’s marketing and sales structure and teams.
Part 2: Customer Discovery
Much has been written on the process of discovery and the usefulness of proposing a hypothesis about customer needs, stating your assumptions, asking good questions and then evaluating and refining your hypothesis based on iterative customer interaction. An excellent resource for developing an understanding of the discovery process in general is the Silicon Valley Product Group blog: https://svpg.com/ In this post I will focus on specific challenges in formulating hypotheses in the context of content-based products for learning and research and the challenges that follow in customer discovery. With content-based products two intertwined concerns need to be addressed before a testable hypothesis can be generated: 1. Prevailing and possible business models and 2. Publisher relationships.
- Read more: Customer Discovery
Part 3: Publisher and Content Partner Discovery
Publishing and content creating businesses may not get a lot of attention from venture capital, but they are bedrock providers nonetheless. Building new products that leverage content in ever more meaningful ways for higher education library patrons demands we celebrate the role of publishers and content creators and that we build their perspective into our products. But we must also challenge and refine the publisher perspective when an opportunity to broaden access, improve affordability or enhance research outputs is in the balance. In short, new product development in the higher education space must be done in a give-and-take partnership with publishers and content creators.
- Read more: Publisher and Content Partner Discovery
Part 4: The Components of a Business Case
We have arrived at the moment we need to sell our new product concept to senior leadership. We have completed customer discovery and established a concept that satisfies a significant unmet need for our customers. We have established with a representative mix of our publishing partners a model they will support with licensed content. Finally, we have considered the strategic, technological and go-to-market context of our business and we know our new product concept is aligned with our companies’ strengths and growth objectives. A well-constructed business case, presented with confidence, is the critical next step to take our proposed product from conceptual to development.
- Read more: The Components of a Business Case
Part 5: The Management of the Roadmap
The senior leadership team and the product leadership group have approved your business case and you are now ready to engage the product team, including engineering, user design and product ownership who, with your leadership, are responsible for delivering on the product concept. In your approved business case wire frames, mock-ups, product requirements, and sprint estimates were presented and approved. Now, with your product team, it is time to turn to the road map and prioritization of the schedule and the product build. Three factors will impinge upon and determine your success in delivering on your successful product launch: 1. Competing priorities, 2. Scope creep and 3. Pressure to meet a deadline.
- Read more: The Management of the Roadmap
Part 6: Product Market Fit and Minimum Viable Product
The overriding objective of carefully managing the road map is to ensure the delivery of a product that meets the most basic and essential requirements of a paying or using customer audience. If the road map expands because of scope creep, or if the road map is delayed for competing priorities, delivering the product as defined in the business case suffers. With this in mind, part six will discuss, differentiate and contextualize the two terms used in product development that capture the essence of delivering a most basic product a customer will support: Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Product Market Fit (PMF).
Part 7: Go-To-Market
The very best product managers are the chief executives of their products, and this means working as closely with the marketing and sales team as with the finance, user design and engineering teams. At launch, a successful go-to-market effort, guided by the product manager and product marketing manager, will have detailed the follow through with the development partners and the many reviewers who offered feedback along the way. The go-to-market plan will include clear sales messaging based on the solutions designed into the product and the role of product management in training and supporting sales. And the go-to-market plan should include a content marketing communication plan designed to leverage industry publications, conferences, blogs and other forums to amplify the new product messaging.
- Read more: Go-To-Market
Part 8: Iterate
My perspective on new product development is based on constant interaction with customers on an iterative basis, with the goal of introducing and testing new product solutions with those same customers. This is an iterative new product development process based on bringing the minimal, salable product to market with the understanding enhancements are coming. When an organization commits to iterative product releases following the validation of a minimally viable product (MVP), and after releasing for sale a product market fit PMF), (You can find definitions in Part 6 of this series for: Product Market Fit and Minimum Viable Product), it has committed to cementing into its organisational structure and strategy a new product development practice that will not yield big failures.
Read more: Iterate
If you want to work together on your new product development strategy, contact me directly.
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Ebooks and Digital Distribution: What Authors Need to Know Now to Maximize Reach
The team at Lived Places Publishing is committed to achieving the broadest possible reach and sales of every book we agree to publish. We are less than two months from the publication of our first title, with many, many more to follow. From deciding on your book title to navigating your royalty statement, understanding ebook distribution and discovery will improve your decision-making as an author. Read on for more on this important topic.
The Lived Places Publishing Library Collection Model
Lived Places Publishing is equally committed to expanding the availability of content that improves classroom learning and discussion in regard to social identity and location and expanding access and affordability in library access. In this post from the Lived Places Publishing blog I describe how we are pushing forward whole ebook interlibrary loan, publisher-funded open access, and equitable pricing:
Learning Belongs in the Library — Exploring the Role of the Library in Curriculum Design and Course Technology Support Centered on Affordability, Engagement, and OER
The library, teaching and learning center, and campus technology all come together to support faculty in deploying OER. Andrea Eastman-Mullins of West End Learning and Joel Nkounkou of ecoText joined me in the writing of my January 2022 column, where we take a look at several examples of campus-wide support for OER from a mix of college types.
Click to read the complete article: Against the Grain V33#6: Learning Belongs in the Library — Exploring the Role of the Library in Curriculum Design and Course Technology Support Centered on Affordability, Engagement, and OER
Developing Content-Based Products for Learning and Research Part 8: Iterate
How many times have you heard a seasoned product manager describe their product failures as a learning experience? In job and client interviews, in podcast and press interviews, and over drinks at conferences, I told the story of an early product failure of my making. The specific product and the failure itself are less important than the larger lesson I took from the experience, albeit many years later (and if you want to know the details, reach out to me at the contact link at the end of this post). Here is what I eventually came to understand: big product failures are not okay and not “glory day” stories to be shared. Big product failures follow from a flawed development process focused on major product launches, months or even years in the making. Small failures are okay and even good and necessary.
My perspective on new product development is based on constant interaction with customers on an iterative basis, with the goal of introducing and testing new product solutions with those same customers. This is an iterative new product development process based on bringing the minimal, salable product to market with the understanding enhancements are coming. When an organization commits to iterative product releases following the validation of a minimally viable product (MVP), and after releasing for sale a product market fit PMF), (You can find definitions in Part 6 of this series for: Product Market Fit and Minimum Viable Product), it has committed to cementing into its organisational structure and strategy a new product development practice that will not yield big failures.
Iterative product releases in the context of new products for learning and research are not random. The customer discovery process will reveal features and requirements of varying importance and value to customers. The first launch is built to satisfy early adopters and subsequent iterations will widen the customer base beyond early adopters. Iterations will also be undertaken to address different market opportunities.
Possible Product Features and Requirements
Engagement with customers and users of the products your team launches will yield an endless supply of possibilities for features, tools, solutions, and improvements to the product. I never reject any item that my product team feels worthy of discussion and consideration for testing and/or a future release. But I am relentless in my focus on prioritizing release of those new features, enhancements or fixes that are most likely to move the needle in terms of new sales, higher usage and/or improved customer sentiment scores. There are many sources of information that will lead to the selection of the biggest needle movers: number of customer requests, number of customer complaints, number of inquiries from the sales organization, competitor product releases, etc. And, of course, product feature testing, such as releasing a proposed feature to a subset of customers to produce an A/B test can be used to prioritize a next release. Regardless of how the list of possibilities is generated, tracking and recording is critical, especially in anticipation of the launch of the MVP and the PMF. I recommend using some version of the following chart to maintain a record. And, of course, there are excellent tools built for product managers that do just this. Check out www.monday.com for a great example of helpful roadmap and iteration tracking tools.
Feature | Date Entered | For MVP/PMF | Critical Post-Launch | Parking Lot | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
“Rate This Video” | May 2018 | X | Impact measure loved by dev partners | ||
“On Screen Annotation” | Dec 2018 | X | Much verbal support but A/B tests, so far, have yielded no usage engagement |
Moving Beyond Early Adopters
A successful product launch is achieved when the most basic version of the product can be brought to market for paying customers. These early adopters will be satisfied with the launch but will expect an improving experience and soon. This is the “critical post launch” category of feature releases that cement the early adopters as customers and advocates with the wider customer community. As you broaden beyond the early launch and subsequent releases, you will engage with customers that are further and further out on the new technology or new product adoption curve. These customers will be less forgiving of technical hurdles or feature deficits than the early adopters. What is “nice to have” for an early adopter will be a “must have” for this broader group of customers. For example, early adopters might purchase a new subscription video product without searchable transcripts, but the wider customer base will not. The product team must be very clear what these “must have” features are and use the validated product launch with the early adopters as a platform to justify the investment in bringing critical post-launch features to the market.
Moving Into New Markets
A special case in new product development for learning and research solutions is moving out of the core market for which the product was initially conceived. For example, a product built to serve the higher education library market may well have potential in the K-12 or public library market. Or a product built to serve the North American curriculum and learning market might have potential in the UKI or Asia Pacific region. I pose this as an iteration issue because, very often, I have seen product teams struggle with balancing a release strategy designed to more deeply penetrate a core market when challenged to consider an adjacent market. This is an issue that should be solved by assessing the market opportunity, which is a function of the size of the adjacent market and the product feature change, addition, or enhancement requirements. If the product team knows the customers in the adjacent market and knows what is required for an early adopter launch, then the calculus is simply where best to iterate for the desired mix of new sales and increased usage against the investment needed.
No Big Product Failures
This concludes my eight part series on new product development for the research and learning market with a specific focus on serving the higher education library. Returning to where this article started, there is no reason to have major product failures on your resume and there is no reason to wear big product failures as a badge of honor because you “learned so much.” Small failures, product feature tests gone awry, bungled feature releases and missed delivery dates are all okay and to be expected. Share these stories with me and I will tell you all about my one, big, embarrassing product failure!
Please subscribe to get a simple notification when new posts publish. I invite you to read the complete series here: New Product Development for Content-Based Products.
If you want to work together on your new product development strategy, contact me directly.
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