I’ve always thought that managing an internal capability or technology platform requires the same processes, artifacts and resources as you use in managing an external technology product such as Websphere or Vignette.
6 months ago, a couple of colleagues (Craig Lonsdale and Pete Crawford) and I were discussing our plan for improving search within our company, we wanted to document our progress as well as define where we were on our journery and where our target for the future was. I had used the CMMI framework before to quantify how well organisations delivered projects and it felt perfect to try and use the same framework in defining on well an organisation managed their search capabilities.
The Search Capability Maturity Model that we came up with looks to quantify the stages an organization goes throught as they become more mature in managing search as a true capability as opposed to just installing it and hoping it works.
Search Capability Maturity Model
Organisations move through the different levels as they grow and become more adept and knowledgable, fundamental to the model is that it’s very difficult to jump levels, I know this from experience, especially when you look at the upper levels of the model such as utilizing external collaborators.
SCMM detail
I have worked in a number of organisations and they rarely get past the adhoc level unless you are talking about the Google’s of the world and because of this they don’t get to see the huge benefits a good search capability can deliver (to be honest this model can be taken beyond search and can be used to track the management maturity of any type of capability).
Search is a capability that changes over time, search patterns change as user experience changes, language moves forward or content is updated all of this means you need to dedicate resources to managing search.
Start off easy, set up a reporting program in order to quantify how well your search is meeting user expectations. Simple things like zero results can point you in the direction of big problems. Once you have identified the obvious issues you can start to use path analysis to pick up commons search types. Focus on these and you will see your user satisfaction soar. Then in the words of agile development, lather, rinse and repeat.
I’ve been told that professional project managers can manage anything, they say it’ all about the process whether your erecting a skyscraper or building a website, I never actually believed this. I’ve always felt you needed to have an understanding of the project your working on, the domain, to know how it fits together, where the pitfalls are, what are the shortcuts that won’t send you in the wrong direction.
So what happens with product management, is domain knowledge more important or less?
For me product management is a profession just like accountancy or law. It has rules, procedures and process, guidelines to follow and techniques to learn, however to be really good and to deliver breath taking products I believe you need more that just process knowledge, you need passion and if your not into the thing you are delivering then where does the passion come from. I’m talking about the burning desire on a Saturday morning to read the latest blog article or pick up the industry journal, now I’m sure there a lot of people out there who can get by, they can work there allotted hours, deliver on time and make their targets but in the digital space I think this is the exception and not the rule.
So in answer to my question, you can have generic product managers but I’m just not confident that they are going to be as successful as you may expect or want them to be.
Over the past few months, I’ve been through a couple of strategy development and product roadmap type exercises and the key thing that jumped out at me is where do the ideas come from, is idea generation a skill you are born with or is it a process you can learn or for that matter, instigate within an organization?
Big companies seem to be bad a idea generation, it seems to happen in pockets of individuals but it doesn’t come together in a way that allows new products to be brought to market, I recently read an interesting article (from pragmatic marketing) about how you shouldn’t or rather can’t innovate like Apple, so how are we supposed to do it, and who in an organization should be doing it.
I don’t know about physical companies and so my thoughts may have no value to you what so ever (that has never stopped me talking before) but when it comes to the digital economy everyone in an organization should have the opportunity to put their ideas forward and with the right environment the best ideas should float to the top.
There are certain parts of the organization that should spend a significant part of their day looking at the external marketplace, The Strategy department should be looking at new business models along with vertical and horizontal market expansions, marketing should be looking at the customer and be an advocate for their needs, product should have their finger on the pulse of their industry, knowing what’s hot and what’s not, who is doing what and what is the next game changer coming around the corner, and technology should be investigating new platforms, architectures, patterns and frameworks. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case and most of the time these departments are totally focused on BAU and the products that are already in the market place, the products that are hitting maturity not the ideas that require investigation.
And then there are all of the other passionate people within an organization that want to contribute to success and who have been formulating that off the wall concept that will blow the competition away.
Firstly the teams who have direct responsibility for idea generation and new product development should be targeted and incentivized to do their job properly, secondly there has to be a process by which all ideas can be reviewed, filtered, evaluated and tested quickly with the chaff being thrown away and the gems being taken forward. The R&D team plays a key role in this process.
More thoughts to come on this one…