AIPMM Webinars

How to Run a High-Impact Product Launch

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:55:50 +0000

Companies spend months or even years building great products that meet the needs of their customers. Yet when it comes to bringing them to market effectively and getting the biggest possible return for their investment, companies often do not develop an effective plan or execute it well. A high-impact product launch can set a positive trajectory for your product's success for years to come. Do the launch right and you'll reap the benefits of significant early revenues, industry and competitive visibility and excellent press and PR coverage. This session will cover creating a plan, setting goals, budgeting, timing, positioning & messaging and other critical factors for maximizing your ROI.

Brian Lawley is the CEO and founder of the 280 Group, which provides Product Management consulting, contractors, training and templates. During the last twenty five years of his career he has shipped more than fifty successful products. He is the former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association, won the 2008 AIPMM award for Excellence in Thought Leadership for Product Management and is the author of the best-selling books, Expert Product Management and The Phenomenal Product Manager. Mr. Lawley has been featured on CNBC's World Business Review and the Silicon Valley Business Report and writes articles for a variety of publications including the Product Management 2.0 newsletter and Blog.

How to Run a High-Impact Product Launch

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All About Product Management Certification

Mon, 17 May 2010 21:04:12 +0000

Certification can be one of the best ways to move your career forward and differentiate yourself from the crowd but you probably have some questions.

Are you thinking about becoming a certified product manager?
What is the difference between a Certified Product Manager and a Certified Product Marketing Manager?
Not sure which certification to choose or what the value of certification is?
Wondering how the Agile Certified Product Manager training will change how you look at the product life-cycle?

Join Brian Lawley as he discusses the certification options available for Product Managers and answers your questions about which might be most appropriate for you and your career.

How to Quickly and Effectively Integrate Market Research into Product Planning

Sun, 09 May 2010 21:30:25 +0000

Have you ever avoided doing market research either because it costs too much and/or would hold up your product development/launch schedule?

This webinar will help dispel the myth that all research is time-consuming and expensive, and help product managers understand the basic steps to integrating meaningful market research into their product management/planning work to help ensure ultimate market success.

Participants will learn:

The importance of integrating customer insight into product planning
Ways to do research quickly and effectively
How to select the right methodology (surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.)
How to develop a research plan

About the presenters:

Jennifer Berkley has a thorough understanding of the impact of customer insight on profits and market share as well as the many processes that are essential to all organizations. She has extensive experience in using various methods (surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews) to integrate the voice of the customer into all functions, helping organizations increase market share, revamp product lines/services, and ultimately increase customer loyalty and retention.

BRIAN LAWLEY is the CEO and founder of the 280 Group, which provides Product Management consulting, contractors, training and templates. During the last twenty-five years of his career he has shipped more than fifty successful products. He is the former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association, won the 2008 AIPMM award for Excellence in Thought Leadership for Product Management and is the author of the best-selling books, Expert Product Management and The Phenomenal Product Manager. Mr. Lawley has been featured on CNBC's World Business Review and the Silicon Valley Business Report and writes articles for a variety of publications including the Product Management 2.0 newsletter and Blog.

Practical solutions for scaling Agile

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:03:18 +0000

Get you agile teams on the same page, even if they are on different landscapes.

Practical solutions for scaling Agile across dispersed teams and complex products

Agile is about team coordination. Widespread development only magnifies the challenge.
Learn about practical solutions for:

Coordinating activity across teams when daily Scrum meetings aren't a viable option
Managing dependencies and synchronizing teams so nothing gets overlooked or delayed
Coordinating platform and architecture work that impacts everyone

Real World Strategies for Prioritizing the Product Backlog

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:39:37 +0000

OVERVIEW
Prioritization is a major responsibility of product management, and we are given rough guidance to prioritize by business value. But assessing value is easier said than done. And maximizing business value means focusing not just on obvious ROI, but divining from developers where they would invest now to enable value later, and identifying steps that will maximize learning to drive out risk. How do we prioritize ROI, risk-avoidance and foundational investment? In this webinar, we will discuss strategies and best practices for prioritization, especially the frequent prioritization required when working with an Agile development team. Areas covered will include:

1. Determining ROI
2. Research techniques to assess value
3. Prioritization when data is not available
4. Mitigating risk
5. How to leverage emergent architecture
6. Managing costs
7. Understanding how value changes over time

Come hear Greg Cohen, author of "Agile Excellence for Product Managers", and Ron Lichty, Software Engineering Management Guru, share their tried and proven methods for easily assessing value and balancing risk in the product development process.

BIOGRAPHIES

GREG COHEN
Greg Cohen, Senior Principal Consultant with the 280 Group, is a 15 year Product Management veteran with extensive experience and knowledge of Agile development, a Certified Scrum Master, and former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. He has worked and consulted to venture start-ups and large companies alike and has trained product managers on Agile development methods throughout the world. Greg is the author of the book "Agile Excellence for Product Managers" and a speaker and frequent commentator on product management issues including Lean Product Management.

Greg earned an MBA with honor from Babson College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with second major in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University.

RON LICHTY
Ron Lichty has managed product development for over 20 years at Apple Computer, Berkeley Systems, Fujitsu, mFactory, Charles Schwab, Macromedia, Avenue A | Razorfish, Forensic Logic, Socialtext and Check Point. Ron is a "VPE of Fix-It," providing interim and on-demand VP Engineering services to optimize software organizations and efforts.

Ron specializes in solving problems like painfully slow product development, past-due estimates, challenges of geographically dispersed teams, and productivity bridled by uncertainty. He also untangles organizational knots, creates roadmaps everyone can follow, builds communications with other parts of the organization, coaches and trains organizations in agile and scrum, and gets teams productive and focused on delivery, quality and customers. Small tweaks, dramatic impacts. His book on managing software developers and software development teams, "Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Wisdom for Managing Software People and Projects", is forthcoming.

Prioritizing the product backlog aipmm webinar v2

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Turning Insights into Innovation: Consumer Goods - Pt. 5

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:48:58 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

You're back from the field, tired and dirty, but overflowing with data and ideas. But with all the insights you've gathered, what do you do next? What do you build? How will you sell it? Now comes the task of innovation and application.

In the one hour webinar "Turning Insights into Innovation: Consumer Goods," Gavin Johnston, Chief Anthropologist of Two West Inc., expands on the last seminar, this time talking about how to apply anthropology to consumer goods. He will take product managers through a step-by-step guide for turning interesting insights into actionable plans for product development and product marketing.

This fifth and final installment of the five part webinar series, gives product managers, designers, marketers and researchers a practical road map to successfully incorporate this innovative approach to help grow their brand.

Webinar attendees will learn how to:

1) Set design objectives, outcome goals and expectations.
2) Define unmet needs and methods of analysis.
3) Turn data into new product and packaging ideas.
4) Design methods for testing the products developed.

Salespeople do the darndest things - and it just might be product management's fault!

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:15:30 +0000

Product managers are constantly amazed at the things salespeople will do, from chasing long shot opportunities to promising impossible benefits and non-existent functionality to prospects when trying to close a deal. Even though we like to blame the sales team for behaving in this manner, it may really be the product managers' fault. Product Managers should own the message and then enable the sales team to take this message to the market. Unfortunately, sales enablement has become one of the most overlooked functions of the product management role.

In this presentation, we will review the reasons salespeople do the darndest things, learn the detrimental impact this has on the company and discuss product management's role in preventing this. We'll address four key components of effective sales enablement tools and show you how to build these components. Then we'll wrap up with final thoughts on best practices to help you achieve an effectively enabled sales team.

Bio: Tom Evans is Principal at Lucrum Marketing and brings over twenty years of successful hi-tech business experience helping start-ups as well as Fortune 500 companies create and launch winning products. Tom's experience covers numerous vertical industries, technologies and international markets.

Slides

Worksheet Examples

Turning Insights into Innovation: Software Development - Pt. 4

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:38:47 +0000

Join us for a Webinar on February 26

You've done the fieldwork, started analysis and are ready to start designing. But with all the data and all the information, what do you do next? Without application, all that information means nothing.

In the one hour webinar-Turning Insights into Innovation: Software Development, Gavin Johnston, Chief Anthropologist of Two West Inc., will provide product managers and developers with a step-by-step guide for turning interesting insights into actionable plans for development.

This fourth installment of the five part webinar series, gives product managers, designers, marketers and researchers a practical road map to successfully incorporate this innovative approach to help grow their brand.

Webinar attendees will learn how to:
1) Set design objectives, outcome goals and expectations.
2) Define UI and application needs.
3) Turn data into actionable development plans.
4) Design methods for testing the results of the insights in use.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: WindowsÃÂ® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

MacintoshÃÂ®-based attendees
Required: Mac OSÃÂ® X 10.4 (TigerÃÂ®) or newer

You've Chosen Ethnography, Now What? - Pt. 3

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:40:44 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Creating value in the research plan You've done your homework. You've researched all the pros and cons. You've gotten internal buy in from your executive team. And now, you're ready to reap the benefits of incorporating anthropology into your marketing strategy. Or are you? In the one hour webinar "You've Chosen Anthropology, Now What?," Gavin Johnston, Chief Anthropologist of Two West Inc., will provide marketers with a step-by-step guide for incorporating an ethnographic approach into their marketing mix. This third installment of the five part webinar series, gives marketers, product managers, and researchers a practical road map to successfully incorporate this innovative approach to help grow their brand. Webinar attendees will learn how to: 1) Set research objectives, goals and expectations. 2) Prepare for fieldwork including building timelines and purchasing equipment. 3) Conduct fieldwork and gather valuable data. 4) Compile, organize and analyze data.

Business & The Brain

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:32:27 +0000

Image by Atelier Teee via Flickr

The human brain was fully evolved by the time of the Lascaux cave paintings, more than 20,000 years before writing, cities, and taxes, and 25,000 years before the Industrial Revolution. Modern business makes stressful demands on a brain that evolved in the Stone Age. The webinar will explore how we can be smarter and more nimble by working with the brain's natural wiring, why we can't just power through stress (and what to do about that), and which new skills - new neural pathways - can make it easier to spark customers' curiosity and cultivate trust. Marsha Shenk is a veteran consultant and one of the pioneers of Business Anthropology. In the trenches for 3 decades with leaders from the Fortune 10 to small service firms, she forged a unique and far-reaching approach to the questions that every enterprise faces. Her work consistently drives advantage: profitable strategies, boosted productivity and loyalty, and distinctive products and services. www.bestwork.biz

Business The Brain

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How To Tear Apart Your Competition!

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:28:11 +0000

Cover via Amazon

Competitive Analysis remains an underleveraged - yet - powerful tool in the product strategist's arsenal. Most companies know who their competitors are. Yet competitive analysis is rarely done in an in-depth manner and usually only covers feature checklists of similar products. This presentation will cover how to examine every aspect of your competition so that winning strategic plans can be put in place. This includes a four-step process for developing competitive analysis for both internal and external audiences and topics such as SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces, channel, team/company, product features, funding and others.

BRIAN LAWLEY is the CEO and founder of the 280 Group, which provides Product Management consulting, contractors, training and templates. During the last twenty-five years of his career he has shipped more than fifty successful products. He is the former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association, won the 2008 AIPMM award for Excellence in Thought Leadership for Product Management and is the author of the best-selling books, Expert Product Management and The Phenomenal Product Manager. Mr. Lawley has been featured on CNBC's World Business Review and the Silicon Valley Business Report and writes articles for a variety of publications including the Product Management 2.0 newsletter and Blog.

Tear Apart Your Competition

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Why ethnography? Communicating the value - Pt. 2

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:41:57 +0000

Why "do" ethnography?

What does an anthropological research methodology (that's a mouth full) have to offer a product manager or marketing manager? The answer is: a lot!

Anthropologists have known for years that the best way to understand a group of people is to study them up close, not theorize about them using flat statistical or demographic data. Humans are complex and we need a method for understanding all those human factors that don't show up in the charts and graphs.

Ethnography is the key that opens up a deeper understanding of the humans we call customers.

Ethnography:
- Identifies practical and realistic solutions based on people's real-world experiences, uses of products, and unarticulated needs and motivations.
- Ethnography's value is that it helps product managers and marketing manager find new ways of looking at the world and designing useful tools, meaningful services, dynamic business strategies, and powerful marketing campaigns.

Delivering Value Using Performance Styles & Ambitions

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:40:56 +0000

Getting the right ducks in the right row.

You know the old joke: If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it must be a duck.

Rev.2.0 is: Who's doing the quacking?

One duck is the customer. You spend a ton of time and resources to better understand your customers: their likes, dislikes, must-haves, what they quack and don't quack about - basically, their pleasures and preferences for everything from GUIs to Hueys, Deweys and Louies. Yet even with the best customer intel, products can still miss the mark. How come?

This webinar explores one of the other ducks you, the product manager, are responsible for getting in-a-row (aka, aligning): the members of your development team. The days of command-and-control leadership are over. The often-dismissed soft skills of collaborating, communicating, building trust, resolving conflict are now a pre-requisite for success. If you don't understand your or your teams' quacks and dis-quacks, there's a good chance that the PM process won't produce the value, product or the customer experience that you want. In this webinar, we'll ........

Explore 8 performance styles for getting things done
Identify communication tips for each style
Distinguish 7 ambitions that fuel those styles
Identify the benefits and pitfalls of each ambition

Let's get real! Make this webinar even more useful and have your actual preferences and ambitions in hand. How? Complete the Performance Style & Ambitions® assessment by Jan 11 and receive an extensive, 24-page report detailing your preferences and ambitions. Click here to order your report. (AIPMM members get a special $100 discount).

Don't fowl up ..... Don't be a lame duck ..... Do join us for a conversation that will have you and your team take off, and land, successfully.

Presenter: Camille Smith, Work In Progress Coaching

Camille combines her business experience in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies with her exceptional skills as a communicator and management consultant to teach people to transform what's possible in business. Her unwavering commitment to bring humanity to the workplace distinguishes her relationships and rewards organizations with outstanding business results and the capacity to create and realize new futures.

Camille received her B.S. and M.A. degrees from The Ohio State University. She is an executive coach for the Global Institute for Leadership Development (Warren Bennis, founder) and the LEAD program (Community Foundation for Monterey County). She has been an adjunct professor teaching business leadership at Santa Clara University and serves as a founding leader of the Global Women's Leadership Network. She lives with her family in Aptos, California.

Keeping an eye on the Competition - Go Beyond Google

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:56:48 +0000

Knowing a competitor's strategies, in advance, can be the difference between success and failure, and yet most product marketing managers, product planners, and marketing research teams are stretched too thin just "doing their job" to spend much time really analyzing the competition.

In this presentation Cascade Insights, a competitive intelligence firm, will walk you through 20 web-based tools, that anyone can use, to quickly get the kind of information on your competitors that you won't find through a simple Google search.

You'll learn fast and free ways to keep an eye on the competition that go way beyond Google. This presentation will walk through 20 free web tools that will let you:

Determine if the competition has been hiring your people
Monitor their site for changes, and spot new products, customer wins, etc.
Monitor for all news related to the competitor
Get information about a private company's revenue, profitability, and employee count
See what conferences they're participating in through speaking or expo space
See if their job postings are exposing their future moves
See how their messaging, positioning, and products have changed over time
Get a sense for the morale and culture at a competitor
See their actual slide presentations on their products and positioning

Marketing To Apes - Pt. 1

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:27:19 +0000

So an ape and a marketer walk into a bar, and the ape says "I'll have the banana." Shocked at the apes decision, the marketer replies, "Why the banana, the packaging is so boring and I haven't seen their creative department do anything innovative in years." The ape responds, "I like the banana because it is the most 'a-peeling'..."

Just like our primal ancestor chooses a banana over a beer, consumers make decisions to purchase products that fulfill their basic needs. The problem is that marketers often get so caught up in designing the most amazing, ground-breaking products and campaigns, we lose sight of designing products that appeal to consumers' emotion, and raw animal instinct.

On November 5th, 9am-10am pst, Gavin Johnston, Chief Anthropologist at Two West, Inc. presents "Marketing to Apes," an entertaining and educational webinar where product and brand managers will learn how to take a step back, and connect with their customers on a deeper, more instinctual level.

With a focus on non-verbal communication and primate cognition, product and brand managers will learn:
- How rational, emotional and, the often overlooked, animalistic instincts are central to product adoption and brand loyalty.
- Why a brand risks losing to the competition if they only appeal to the rational brain.
- How to develop emotional attachment and customer loyalty through blending rational explanations with innate triggers.
- How to design products that facilitate daily life.

Webinar Presenter:

Gavin Johnston is Chief Anthropologist for Two West Inc., a branding and design firm with offices in Kansas City and Los Angeles. He has spearheaded ethnographic practices and multidisciplinary research methods for marketing and branding, working closely with brand development, marketing, advertising, and product innovation teams. With over fifteen years working in the private sector and advanced degrees in cultural anthropology and HCI, he has conducted research for Chrysler, BBDO Detroit, Baker University, Cars.com, Miller Brewing, and Sprint to name a few.