What does a Chief Product Officer do?

Companies rise and fall on the success of how well their products fit the market. The Chief Product Officer is responsible for meeting the product-market fit objective.  The CPO’s is responsible for asking and answering critical questions in three areas.

Product Strategy

Is the core hypothesis of your value proposition correct? Often, the core value proposition of the product itself is incorrect. Or value is miscalculated or misunderstood. People love your idea or love your demo but are not moved to actually spend money. Is your product a nice-to-have vs. a must-have? Also, if you have multiple products, is your portfolio rationalized correctly? Are there changing market conditions that require you to act quickly?

Product Management

Are you prioritizing the features that are needed to deliver on your strategic value proposition? Do you have a full product? It is missing areas that move people from looking to buying?

A common mistake in this area is gold plating. Trying to build too many features or over designing them for possible future situations. Another major problem is thinking you have a complete product when you don’t. You have the core idea but don’t have features that your prospects need to fully implement.

Product Implementation

Is product built correctly? Does it perform and scale? Is it easy to use or is it ‘clunky’. Is it buggy or brittle? Is the product not being delivered quickly enough? Does implementation take too much from your budget so you can’t focus on other things? These are all common implementation issues.

Fractional CPO Services

A fractional CPO brings both strategic and tactical experience to any engagement and has extensive experience growing companies and teams and bringing many types of products to market. TechCXO CPOs have deep knowledge of various business functions – development, marketing, sales, and partnerships as well as the communication skills to communicate with any stakeholders – your employees, your management team, your sales team, customers & prospects, as well as your investors & board. In addition, a TechCXO fractional CPO draws on both their experience as well as over 100 other seasoned C-level executives within our organization.

Depending on your organization, you may not need a full-time CPO but need the level of experience and insight that one can bring. Or you may have a special project or need that requires specific knowledge and experience to help navigate a problem. Also, you may want to support your existing team with flexible seasoned leadership and mentorship to help them deliver their best during, and after, the engagement.

Product Review & Assessment

A product assessment identifies areas of need and provides action points for remediation.

The assessment determines the current state of your product, organization, and execution. Depending on the types of issues that you are having, we may collect the following information to help determine a true picture of your product issues:

• Product Market Fit Analysis
  • Competition & Market Analysis
  • Win/Loss Deal Analysis
  • Customer Close Rates – Leads -> Pipeline Stages
  • Sales Organization Interviews
  • Support Ticket Review
• Product Management Process
  • Product Portfolio Review
  • M&A History
  • Software Development Lifecycle Review
  • Review of product organization & turnover
  • Roadmap & Timeline History Review
  • Estimation Accuracy Review
  • Backlog & Release Analysis
  • Feature Request Review
  • Competitive Product Review
• Product Development & Execution
  • Functionality Review
  • Review development organization & turnoverArchitecture Review: Security, Scalability, Reliability, Tech Debt
  • Issue & QA Review
  • Usability Review
• Customer Experience/Voice of the Customer
  • Customer Interviews
  • Independent Customer Satisfaction Survey
  • Support Ticket Review
  • Onboarding/Training Review