Product Management is the new Business Analysis

I attended Dave Saboe‘s presentation at the Building Business Capability conference entitled “Product Management is the new Business Analysis.” This session delved into the shifts that we must make and new techniques we need to know to succeed in a product-focused world. As Business Analysts, we must:

• Shift from the tactical to the strategic; we’re no longer just making widgets.
• Think about products instead of projects.
• Move from influencing decisions to making them.
• Focus on the future rather than just the short-term.
• Be concerned with discovery versus delivery.
• Move past requirements to experiments to get the right fit.
• Do the right things rather than just doing things right.
• Move from team-facing to customer-facing; get as close to the customer as we can.
• Focus on customer needs and business value.
• Look at the big picture.

To be successful as a Product Owner or Product Manager, you must be:

• Available
• Knowledgeable
• Empowered/authorized
• Accountable

As someone in a product role, the following techniques may be employed:

Product Vision

Having a Product Vision creates alignment between everyone involved in supporting a product. There are a couple of different ways to communicate your Product Vision:

• Product Vision Board (free download from Roman Pichler)
• Product Vision Statement

Product Thinking

I didn’t capture too many notes on this topic, but this chart was included in the presentation:

START WITH THE USER	GET ALIGNMENT	MEASURE OUTCOMES
Problems What problem should we solve?	Vision Why are we doing this?	Goal What outcome do we want?
Target Audience For whom are we doing this?	Strategy How are we doing this?	Features What are we doing to achieve the outcome?

Customer Journey

A customer journey uses a defined persona to walk through a customer’s journey to identify how the person feels at each step or phase of a process or experience. It tracks the emotions so you can identify areas for product improvement. Here’s a sample:

Empathy Map

Somewhat similar to the customer journey, empathy maps focus exclusively on what customers are hearing, thinking and feeling, seeing, saying, and doing, along with their pains and gains. Empathy Maps are a tool that you can use early on, even before you develop your Vision. It’s a simple format that helps you gain valuable insights about your customers. Miro has a template you can use:

Experiments

Start with a hypothesis, and identify assumptions, risks, and questions. Then, design tests and apply them to the experiment. Based on the results, validate your ideas or reject them and try something else. The idea is to find out as quickly (and cheaply) as possible what will work and what won’t. There are many different techniques that can be used for experiments, including:

Lean Canvas

Another tool you can use is the Lean Canvas. There are varying models out there for this. It covers the following topics:

The Three Lenses

When working with a product, you need to view the product through the following three lenses to do your evaluation. Is your product:

1. Desirable
2. Valuable
3. Feasible

You must use all three of these lenses to identify your target product.

Final Thoughts

The topic of “Product Management is the new Business Analysis” was an interesting one for me because I’ve often been asked what the difference is between Product Management and Product Ownership. Prior to earning the CPOA, I would have said that they’re more or less the same thing, but that’s another topic for another blog. For purposes of this presentation, the focus is on anyone working in the product space.

Being a Product Owner is a difficult job, and this presentation helped illustrate additional shifts and techniques are needed to move from being a Business Analyst to working with products. Does anyone have anything to add to this list? If so, please let me know in the comments below!