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The Market-Product Risk Profiles tool helps to align strategy with risk
You have a product in the market, and things are going pretty well. You have a strong team of developers, marketers, and salespeople. Your customers are pretty satisfied—although, as with any product, there are many enhancement requests in the queue.
Now your leadership team wants to know what’s next: how are you planning to grow revenue and adoption?
There are infinite options. You could continue to improve the existing product with new features and capabilities; you could build optional components or new similar products; you could build entirely new kinds of products.
Or, you could stabilize your existing product and seek out new personas and new markets.
[Learn more on personas and markets in the online course Fundamentals of Managing Products.]
When considering your options, each unknown factor introduces risk. New product initiatives come with risk. New market initiatives come with risk. The more unknowns, the more risk.
That’s where the Market - Product Risk Profiles tool can help you prototype your product strategy. What is it? Who is it for? Which strategy has more risk and needs more validation?
Let’s break down the three types of product initiatives.
So “old product in old category” is safest (in the short-term), new-old is a little riskier and new-new has the most risk.
Salespeople will tell you it is easier to sell new products to an existing customer than to find new customers for existing products. But at the same time, they continue to find new personas and markets who want the products you have. In this context, “markets” means a group of customers and potential customers with common needs. Personas are archetypes of the people who will buy and use your products.
Let’s break down the three types of market options to consider in your product strategy.
As with products, “old personas in old markets” is safest (in the short-term), new-old is a little riskier, and new-new has the most risk.
All new ideas fit into one of these intersections of product capabilities to build and markets to pursue. Each of the nine segments has a different level of risk. As shown here, intersections A, B, and D are safer; sections F and H have more risk and section J is the riskiest—since there are so many unknowns.
Profile each of your product/market ideas. A feature planned for an existing product but for a new market goes into G. A feature for a new product for existing customers goes in B. Fight the inclination to put one idea in multiple intersections. If you’re unsure where an idea fits, you lack clarity on either the product component or the market(s) you serve. If your product is for “everyone,” then it probably doesn’t truly meet the needs of anyone.
Risk isn’t bad. But with increased risk, you’ll need to increase confidence that you’re making the right product and market decisions. You’ll want to perform continuous validation to reduce your unknowns.
That’s why the concept of MVP (minimum viable prototype) is so valuable. Show your product idea to people you want to serve and get their feedback before you spend a lot of time and resources building the final capability.
Product decisions should not be arbitrary. Just because one person asks for a feature doesn’t make it a good strategic decision. After all, you can’t do everything when you have limited resources—as we all do.
Use the Market - Product Risk Profiles tool to identify your product strategy focus and the risk associated with your decisions. Download the editable PDF here:
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About the Author
Steve Johnson is an author, speaker, and product coach using modern methods to move products from idea to market. His approach is based on the belief that minimal processes and simple templates result in a nimble product team. Steve has been a long-time advocate for product management, serving as an executive and advisor to many technical product organizations and industry associations. Steve is a former instructor and vice president at Pragmatic Institute as well as co-creator of the popular QuartzOpen framework.