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Software product management : finding the right balance for YourProduct Inc.
Wagenblatt T., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2019. 475 pp. Type: Book (978-3-030198-70-1)
Date Reviewed: Sep 11 2020

According to author Timo Wagenblatt, software product production and marketing can be managed in a data-driven and quantitatively characterized manner. This book is based on his long career in software product management, which includes his early years at a small start-up and emphasizes his long service at a large multinational company. The management tool he developed is called product yield potential radar (PYPR).

PYPR is visualized using radar plots--circular diagrams resembling the pictures that can be seen in radar stations. The circle is divided into six sections according to the six fundamental areas that affect the making of a successful software product: (1) product viability, (2) product development, (3) go-to-market/product marketing, (4) software demonstrations and training, (5) the market/your customers, and (6) organizational maturity. Each of these larger categories is further broken down into subcategories of greater specificity.

The book is divided into three parts: fundamentals of software product management, detailed description of the components of PYPR, and a set of case studies. Each of the first two sections is further split into several chapters. The section on case studies consists of only one chapter. The introduction is a worthwhile read, where the author introduces himself and PYPR.

Part 1 (three chapters) presents the mindset of a successful software product manager and an overview of PYPR. A successful manager is focused on the success of the product. A successful manager embraces a service orientation toward the product, the project, and the people doing the work. The long second chapter describes PYPR in detail, introducing the six major dimensions and the breakdown of each into subcomponents. The method is a graphical tool and each of the six dimensions (and subdimensions) is awarded an integer score, from zero to ten, to give a visual representation of the state of the project. The third chapter summarizes the material covered in the first two chapters.

The second part consists of six chapters that correspond to the six principal dimensions of PYPR. The emphasis of each chapter is on how to evaluate and score each of the subdimensions using additional quantitative tools to capture the assessments. The goal is to produce realistic appraisals of progress in producing a product that meets customer needs.

The short third part, on case studies, starts with showing the default PYPR configurations. These include weights of each dimension. Not every dimension has the same weight, and the weights can vary depending on the potential market for the product (for example, business-to-business, individual consumers, internal service to an organization). The remaining sections have several cases, differentiated by the market the product is intended to serve.

The application of PYPR has a temporal element. There are four steps in applying it, and there is a prescribed structured set of meetings with different tasks that recur over a quarterly cycle. The author takes pains to discuss issues that transcend the specifics of the methodology. Understanding environmental contexts, what a manager should and should not do, and the importance of communication (among other soft skills) animate the application of PYPR.

Although the presentation is somewhat conversational in tone and seems to digress, the seeming digressions are useful in establishing the humanistic foundations that should be internalized in order to apply PYPR in a nuanced, careful, nonmechanical manner. The principal drawback of the book is the size of the figures; they appear as if they are severely shrunken versions of PowerPoint slides, and their size reduces much of the text in the figures to unreadability. That being said, the surrounding discussion fills in any gaps. This book could be useful to anyone managing a software product.

Reviewer:  Anthony J. Duben Review #: CR147059 (2012-0290)
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