Market Problem Matrix

A tool I use to be more market driven

Scott Sehlhorst

Product management & strategy consultant

8 Years electromechanical design engineeringIBM, Texas Instruments, Eaton

7 Years software development & requirements> 20 clients in Telecom, Computer HW, Heavy Eq., Consumer Durables

9 Years product management consulting>20 clients in B2B, B2C, B2B2C, ecommerce, global, mobile

Agile since 2001Started Tyner Blain in 2005

Helping companiesBuild the right thing, right

tynerblain.com/blog/@sehlhorstif you’re into that sort of thing

Failure Mode Risk Map

http://www.slideshare.net/ssehlhorst/20130322why-do-products-fail-isa

Market Driven Product Management

Building a strategy & planning a product based on…

To whom should we be selling

What is important to them

How good we are and how good we will be

How good will the competition is and will be

Market Problem Matrix

A tool which is the evolution of, and repurposing of the old Harvey ball charts we’ve seen for years.

Start with a Harvey Ball Chart

Harvey balls are coarse

I like a 1-10 Scale

Inform Decisions, Don’t Keep Score

Where we are today is mildly interesting

Where we expect to be after the roadmap is executed is very interesting

Beauty, In The Beholder’s Eye

Who are our target customers?

And how much does each group care about each capability?

We Could Just Stop Here

And be better than most teams I’ve seen: Accountability in roadmap Plan based on future competitive landscape Acknowledge that all customers are different

But let’s keep going anyway…

Important Customers

Some markets are more important* than others

*to successfully executing a particular strategy

Time To Choose

Can you try and “win” for a single customer group?

Or are you forced to try and “focus on everyone” because every customer has a champion?

*Hint: you meet your sales forecast by closing one deal at a time

If You Are Fortunate

You have a single customer group, and you are able to focus on what matters most to them

If You Are in a Typical Company

You have to try and be all things to all people.You also have to bias towards the most important customers.Here’s some “fake math” to help tell the story1. Multiply the “importance of customer” value

with the “importance to customer” values.2. Add them up, to get a normalized

“importance of capability” measure

1. Multiplying

The “math” should bias towards investment in the capabilities of greatest interest to the most important customers

2. Normalizing

Does the bulk of your investment (by capability) match the importance (by capability) to your market?

Market Problem Matrix

We now are looking at the following things at the same time: Which customers are important What those customers care about Expected future competitive position

Thanks very much! @sehlhorst