MET 470 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Responsive Web Design, Product Manager, Quality Assurance
22 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Product Manager
goals rely ultimately on the success of the product. Product Managers are responsible for sitting at the
intersection of Design, Technology, and Business. This involves figuring out what to build based on
customer needs and making sure it gets shipped. Since the scope of this role is more broad, detail-level
product specifications are sacrificed sometimes. The result is that engineers might make more decisions
about specific features, like error cases. Typical responsibilities involve defining and clarifying
requirements, working to fine-tune design intent, managing product launch expectations of regional
teams, and developing base-line content to be used for localization. As much as possible, they are
expected to be experts on their customers: end-consumers and operators. As such, they should be
heavily involved in driving these consumers wants/needs into the upcoming products. The PM also owns
the development of the business case, so in making product modifications and dealing with schedule
changes, they must also account for this in their financial projections.
A product manager makes sure that the right product is being built. responsible for ensuring that the
content of the product is in line with the market demands. Essentially the link between the intended
customer and development.
Project Manager
- goals rely on individual projects. The success of a Project Manager will be determined around whether
or not they were able to get a given project out the door on time. There isn't a focus on quality of the
vision around why the project was determined important, rather the Project Managers goal is just to get
it done. Project Managers are responsible for execution. They are removed from the "What do we
build?" question so they can focus on, "How do we build it?" They live in the world of budgets and
schedules.
A project manager makes sure that the work is being built efficiently. responsible for the development
of the product, including time lines and keeping in sync with the product manager to ensure that the
prioritizations matches the market needs.
Program Manager
goals rely on the success of an overall program, which may include many product and project managers.
A program will represent a large organizational initiative like launching responsive web design across US
and International markets. This program will include project managers to track the timing and product
managers who may own different impacted components of the website in each market. their day-to-day
job involves coordinating across all the functional areas that report into them. The Program Manager
also acts as a management level to help clear through disagreements and open issues. Typically, there
are problems that require high-level management support or even just the support of resource streams.
The Program Manager must then work through these problems to make sure they are appropriately
staffed and that open issues and roadblocks are quickly resolved.
A program manager makes sure that the product creation aligns with the company's long-term
strategies and oversees several projects. responsible for keeping the development of several projects in
sync with each so that, for example, dependencies are resolved between the projects.
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* Product manager tasks
1. Voice of the Customer (understand and translate into specifications)
2. To own (take responsibility for) the product roadmap
3. Creation of New Product and Feature Details
4. Getting the work done with development team
Qualitative research
*Why, in the context of product design, does an innovation team study, social, economic, and
technological factors? Put differently, what are the benefits of this work?
Social factors: help identify social and cultural trends and drivers
Economic factors: study the economy state and focus on where money is spent and level of disposable
income.
Technological factors: focus on the state of art and emerging technologies
Together they correspond to the gap that exist between the available product and the new product to
be developed which is later identified as an opportunity for the company to further innovate.
*List three main reasons why so many new product launches ultimately fail?
Technology shifts: when there is a shift in technology, that affects the customer behaviour as the
product is not of a good use to the customer anymore.
Inadequate support from distribution channels: they help the company to get its product to the market,
and hence if there is not sufficient support from the distribution channels then the product will not
reach to the customers.
Lack of market for new product: new product does not tap on customers needs and hence there is no
demand for it in the market.
Company capabilities do not match product's requirement.
Poor customer service
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*What is the purpose of a "product innovation charter"?
- Focus and integrate team effort,
-permit delegation
- establish the size and range of the "sandbox".
*In an innovation process, how does early focus on opportunities and not products help the team to
avoid creating something too similar to existing products?
Opportunities can help identify innovations by taking into account new technologies and needs.
Therefore, they explore new methods that lead to making different products
*Two major types of research are "qualitative" and " quantitative". In the context of product/service
innovation, which research type would typically be done first, and why?
Qualitative would precede quantitative research because quantitative research only becomes
meaningful once you know what problems you are solving and qualitative research is critical to knowing
the problem to be solved. As it will provide a the necessary understanding that would allow to ask more
precise questions later. They help propose what the value proposition might be all about.
*Contrast a "market driving" and "market driven" approach to innovation. How does a Value
Opportunity Analysis (VOA) solve the tension between these approaches?
Market driving: Bringing genuinely new products to the market.
Market driven: following customer driven approach
VOA identifies more fundamental, generic needs of the customers for any market, and that allow a firm
to be both "Market driving" and "Market driven" by constantly developing new products that respond to
the customer needs and bringing them to the market.
*Why is it important to screen opportunities?
The goal of screening is simply to eliminate opportunities that are highly unlikely to result in the creation
of value and to focus attention on the opportunities worthy of further investigation. This helps reduce
waste of resources and risk.
*
List and define three reasons why a well defined development process is useful (2-3 sentences)
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