For the past three years Actuation Consulting, along with a wide array of sponsors and industry associations, has conducted a global study of product team performance. The findings from our annual study are published in a free white paper available to all. We then hit the road doing podcasts, webcasts, live presentations and video interviews from August to February. The findings of our study are widely cited and incorporated into books and publications.
Our Sponsors
As we kick-off the fourth year of the study I want to take a second and acknowledge this year’s gold level sponsors without whom our efforts would not be possible.
Project Connections provides resources to help project managers, teams, functional groups and organizational leaders drive results whether it is strongly kick-starting a project, improving cross-functional collaboration, providing training and support, or implementing best practices.
Sensor Six is a leader in helping organizations prioritize product ideas based upon data, enabling roadmap creation and tracking progress in real-time.
The Authors
Part of what makes this study so unique is that it enjoys such wide support. For instance, the five contributing authors each represent a particular functional point of view.
Greg Geracie, President of Actuation Consulting, represents the product management perspective
David Heidt, Principal of Enterprise Agility and former IIBA Chicagoland chapter president, represents the business analyst community
Matt Jackson, President of Jackson Consulting, represents the voice of the project management community
Ron Lichty, Principal of Ron Lichty Consulting and co-author of Managing the Unmanageable, represents the engineering community
Sean Van Tyne, co-author of the Customer Experience Revolution, represents the user experience community
Our Promotional Partners
We also enjoy the support of a wide array of industry associations and organizations who help to distribute the survey link and provide a platform for us to communicate the findings to executives and product team members world-wide. This year’s list includes:
The Boston Product Management Association (BPMA)
The Chicago Product Management Association (ChiPMA)
Orange County Product Managers (OCPM)
The IIBA Chicagoland
The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA Chicago)
The American Society for the Advancement of Project Management (asapm/IPMA USA)
Engineering Leadership Meetup Group in the San Francisco Bay Area
The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)
The Output of Our Research Into Product Teams
Each year we ask a standard set of questions that enables us to closely monitor industry trends including product development methodology adoption rates, how product teams perceive the effectiveness of their performance, and a wide range of other topics. Additionally, we have devised a new set of questions based upon what we have learned from previous studies and what we are witnessing in the marketplace in real-time.
If you are interested in seeing last year’s study – to get a sense of the output of our market research – you can download the 2014 study here.
For those of you who don’t enjoy reading white papers (we know you are out there!) there are four pages of infographics summarizing key data points that are very Twitter friendly. You can access them by clicking on this link.
Want to know how your product team(s) compares to others in our database? We have free online assessments you can take which benchmark your team against others in our database so you can see where you stand. There is one for product team members and another for executives.
This year’s new questions focus on user experience trends and reporting relationships, the impact an improving economy is having on product team turnover, backlog ownership and much more. We would love hear your thoughts on these subjects. You can add your voice to hundreds of others by clicking on this link. The survey takes six minutes to fill out and it’s very user friendly. All responses are anonymous. There is an option to self-identify if you decide you would like to participate in future studies or be the first to receive this year’s white paper.
If you provide us with your contact information you will be entered into our random drawing for a new IPad Mini!
We want to hear from you! Your perspective matters.
Authors Note: If you are interested in sponsoring future studies or learning more about this year’s study you can contact us here.