Accenture CMT Industry X0 Platform Product Management PoV October 2018
Accenture CMT Industry X0 Platform Product Management PoV October 2018
Accenture CMT Industry X0 Platform Product Management PoV October 2018
Dimensions
of Platform
Product
Management
1
Successful tech companies like Amazon,
Google, and Alibaba are unleashing profound
global macroeconomic changes through their
platform-based business models. But this is
not just a tech industry phenomenon. Industry
leaders across all market segments are building
platforms to seize new opportunities for growth
and capital rewards. In fact, 81 percent of
executives say platform-based business
models will be core to their growth strategy
within three years.1
2
The two main objectives of platforms are The core responsibility of the
acceleration and extended value. If an platforms is to not just be future
organization wants to achieve these objectives
thinking but to be velocity oriented.
on its platform, it is critical to recognize the
differences and employ the appropriate Ashley Still, Vice President/General
platform product management capabilities. Manager, Adobe Document Cloud and
Adobe Creative Cloud Enterprise, Adobe
Successful platforms have product managers
who constantly strive to shift the organization’s
DNA from product to “platform first.”
3
2 Protect the core interactions and enable the rest
The platform ecosystem necessitates a key question: What are the platform features that the
personas derive value from on a regular basis? These features form the core platform interaction,
which is the company’s key differentiation and should therefore be protected.
Only when the core is fully developed, and Our main goal is to keep your content
business model finalized, should the middle safe in Dropbox, while making it
tier of the ecosystem—developers and partners
extremely accessible.
—be empowered to develop complementary
experiences on top of the core interaction. The Doug Summe, Platform Technologist,
platform approach is really an embodiment Dropbox
of a desire to scale and scaling can only be
achieved through a clear distinction between
the platform’s core interaction and its enablers.
If a platform product strategy does not
That means that platform product managers incorporate a “Platform First approach”
have to think about what is core and what with core interaction APIs and enablers,
can be shared. Making mistakes in this area it will be very difficult to scale across
can have consequences. Exposing the core multiple customer segments.
creates competitors. Doing it right creates
complementary experiences. Ramadurai Ramalingam, Managing Director,
Platform Engineering, Accenture
4
3 Scale with public APIs while providing premium or
secure access through private APIs
The middle tier of the ecosystem generally consists of developers and these developers are
enabled to create complementary experiences through APIs. This introduces a key dilemma
for the platform product manager. Should the APIs be made public (shared with all 3rd party
developers)? Should they be kept private (shared internally or with select partners)? Or, should
the code be opensource?
Opening up an API externally to the public is a large commitment, and the APIs have to be treated
like a product.
The platform product manager should follow a decision framework to help guide this decision,
similar to the simplified decision tree in Figure 1. It is critical to consider what data should remain
private, what can be exposed to partners and, if appropriate, what data can be exposed to public
developers. As recent newsworthy events have demonstrated, the decision to make an API public
is a significant decision that needs to comply with privacy policies and endure rigorous testing.
Private API
Opensource
5
Most public APIs are initially introduced as private APIs to ensure they are tested thoroughly
before their broader release. They are initially released as “private internal” for internal teams to
use to create connectors with third party apps. This helps test functionality, performance and
security. If the APIs pass the internal scrutiny, they are published as “private APIs” or “beta APIs”
and released to select ecosystem partners. Once the APIs perform with no issues at external
partner sites, the APIs are released as “public APIs.”
Some companies choose to open source internal platforms to showcase the interesting work they are
doing internally which can serve as a recruiting tool.
Presentation Layer
6
Additionally, the key platform success metrics are similar Application product managers
metrics used to monitor microservices. Common platform measure success of their
metrics are: product using engagement and
retention metrics such as DAU/
• Platform availability SLAs measured as 99.95% / MAU. Success of a platform
99.99% / 99.999% should also be deliberate about
• Usage metrics measured as #API calls/day the metrics they choose to
define success. Eg: API calls/day,
• Performance metrics measured through Read/Write/
#Events ingested per day etc.
Query latencies in mico/milli seconds
Priya Lakshminarayanan
• Scale metrics measured as #Events ingested per day,
Sr. Dir, Head of Product, PayPal
#of queries per second, #of notifications sent per day etc. Platform Services
A platform product manager should be deliberate about the metrics they choose to define the
success of their platform and understand the impact that the microservices architcture can have
on their success metrics.
The platform product manager needs to understand the long-term strategic vision well enough
to decide on short- and long-term trade-offs. Focusing only on the short-term quick wins may
not encompass requirements specifically for performance at scale and extension of the APIs
for different market segments, which could be disastrous for partners and for platform
growth. There is always a need to appropriately balance quick wins versus long-term platform
investments. Many times, unpopular decisions that hurt the short-term wins are made to make
the platform better over time.
Consider Adobe, where the average platform strategy spans A platform product manager
at least 10 years. Adobe’s transition from packaged software is different. There is no instant
to subscription-based cloud services began in 2013. gratification for the platform
Eighteen months ago, Adobe began investment in building product manager. They need
support for artificial intelligence (AI) and the company is to be patient. Long-term
currently thinking long-term about the next generation requirements are a tough sell and
platform that includes AI, voice, augmented and virtual
can be influenced by discussing
potential total addressable market
reality technologies. This approach does not come easily.
(TAM) expansion and growth in
As Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis commented, “When we first
product lines.
started thinking about the next generation platform, we had
to think about what do we want to build for. It’s a massive lift Doug Summe, Platform Technologist,
and we have to architect to last a decade.”8 Dropbox
7
6 Emphasize future-proofing
during platform updates
Traditional packaged software has a very clear upgrade
Platform product managers
need to be able to drive long
term sustainability, scalability
path and is managed by the engineering or support
& performance for “future
teams. The new releases only impact the end-user in
“proofing the platform.
terms of usage. However, a platform product manager
has to be involved in the upgrade strategy in order to Heather Conklin, VP Product
drive long-term performance of the platform. Management – AppExchange, Salesforce
7 Optimize by exploring
the distinct platform
monetization models
Companies like Adobe & Netflix
currently do not directly monetize
the platforms. Platforms support
experiences – features are
In packaged software products the monetization flow developed to enable experiences.
is generally one-way. End users pay for the product So, monetization is still through
directly or through advertisements. This is not the the application.
case with platforms where the monetization flow is
complex across the ecosystem of developers, partners Ashley Still, Vice President/General
and end-users. Manager, Adobe Document Cloud
and Adobe Creative Cloud Enterprise,
Adobe
8
Companies like Adobe & Netflix
do not directly monetize their
platforms. They use the platforms
to enhance experiences on
their applications that improves
customer loyalty and enables
new customer acquisitions.
Sometimes partners or developers can also be paid to use the platform to amplify the network
effect – growing the developer ecosystem to grow the platform. For instance, Slack has set up an
$80 million fund to seed development of the Slack platform.10 There are also instances where the
success of the platform is based on growing user adoption of the core product. (See Figure 2.)
Platform product managers and their organizations must give careful consideration to adopting
the right monetization model to achieve the best return on investment.
Premium API access Twitter offers APIs for premium access for elevated access.16
9
8 Inspire the shift to a “platform
first” culture
Companies undergoing a transformation to a platform
Having good working
relationships with developers
& a deep understanding of
the breadth of business and
have to be very purposeful in the architectural
decisions that are made and the order in which the what the customers do is
platform is built. Every single decision needs to very important for platform
encompass a mindset of building for flexibility – this is product managers.
the core of the platform DNA or platform culture.
Ashley Still, Vice President/General
Traditionally product managers provide supervisory Manager, Adobe Document Cloud and
leadership with tight control over features delivered Adobe Creative Cloud Enterprise, Adobe
by each scrum team. This approach is sustainable with
a monolithic architecture and internal developers.
However, a platform product is comprised of multiple
microservices with each microservice engineering
team operating independently. The approach of
In platform engineering,
decoupling releases introduced by the platform
microservices architecture is only successful with we allow time for spiking
highly aligned and empowered autonomous teams. - researching and
A platform product manager needs to work with investigating architecture
internal developers as well as external developers in options before beginning
the platform ecosystem. While in application product development sprints.
management the product manager controls backlog,
product approval and releases, in platforms, there Heather Conklin, VP Product
are multiple dependencies and decisions controlled Management – AppExchange,
by autonomous teams. Platform product managers Salesforce
must collaborate, justify objectives through a strong
business case and lead through influence. He or
she is a key influencer in setting the order and
speed of releases so that the platform foundation
remains strong.
10
In addition, general product management principles of continuous improvement and agile
development apply (Figure 3).
11
Citations:
1. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-digital-platform-economy
2. https://www.dropbox.com/business/app-integrations
3. https://www.dropbox.com/business
4. https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2018/06/media-entertainment-partnerships/
5. https://developer.xero.com/documentation/getting-started/api-application-types
6. https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/api-reference-index
7. https://uber.github.io/
8. https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/12/adobe-cto-leads-companys-broad-ai-bet/
9. https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_console.meta/api_console/sforce_api_console_lightning_classic_
bridge_methods.htm
10. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/16/slack-launches-80-million-fund-to-boost-third-party-development.html
11. https://partners.salesforce.com/s/AppExchangePartnerProgramGuideMarch12018.pdf
12. https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-strategic-value-of-apis
13. https://www.docusign.com/products-and-pricing/api-plans-b,
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/docusign-reveals-annual-revenue-518m-36-updated-ipo-filing/,
https://www.docusign.com/press-releases/docusign-launches-new-developer-center-as-api-usage-doubles
14. https://www.twilio.com/pricing
15. https://www.twilio.com/pricinghttps://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/twlo/financials,
https://investors.twilio.com/all-news/press-release-details/2018/Twilio-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2017-
Results/default.aspx
16. https://developer.twitter.com/en/premium-apis.html
17. https://partners.salesforce.com/s/AppExchangePartnerProgramGuideMarch12018.pdf
18. https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/api-reference-index,
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/ads/audiences/overview/audience-insights.html
19. https://www.recode.net/2017/11/14/16647106/twitter-data-licensing-sales-revenue-gnip
12
Author
Kirthi Vani
Senior Manager
Product Strategy & Management
[email protected]
Key Contributors
Ramadurai Ramalingam
Managing Director
Product Engineering
[email protected]
Steve Roberts
Managing Director
Communications, Media & Technology
[email protected]
Robert Hiss
Managing Director
Products and Platforms
[email protected]
Pankaj Chawla
Managing Director
Products and Platforms
[email protected]
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