““If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader, sell ice cream.”
-Steve Jobs”
There is no way around it, a Product Owner is a leader. You lead a team of professionals in pursuit of a winning product, you lead the organization to success by creating the best product possible, and you lead your users by standing up for what matters to them. The challenge is you can never make all of them happy. In fact, surprisingly, you should not even try. The goal is to weigh all those positions and make the best decision you can with the information you have. Sometimes this means advocating for your team and going after some long standing technical debt in order to make their lives easier. Sometimes this means appeasing internal stakeholders by executing some internal pet project. Often this means solving for unmet needs of your users. Even in the space of solving for users, there is room for error. It is often appealing to try and solve for the needs of all your users/user types simultaneously. It’s tempting to search for that low hanging fruit that solves a problem all users have. The challenge is that those opportunities tend to be few and far between. Often this means that we need to get focused on a single user type, or persona, or even a segment of users.
Segmentation of users is deep in both art and science and draws on quantitative and qualitative analysis. As a Product Owner, it is unlikely that you are solely responsible for market or customer segmentation. It is much more likely that you will need to partner with internal teams like product marketing, corporate strategy, sales, or advertising teams to understand how your organization thinks about segmentation and how your company is approaching those segments strategically. If, however, you come up dry and your company has not developed assets that you can use or you are working on an internal, enterprise product, you may need to take on this responsibility as a Product Owner.
This may seem like a lot of extra work. After all, you probably feel like you have your hands full just managing the backlog, working with the team, and attending meetings. However, the work you put in to understand how to segment your users can add significant clarity to all your other responsibilities. If you can enumerate those segments, articulate unique needs for each, and describe a strategic approach to solving for each segment, you can lead through the tough challenge of saying no to some things and yes to others. Remember, you are not selling ice cream, you are leading a cross-functional team and your organization through a complex balancing act. You will not make everyone happy.
So what are some general rules to consider when identifying segments? Here are some things to consider:
Create a separate Customer Segment when:
● They have needs that require and justify a distinct offer
● They are reached through different distribution channels
● They require different types of relationships
● They have substantially different profitability
● They are willing to pay for different aspects of the offer
Segments should be:
● Measurable – We can determine its size
● Significant – It is large enough to be economically feasible
● Homogenous – Members within a segment are similar
● Heterogenous – Members between segments are distinct
● Reachable – Contacted through promotion and distribution efforts
● Compatible – Align with our mission, strengths, and ability
Segment attributes might be:
● Business to Business – Vertical industry, operating characteristics, firm size, firm structure, number of employees
● Business to Consumer – Behavioral/lifestyle, personality, geography, demography
If you can identify and communicate your segments you can then begin to construct a plan on how to tackle specific segments in your product planning process. Prioritizing your backlog, negotiating with internal stakeholders, and inspiring your team will get a lot easier if you can articulate who you are solving for and what you are deferring for later. Staking out a position here is leading, and it will not make everyone happy.
And in the end, that will turn out to be a very good thing.