Product Camp Austin: From Product Management To Social Product Management

Tom Grant, a Senior Researcher at Forrester Research presented in the 10am slot at today’s Product Camp Austin.

As is typical for Forrester, his presentation was general and steeped in Forrester data.

His main assertion was that product managers are frustrated by antiquated methods of gathering requirements.  He contends that social media can be used to create better requirements.

The benefits of understanding the users are clear – but the audience was very concerned that insights gleaned from social media are not representative.

Forrester’s recommendation for social media strategy is known as “POST”.

1. People - Who are we trying to reach?  Where are they?  Why are they in those places?
2. Objectives - What are you trying to do?  Customer service?  Twitter might be right.  Understand your users?  140 character tweets might not help you.
3. Strategy – Match your approach to the people and the objectives.
4. Technology – This is the last thing in the list — the technology selection comes last.

Examples Tom offered include

• Archer
• Nokia
  • Q1: Annual survey
  • Q2: Learning survey
  • Q3: Validation tour
  • Q4: Developer days
• Collabnet (who qualifies leads via their community)

Tom says that product managers need to be doing more research and less project management.  He asserts that you need to conduct regular research and be poised to get user-centered answers rapidly.

• Personas: Who are the target users/stakeholders?  What problems do they face?  What tasks do they perform?
• Location: How do the ppl you want to learn from use social media?  Where can you find them?
• Questions: Choose the right questions.  Get credible, actionable answers.

See also

1. Product Camp Austin: Total Vision
2. Product Camp: Networking Like A Pro
3. Diving in to social media