In B2B/B2G, creating a “technology product” (which may be a physical product, a service, a piece of software, a system or a solution) and then managing it by improving it throughout its lifetime draws on a wide range of skills, from the initial idea through to market withdrawal: R&D, product engineering, technical specialisms and roadmaps, procurement, management control, finance, services, CSR, product marketing, and so on.
These skills are generally coordinated by a “product manager” around whom a flexible “product team” revolves, bringing in the necessary expertise according to the various stages of the product lifecycle.
Of course, each specialist within the product team must be properly trained in their own particular area of expertise. However, there is another training challenge that is critical to the product’s success or failure: enabling these different specialists to work effectively together and aligning them around the shared objective of “making the product succeed in its market.”
This alignment does not come naturally, as each specialist, in perfectly good faith, holds a truth — yet only a partial truth — about what it takes to make a product succeed.
The most common example, amongst others, is that the technical specialist often believes success depends on the product’s innovative character and technical performance, whereas the marketing specialist considers it to rest on customer acceptability in terms of value, pricing, and time to market.
Aligning Expertise Around a Common Objective
So how does one design a training programme that not only aligns sometimes very different perspectives, but also harnesses the new possibilities offered by AI?
Drawing on what I have had the good fortune to practise over a number of years with technology companies, here are the key principles around which a training programme designed with this objective in mind should be organised, whether or not it is enhanced with AI:
- The programme must be aimed not only at product managers, even though their perspective remains central, but at all members of the product team.
- It must present the fundamental principles of strategy and marketing as they apply in a technical environment, so as to align teams around a shared vision of what makes a technical “product” succeed or fail.
- It must explain the organisation and governance of product policy within the company, illustrated by contributions from the various managers involved, including those from purely technical backgrounds. Each participant must gain a clear understanding of the objectives and constraints of the different members of the product team, as well as those of management. Contrary to what one might expect, the details of this product organisation and governance can sometimes be poorly understood, even within a large group.
- It must set out the internal product policy processes: for instance, decision-making rules, the expected content of a plan or business plan for a product, or the definition, required inputs, and expected outputs of each internal stage gate authorising progression to the next step and its funding.
- In order to put the programme’s content into concrete practice, it is advisable for the programme to include the development and presentation by each participant, to the rest of the group, of a personal action plan. This action plan will set out an analysis of the situation of a particular product and the participant’s personal contribution to the collective success of that product, in the form of a list of actions to be carried out over a period of several months.
Pedagogical methods and benefits for participants
Such a programme can be designed as a series of thematic modules of two to three hours each, delivered either in person or remotely, with an opening session and a closing session held in person, the whole being followed by an assessment.
If necessary, it can be adapted to address specific sub-groups, such as those responsible for launching a new product or those responsible for managing an existing one.
Participants may be assessed by an internal panel comprising both the training management and line management, convened some time after the programme has concluded. This assessment will be based on participation and engagement during the sessions, a quiz covering the knowledge acquired, and the quality of the personal action plan presented.
Drawing on extensive feedback gathered over a number of years, a programme of this kind is consistently found to be valuable by participants as well as by new joiners. It enables them to:
- Acquire foundational knowledge that they may not have received during their studies.
- Better understand their company, the workings of the product team, and what is expected of them.
- Benefit from the experience of more seasoned colleagues and managers.
- Contribute more effectively to the collective effort to make products succeed.
As regards the new possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence, these can be deployed in two distinct directions:
- Naturally, improving interactivity and personalisation during online or in-person sessions: there is currently an abundance of articles on this subject.
- But also, and this strikes me as a promising avenue that we are currently exploring, supporting training sessions and the facilitator’s responses with an AI-powered system capable of providing direct answers to specific practical questions. The system uses an AI fed by a proprietary internal knowledge base and is trained to deliver relevant responses drawing from heterogeneous sources (Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, videos, and so on).
- It is worth noting that such a direct question-and-answer system can also prove extremely valuable in facilitating access to the various resources made available to the product team on the company’s intranet or intranets. These resources do indeed tend, over time, to become fragmented, sometimes overlooked, or accessible only through a “labyrinthine” process that is invariably time-consuming.
