Running a Successful Product
Planning Meeting
October 2004 - BEK Best Practices Newsletter
Have you ever worked in a company where the CEO or other
high-ranking executive wandered over to Engineering and
together with a couple of key engineers they would come
up with a great idea, and suddenly there was a new product
that was funded? You're not alone. There are a couple of
problems with this shoot-first-ask-questions-later process
of product development. One is that the product may not
necessarily be something that your customers want. Second,
and worse, the products that your customers do want don't
get resources assigned to them.
The answer is a product planning meeting,
where all ideas are researched, discussed, and approved
or rejected at this meeting with everyone's input.
Another Meeting
Why hold a product planning meeting? Everyone hates meetings
and have too many already, but this one is a requirement
because time-to-market is the key to success in any industry!
Anything that delays general availability hurts your company.
If you can gather everyone in a room and get them to agree
that your new product must be funded, and development started
immediately, you have decreased your time-to-market.
The product planning meeting gives you a forum
to formally add and remove products and projects from the
Approved Projects list. It's also a touchstone to ensure
that everyone involved is clear on what and why the priorities
are what they are.
This process may seem like a lot of work.
It is! But by comparison, you wouldn't just start writing
code without doing the structure and design work first.
If you spend hundreds of man-hours developing a product
that sales can't sell and customers won't buy, suddenly
a one-day product planning meeting seems like a nominal
amount of time.
How often product planning teams meet depends
on the size of your engineering group and the dynamics of
your market. Once every six to twelve weeks should be often
enough to confirm and reset priorities. Although the market
may change overnight, product development can't and shouldn't
be asked to. Changes to development plans, schedules, and
priorities need to be carefully measured.
Who Should Attend
Your objective in a product planning meeting is to obtain
product approval. It is in your best interest to invite
everyone who has a say in such things including the president,
CEO, VPs of Marketing, Support, Manufacturing, and Finance.
Invite as much of Engineering as you can, especially those
who will provide lively and productive discussions.
It is the job of the Product Manager (or Product
Marketing Manager if he/she has a combined role) to keep
the discussions controlled and focused. You don't want the
meeting to become unwieldy; at the same time, you don't
want someone complaining later that they didn't get a chance
to give their input.
The Meeting
Format
Ideally, you should hold your meeting off-site, so there
are no interruptions. If that is not an option, block out
the morning or afternoon and include lunch.
All participants should be notified well in
advance of the meeting about which potential products or
features are to be discussed. While this is often difficult
to do, it allows concerned parties to think about the new
ideas and how it will affect their aspects of the business.
The meeting is not the place to spring new product ideas
on participants. Instead, provide as much information as
you can in advance to make the meeting time more productive.
- Before your meeting even starts,
make sure you have an agreed upon Up Front Contract (UFC)
or agenda. The contract should include the purpose of
the meeting, the agenda, the logistics (time, location,
etc.), and the outcome (what will happen at the end of
the meeting). This will help keep your meeting focused.
- Overview of the market and significant
changes since the last product planning meeting (or within
the last quarter, which ever is shorter). This gives the
participants complete exposure to all changes and trends
in the market, and creates the context within which to
make good product decisions.
- Review of the company direction and
long term goals. This review will help everyone keep strategy
in mind when making product decisions.
- Review of currently approved products
and schedules, preferably by the VP of Engineering. This
gives the participants an understanding of the current
workload and how time is already allocated. If current
projects are slipping it makes no sense to add new projects
without removing others.
- Discussion of new project proposals
or changes. Each product should be given 45 minutes to
an hour for presentation and discussion. Limit your meeting
to four to six products.
- The meeting should end with a review
of all projects and which were approved, rejected, or
need further investigation. You should also generate a
list of proposed projects for the next meeting.
Product planning meeting minutes should be
published immediately following the meeting. Meeting minutes
are never fun, and it is easy to put them off. For this
meeting, the decisions are so critical to every aspect of
the business that it is strongly recommended that the minutes
be distributed the night of the meeting. If you aren't able
to get minutes out in a timely manner have a transcription
service do it for you.
Once projects are approved, you can begin work on the Market
Requirements Document.
We'd love to hear about your product planning
successes and places where you've learned. You can email
these and other comments to .
Next month's topic:
Winning and Losing: Do You Know Why You Win and Lose?
For more information, contact BEK Enterprises
at:
Web: www.bekteam.com
E-mail:
Phone: 720-304-3300
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Unless otherwise attributed, all material is written and
edited by Blair Koch, BEK Enterprises.
All rights reserved. 2004
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