Product portfolio management takes new ideas from inception to development.  The strategy provides an overview of all the company products, segmenting them by contribution to the portfolio.  (For those interested, the concept comes from diversified portfolio management.) By continually understanding the portfolio landscape, agile adjustments can be made about how to allocate resources, or which lines to discontinue rapidly.  Product portfolio management determines the strategy leading to profitability and market share by staying apprised of product demand, new features that could be added to improve the product, what products are under-performing etc. It analyzes the performance of the products (up, down vs. current market).  It incorporates customer feedback into the development process as early and often as possible.  The product portfolio management team also resolves conflicts between management opinion and the roadmap.

The product portfolio strategy is also responsible for maintaining the financials (e.g.,) expected profitability of the product) that allows the company to have the debate between supporting growth through innovation while at the same time supporting existing product lines.  Each type of product – existing, new products, products for incremental growth, and products for disruptive growth typically have a unique role – and budget – within the portfolio.   Typically, PV, probability of future success, development cost, and expected future value are all considered for an existing product.  For a design and build product, the emphasis is on identifying opportunities and risks for new products, prioritizing higher value products, and optimizing resources across products.  Incremental growth and disruptive growth products also need to manage and in some places, innovate in smaller outputs to manage the pipeline.  Agile practices are necessary for disruptive growth.

Historically, manufacturers relied on a linear stage-gate process, with specific design and financial hurdles for a product to get to the next stage in the funnel.   Agile represents almost the opposite of the stage gate process.  Agile focuses on the micro, flexibility,  a small technical team, individuals and interactions, operational prototypes, and customer feedback.  While it might seem the obvious answer, give the pace of innovation today, is to convert to the agile method. However, several consumer goods companies are trying to incorporate both.  They have reduced the number of gates (usually from 6 to 4) and have between 2 and 4 sprints running during each gate.  This has greatly reduced the isolation of the agile teams from the organization and one can argue still requires too much documentation, but it does provide the entire management team with visibility.

Product and engineering work hand in hand. The product engineer is responsible for the development of the product from concept to tooling (acquiring or potentially manufacturing components, machines, and equipment for production. , as well as runs the team. The product manager owns the product roadmap, features and alignment with the rest of the organization and testing with customers. Further expansion necessary

Business models used to be overlooked because individuals were used to looking for new shiny object vs. way of doing things. A combination of the iPhone, Uber, Airbnb, the Printing Press, the lightbulb, and the computer have all been business model innovations. Of course, given the era of digital disruption we are currently in, these innovations seem to be coming faster. Another example would be the rise of the subscription business – think Microsoft Office 365, which converted from a one-off purchase to a subscription model, enhancing the lifetime value of the customer. Further expansion necessary

Test and Learn has become a widely generalized term with many specific and unique definitions.  Overall it refers to “testing” a product, decision (e.g., pricing change), new business model, or new operations practices against stores in an A/B “type” test.  The types of test and learn range from just that – an A/B test – to see if one performs better than the other to use the Software “Test & Learn.” (by Mastercard).   The software is unique for a few reasons.  First, to get a better test to control match, it does a 1:10 test: store ratio.  Further, you can on 100’s of dimensions, including attribute matching (e.g., geographic distance) and financial pattern matching (e.g., transactions, net sales, etc.).  It can then run any time specified.  Generally, a pre-period of a year, any blackout periods where other events were taking place, and a post-period for about 6 weeks.  It then uses machine earning to conduct uplift modeling to model the incremental lift and drivers.  That model is applied to all the entities you want to roll out to determine the impact per store (or customer).  This enables you to refine your roll-out model and only include profitable stores.  Re-write necessary