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December 19, 2006

Product Planning: Traveling The World, So You Don't Have To

It's been a bit since I've posted about my job (my last entry was September 21st), and, as Elaine and I have been on the holiday party circuit these last few weeks, I've been seeing a lot of old friends. Many of them have asked me:

"Man! What's the deal with all the travel? What are you doing in all these crazy places?"

I can't talk about any specific projects, of course, but mostly I travel to meet with customers.

Planners in Office generally spend between 20% and 80% of their time in the field. This is driven, in a very literal sense, by the need to hear the "voice of the customer" when you're trying to figure out what to do with the product. You can read all the analyst reports you like, sift through articles in journals and magazines, chat with the sales force, get the opinion of the smart gal down the hall, whatever - but when that product finally ships we're going to ask some bloke/blokette to pull money from their wallet in exchange for a small, flimsy disc with bits encoded on it. If we haven't addressed what that person wants in the product, well, the money will stay in the wallet. Which is, as you know, a Bad Thing.

So we go ask 'em. Directly. And my job is to do a lot of the asking.

(A quick side note on the 'romance' of air travel. When I first got my gig in Planning, I was really excited about all the travel opportunities the job would afford me - 'see the world on Bill's nickel' and all that. My friend Joanne, who did a tour of duty in Intel's Marketing department, rolled her eyes at my naive enthusiasm and informed me, bluntly, that I would be "sick to death" of the travel thing in no time flat. While I'm not as sick of it - yet - as she clearly is, I have been to Europe four times in eight months, and, I'll admit, Jo has a point. By the end of October, the very thought of sitting on another airplane was making me want to blow my brains out. Props, Jo - you called it.)

So, you might be asking, how do we go about finding the customers we want to talk to? I mean, we don't just get on the airplane, fly to Dallas (say), and start pestering people for feedback. (Right?)

At a high level, the process works like this:

• First, we start with an 'area of interest'. An area is usually a set of customers that have a need we suspect is being under-served (or inadequately served) by our product today. 'Areas of interest' come from everywhere - previous research, customer requests, internally-generated ideas, you name it.
• We then investigate a few of the most promising areas to learn a lot more about 'em. Mostly this consists of secondary research (the journals, articles, analysts, etc.), where we try to understand who the customers are, who the competitors are, the economic opportunity, strategic value, and so on. At the end of this process, Planning has produced a report and a set of PowerPoint slides to explain to the product team and executives what we think, what we recommend, and why. (Basically, this boils down to figuring out the best way to spend our resources.)
• Once we decide to move forward with a given area, we begin talking to customers to round out our research and start generating new insights. This kind of customer research usually starts with phone interviews, but if we find customers who are doing things we think are interesting (or that are representative of what we're hearing from others), we'll try to get out and visit. One thing I love about this kind of research is that, as Planners, we're not usually talking to them about our product, per se, but rather about the problem they're experiencing. We learn more about their jobs, their challenges, and what annoys them. It's like the old adage, "People don't buy a drill - they buy a hole in their wall." We try to make sure we're selling holes. If the drill is the best way to do it, fine, and if not, we'll find a better way of doing it. (Talking about the drill too early is a deadly mistake, because it locks you in to limited thinking.)
• Once we put together a slate of customers who are willing to talk to us, we then schedule the trips around the customers' schedules. The meetings themselves are always interesting - people do the craziest/coolest things with our software, and when you go on-site, you get to see it in action. Customer visits give you the flavor that a phone interview cannot, helping you to understand how technically sophisticated the customer is (many are not using the latest stuff), cultural differences (Germany vs. Japan vs. the States), how their organization is put together (matrix/hierarchy, open/locked down), how they like to work. Planners will snap lots of pictures on these visits, collect documents (we call them 'artifacts') and, of course, ask lots and lots of questions.

Oh, and yes, it's all covered under double-super-secret NDA, so we can't spill what we learn or see. And neither can they.

I have to say, the customer-contact part of my job is among the most rewarding things I get to do. Customers are often very excited that we're listening to what they have to say, and frequently they are quite glad to have us sit down across from them and take (copious) notes on what we can do better. For me, the reputation of the "Microsoft arrogance" was one of the things that died almost immediately after I arrived on the job. Everyone I work with internally - the product team, the marketing team, developers, testers, you name it - cares very, very much what people have to say about the product. It's a human thing, right? People want to work on something good, and excellent. The team wants to build something people love.

So we ask what we can do better.

Actually, in that vein - I dig visiting with customers who don't like us very much. (I've had a few of these so far this cycle). I get to listen, find out what sucks about our stuff, and then take that information back to the people who can actually do something about it. Microsoft can feel like an indifferent monolith, and I've encountered folks who feel very personally angry at us ... largely because nobody listens to them. So we show up, we listen (hard), and - boom! - people are suddenly very willing to help us. It's cool.

So that's what I've been up to. Research, research, research. If I've done my job correctly, the product team has been supplied with lots of good, representative data that they can use to build the next product version. I've seen some prototype designs of these past few weeks, and they're amazing - I get all tingly. These won't ever see the light of day, as currently designed - they're "concept cars" for software, and we still have to see how expensive they are to implement - but it's quite something to see six months of your life distilled into some realistic-looking Photoshop mockups that, truthfully, get it. As Keanu would say ... "Whoa."

So, yeah. Lots of travel. Lots of phone calls. Lots of report-writing. And it's all so, you know, the product has a chance of kicking some ass when it comes out the door.

More travel in the new year. Let's see if my spirits stay high, huh?

Posted by Gavin Shearer at December 19, 2006 10:27 PM. Posted to MSFT.

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