Product management

IBM Rational® product management solutions improve the predictability of product success with better decision-making by keeping focus on delivery of customer value.

The solutions help you automate many of the tactical activities that consume so much of a product manager's time, so you can select the right products and features and deliver them to the right market segment at the right time.

Rational product management solutions provide visualization of trade-offs using multiple criteria, including the voice of the customer to balance cost, risk, and reward. By making informed decisions based on customer and business value, the predictability of product success is greatly improved.

Successful product management includes:

• Market planning to capture market needs and the value of the market so that products stay focused on what the market needs, not just responding to the loudest voice in the room
• Competitive analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of competing products to exploit your strengths and to take advantage of their weaknesses
• Win/loss analysis to understand why you are winning and losing so you can make decisions based on fact rather than emotion
• Requirements management to capture enhancement request, product ideas, market needs, and technical needs for product development
• Change management to manage the change of product requirements so you can understand the sequence of decisions and clearly communicate the current status
• Prioritization to communicate the requirements for product development clearly, so scope changes do not eliminate the most critical features
• Release planning to focus product releases on key capabilities within the constraints of resource availability and time to complete product requirements
• Roadmap planning to give a long-term view to the direction of the product and to ensure that it is headed in the right direction
• Performance monitoring to understand how products are performing once they are released and when to improve or retire a product