Minimum Viable Products and Product Requirements; Upcoming Webcasts; Competitive Analysis Workshop in Boston

Jeff Lash

Minimum Viable Products Don’t Replace Product Requirements – They Help Identify Them

“Minimum viable product” (MVP) is the term du jour among entrepreneurs and increasingly among product managers. In the product management advisory service that I lead at SiriusDecisions, we hear the term used frequently by b-to-b product managers to refer to products that have the absolute minimum feature set required to launch – products that are devoid of unnecessary and non-value-adding features.

Unfortunately, that’s not what a “minimum viable product” is. So, what is an MVP? And what does this have to do with product requirements? I tackle these questions and more in my blog post: Minimum Viable Products Don’t Replace Product Requirements – They Help Identify Them

Upcoming SiriusDecisions Webcasts

There are number of great SiriusDecisions webcasts coming up in August, including two on which I’ll be presenting. You can see the full list of SiriusDecisions webcasts on our web site, but there are three that I think will be most of interest to my readers. These were all presented at our 10th annual SiriusDecisions Summit this past May in Nashville, and due to popular demand, we’re offering them as “replays” if you weren’t able to attend:

  • August 5: Product Management: The Next-Generation Toolkit. I’ll be presenting along with my colleague Jill Stanek. We’ll cover several categories of new tools and technologies specifically designed for product management use that have the potential to can improve both the efficiency and performance of product managers. This is an exciting area where we’re seeing a lot of activity, but many product managers are not even aware that these sorts of technologies exist. In addition to explaining the different types of applications relevant to product managers that are in the market, we’ll talk about the potential business impact and the types of organizations that should consider each type of tool.
  • August 13: The Economics of Sales/Marketing/Product Alignment. SiriusDecisions co-founder John Neeson will present some fascinating findings from recent research that looks specifically at the benefits of aligning sales, marketing and product functions within b-to-b organizations. The presentation also covers how you can get these three revenue-producing functions aligned and the impact you should expect to see when you do.
  • August 26: The Keys to Succeeding With Integrated Solutions. So many companies are trying to focus less on individual standalone products and more on integrated “solutions.” Unfortunately, this is an area where many organizations struggle — we regularly see problems like lack of agreement on what a “solution” is, trouble identifying the right opportunities for solutions, and inability to align their internal teams to be able to effectively deliver solutions. In this webcast, I’ll be covering the keys to succeeding with integrated solutions, including the important role that solution management plays.

Practitioner’s Workshop in Boston: Competitive Analysis for Product Managers

I’ll be in Boston on Friday, September 11 with my colleague Lisa Singer to lead a workshop for the Boston Product Management Association and you can join us! We’ll be sharing best practice techniques, practical advice, models and examples for competitive analysis that we use with our clients. Competitive analysis is one area that we see product managers struggle, whether it be because they are focusing on product feature comparisons rather than strategic competitive analysis, or relying only on a limited set of techniques to gather competitive information, or gathering information on competitors but not having a consistent, objective process to analyze that information and inform decisions.

This is a great opportunity to improve your competitive intelligence gathering skills, learn new techniques, get feedback and guidance on your approach to competitive analysis, and network with other product management professionals.

Learn more about the workshop and sign up to spend the afternoon with us!

What’s Hot on Twitter

Here are a few of my tweets that have generated the most interest recently; to get these in real-time, follow me at @jefflash: