In the previous post, we focused on how product managers share customer knowledge with engineers. We discussed how user personas are an effective way of telling the customer’s story. We also looked at how some teams share artifacts (videos, audio, written reports) from usability tests to help communicate customer pain points. But I left out a critical mechanism for how product managers share customer knowledge with engineers – the user story. Historically (let’s say before the internet), product teams wrote Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), long documents that outline…
Product Management
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Most Topular Stories
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User Stories Are Better Than PRDs
Product Talk24 Apr 2012 | 10:00 am -
Beware the dogma of agile and lean
MindTheProduct2 May 2012 | 4:10 amThe public discourse around startups, product management and UX has become a touch dogmatic for my taste lately. If you’re not following the Lean Startup(TM) to the letter, holding daily scrums, doing continuous integration, embracing failure or (pick your own buzzword) you’re apparently doing something wrong.But I think this sort of dogmatic thinking is what is wrong, and loses sight of the principles that led to the development of those techniques and tools in the first place. On Agile While I agree with the values set forth in the agile manifesto wholeheartedly, I fear the… -
6 Goals for Product Design Teams
The Experience is the Product30 Apr 2012 | 6:35 pmDemand objectives from the people you’re working with. Your job as a designer is to solve problems, not to make things look pretty. To do your job, you need to understand the who, why, when, what, where, and how. People will try to hand you a spec or a list of requirements and say, “I’ve already thought about this a lot, just design it.” Don’t accept that. Insist, politely but firmly, that they tell you what the main goals of this project are. For any project, one can say, “if it doesn’t achieve X and Y, then we’ve failed”. Are… -
What Product Marketing Managers Really Do
Launch Clinic21 Feb 2012 | 2:52 pmWhat salespeople think I do when they get what they want I am a tireless team player providing everything they need to be successful. What salespeople think I do when they don’t get what they want I am the devil who finds every opportunity to impede the progress of a sale. What product managers think I do Everything they don’t want do and it changes on a whim. What my boss thinks I do He’s not really sure, but tells me I’m doing a great job. What my family and friends think I do Travel in first class to exotic locations, waited on hand and foot. What I think I do I am a god-like,… -
A Product Perspective on Win/Loss
Blog feed7 May 2012 | 3:45 pmI am co-presenting a webinar next Thursday called ‘The Guide to Win/Loss Analysis for More Successful Products’ along with Steve Johnson of Primary Intelligence. In preparation for the presentation, I have given a lot of thought to the benefits of win/loss and why all of you product people out there should care.
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Rocket Watcher: Product Marketing for Startups
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Should Only Startups with Products Get Funded?
10 May 2012 | 7:00 amThe “trend” of startups without a well-defined product idea getting funding was discussed in a recent Forbes blog post. Here’s an excerpt: Having some kind of notion what line of business your fledgling company might want to pursue used to be a prerequisite to raising capital. Now, it’s a mark of hubris. You don’t tell the market what it needs; you gently offer it a series of options, which are less viable concepts than ritual sacrifices aimed at cultivating the favor of the start-up gods. It’s called “iterating.” The gist of the post is essentially this: if there’s… -
Weekend Startup Marketing Reading April 20
20 Apr 2012 | 7:00 amI’ve been on vacation this week and spending more time on the beach than on the internet. That said I did come across a couple of neat posts this week. Enjoy! William Mougayar of engagio had a great post over on StartupNorth this week about his lessons learned over the past 3 years. I agree with a lot of what he has to say here about relationships, the danger of believing your own story if nobody else does and how helping people is important. I don’t agree with him that selling to enterprises is a dead end – but I do agree that it’s very, very different from selling to… -
6 Skills That Will get you a Startup Marketing Job
18 Apr 2012 | 7:00 amI get about 4 calls a week from people looking to hire a startup marketer. The skills startups are looking for in a marketing hire are remarkably consistent. These are the skills I hear about the most and how you might easily get them. Here’s what startups are looking for in a marketing hire: Content creation – Folks that can create engaging, relevant content are in short supply. Most are looking for writing skills but being able to create video, build infographics and create presentations are desirable skills too. Bonus points if you are a decent public speaker and can represent… -
Weekend Startup Marketing Reading
13 Apr 2012 | 8:39 amHere’s this week’s batch of interesting stuff for startup marketers. The folks from the startup Pipedrive, a pipeline management tool wrote a great post looking back at how they grew to 1,000 paying customers. The post includes a great discussion about how they learned to say “no” to customers that wanted one-off features, how they ramped up their growth by spending more time with key influencers and removed as much friction as they could in the their sign-up process. This is a great lessons learned post. An older article on Demand Gen Report, “Why Demand… -
Startup Marketing: Does the Competition Matter?
12 Apr 2012 | 8:52 amI have heard people make the argument that startups shouldn’t think about their competitors. I agree that many spend too much time worrying about how their feature set stacks up against another offering’s feature set. On the other hand, prospects are evaluating your solution against alternatives (which may not be products) and communicating how you are better than those alternatives is a key part of great startup marketing. Simply put – you should care about competitive alternatives if your prospects do. Startups are not Big Companies I very rarely see useful competitive analysis…
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ProductMarketing.com
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Product Launch Planning: Sales Channel and Sales Cycle Complexity
15 May 2012 | 7:55 pmAs it relates to your sales channel and channel partner readiness, there are two things to consider when developing your own product launch time line. First is the size of your sales channel. The second is the complexity of the sales cycle. By focusing on the sales channel and channel partners you address what is typically the most time consuming and riskiest part of a successful product launch. Size and of Your Sales Channel and Channel Partners Get your sales channel and channel partners ready for product launch is often the most critical and time consuming part of product launch. You can… -
Turn Fans into Advocates
10 May 2012 | 11:33 amTurn fans into advocates through influencer engagement View more presentations from Ant’s Eye View -
ProductCamp DC: Manage Your Career Roadmap!
5 May 2012 | 11:29 amThanks to all for the wonderful discussion! Define Your Career Roadmap View more presentations from Jon Gatrell -
Google + vs. Facebook: A Social Survey
27 Apr 2012 | 7:27 amGoogle+ versus Facebook, A Social Networks Survey View more presentations from SurveyMonkey -
Content Marketing: 100 Use Cases for Marketers to Deploy Content
13 Apr 2012 | 10:21 amContent continues to be a critical item for marketers to influence behaviors, beliefs and drive engagement. This presentation demonstrates creative and effective use of content by companies big and small across all kinds of sectors. Content marketing campaigns are only online, the most effective are integrated across multiple online, IRL and print channels. See how folks are using different mediums to drive results across the following tactics: Blogs Webcasts Podcasts Magazines Websites Microsites Online Communities Social Media Events Customer Newsletters Videos Mobile Apps 100 Content…
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Technology Marketing
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How Well Do You Manage Your Brand? As Good As Adobe, IBM, Infosys, or TCS?
14 May 2012 | 2:06 amBefore you read this latest blog by Peter O'Neill, please join our survey on content management maturity. Brand marketing was a focus of our Marketing Leadership Forum in Los Angeles, where Chris Stutzman talked about brand building in the 21st century (see video). His examples were primarily B2C, but he also cited IBM and Adobe: two tech vendors that have rightly earned respect for their brand marketing. But to be honest, for the rest of us, brand marketing is less about raising the bar and more about getting out of our limbo position (think about that).Read more -
Your Business Tech Buyers Are More Social Than Ever
23 Apr 2012 | 11:08 amI am writing this blog from a country club in beautiful (albeit rainy) Virginia. It seems like yesterday when I was in warm LA for the Forrester Marketing Leadership Forum. What a difference a week makes! Our sales enablement and tech marketing teams have a 3-day offsite here to dive very deep into our clients' problems and how Forrester can help solve them. In order to tackle these problems, we must start with the critical step of understanding everything we can about our customers. For example, Forrester has surveyed business technology buyers over the past 4 years to gather data on… -
My Next “Letter From Germany” – Happy Birthday SAP & Time To Automate Marketing
17 Apr 2012 | 9:23 amThose of you who know me (Peter O'Neill) know that I've lived in Germany for 30 years. So, I am posting a regular blog - probably bimonthly - where I highlight something important for you that has or is about to happen in Germany. We'll start with a history lesson. In 1972, the last Apollo moon mission was launched, Germany won the European Championship (soccer), and five consultants and developers left IBM Germany to start their own company called Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung GbR. They wrote financial accounting software for the local Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) factory,… -
Tech Marketers Have A Reason To Love LA...The Forrester 2012 Marketing Leadership Forum!
9 Apr 2012 | 2:30 amI am embarrassed to admit that I have lived in the California Bay Area for 18 years and have yet to venture outside of the Los Angeles airport. Some have told me that I "am not missing much," yet others are surprised...as if one is never truly a "Californian" unless you have been to LA for a visit. Well...this year will be my first official visit "in" LA...and excited that the reason for breaking my 18-year streak is Forrester's 2012 Marketing Leadership Forum! My Tech Marketing (i.e., "Travis Martin") colleagues and I have a very energetic,… -
Some Busy Weeks Researching Content Management
3 Apr 2012 | 8:43 amPeter O'Neill here. As well as working the end of our fiscal quarter (yes, we analysts must also meet targets), I've been busy in the past few weeks getting ready for our upcoming Marketing Forum, where I am co-presenting a session on the rising importance of the customer retention and expansion phase with my colleague Tim Harmon. A Forrester Forum always presents me with a dilemma: I'd like to have as many client one-on-one sessions as possible -- it's always great to meet people that I often only know from the telephone -- but then again, I'd also like to enjoy and learn from the other…
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The Accidental Product Manager
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How Product Managers Manage A Product That Nobody Needs
14 May 2012 | 4:00 amImage Credit Nobody needs a DAC, but everybody should have one… What’s the first thing that every product manager learns? Simple, that you have to figure out what problem your product solves for your customer if you want the product to be a success – this is almost part of the product development definition. That’s all fine and dandy; however, what’s a product manager to do if it turns out that customers don’t really need the product that he’s managing? Why You Don’t Need A DAC Do you own an iPod or some other brand of digital music player? -
What Product Managers Need To Know About Going Mobile
7 May 2012 | 4:00 amImage Credit Just how does a product manager create a mobile app? If you have been out to a mall, driving in traffic, or attended a sporting event lately then you’ve seen that just about everyone had their faces planted into a mobile device of some sort. From a product manager point-of-view, this sure seems to be telling us that we need to find a way to get information about our product onto everyone’s mobile phones. But how? Why Product Managers Have To Go Mobile Clearly, trying to add a mobile marketing channel to your product communication program is going to cause more time,… -
Product Managers Learn To Optimize Prices In Order To Boost Margins
30 Apr 2012 | 4:00 amImage Credit Forget market share, it's really all about profit margin… So what does a product manager need to do in order to make his / her product more profitable? As I suspect every product manager learned during the last global recession, cutting costs associated with your product is one important step. That’s a nice skill to have on your product manager resume, but it’s not enough. Once that’s done, what comes next? How about raising your product’s price? Great idea, but how does a product manager go about doing that? Why Raising Your Product’s Price… -
5 Tips For Product Managers From The Former Bergdorf Goodman CEO
23 Apr 2012 | 4:00 amImage Credit How to be a better product manager from a retail success story As product managers we are always looking for someone to tell us how we could be doing our jobs better so that we can look even better on our product manager resume. The problem is that it’s all too often hard to find someone who can give us good advice. Is it our boss? Our competition? Somebody that we bump into at a trade show? Or could it be the 90-year old former CEO of the successful Bergdorf Goodman retail chain of stores? Who is Ira Neimark? Before you take advice from anyone, you should first make sure… -
Why Product Managers Need To Learn To Love Being #2
16 Apr 2012 | 4:00 amImage Credit Sometimes second place is where product managers want to be… If you’re a product manager, then you always want to be a winner, right? It’s almost an integral part of our product development definition — you want your product to storm into the marketplace and kick some butt and become #1 overnight. You want to climb to the top of your marketplace and you want to stay there forever. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? You’d be right if it weren’t for the fact that sometimes you’ll be more successful if your product is #2… The Problem With Becoming…
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Lead on Purpose
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Guest Post: Leadership—Why Passion Still Matters
5 May 2012 | 8:40 amBy Melissa Crossman We associate the term passion too much with magazine ads for perfumes or movie clips about doomed love. According to business leadership gurus Tim Elmore and Glenn Llopis, it needs to be a term we associate more with our careers and work life. At most Monday morning staff meetings, voices rarely stray from a monotone unless a colleague mentions a leisure event he attended over the weekend. Managers either cajole or threaten — whatever method seems more productive this month — to enlist staff support for the upcoming week’s planned projects. Another… -
Conversations that win
28 Apr 2012 | 11:12 amYou want to win. Whether you are an athlete, an actor or a business leader you are “in the game” to win. You might be competing in a major event (e.g. summer Olympics in London) or in a crowded market (e.g. productivity software); regardless, you want to win. What does it take to set you apart from the competition? In sports it’s pretty easy; you win competitions (ok, it’s not ‘easy’ to win for most of us, but it’s easy to measure). In business it most often comes down to the bottom line; how well your products and services sell compared to your competition. Measuring is not… -
PCamp Utah and the “unconference” explained
21 Apr 2012 | 4:00 amIn the technology world, conferences have grown into huge events that attract thousands of participants and occupy massive convention centers. Hosting technology conferences has turned into an industry driven by big money and advertising. The value to individuals has diminished as the industry has commercialized. Enter BarCamp. BarCamps sprouted up in 2005 as the unconference way of gathering and sharing ideas. They are open, participatory workshop-like events where the participants provide the content and attendees collaborate to learn and grow in their specific areas of interest. The… -
Five must-read blogs
14 Apr 2012 | 6:10 pmToday’s post focuses on five blogs that have been great resources for me. These blogs and their authors have not only shaped my thinking but also inspired me to dig deeper and work harder. These are great blogs and I highly recommend you click through and spend some time learning from their authors. Leadership: One of my favorite leadership blogs is Art Petty’s Management Excellence blog. Art writes about all things leadership, and he does a great job of explaining key points in a practical way. Purpose: One of the most positive people I know is Dr. Paul Jenkins (“Dr. Paul”). His… -
The desire to learn
7 Apr 2012 | 10:15 amOne of the key tenets of leadership is learning. Great leaders are learners. They read voraciously. They write and teach what they learn. Learning is as much a part of their life as eating. Cultivating the desire to learn is vital to your success as a leader. Tip 5 in Management Tips: Harvard Business Review states the following: Successful leaders keep their minds open to new things because they know that no matter how high their level of mastery, there is always more to discover…. When facing challenges, even ones you’ve faced many times before, adopt a learner’s approach—ask…
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Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy
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Market Sizing – Quick and Dirty Techniques
21 Apr 2012 | 11:19 amThis post is a guest blog post by Ilya Mirman, former VP of Marketing at VMTurbo, CilkArts (acquired by Intel), Interactive SuperComputing (acquired by Microsoft) and SolidWorks Corporation. Ilya is currently an advisor to many startups in the Boston area. I was 9 years old when my father taught me how to estimate the height of a building using my thumb and simple geometry. As engineers we are taught estimating techniques – in school, and by colleagues and mentors. Quick-and-dirty assessments are indispensable as we engineer new products, and they’re just as critical for product… -
Product Manager’s friend: Momentum
19 Apr 2012 | 10:31 pmWhat a product manager needs to succeed is momentum. Momentum in product development, in product sales, in customer adoption, …. – you name it. Lack of momentum is akin to death. If your company is not willing to make necessary investments in your product, it will die. If enough engineering resources are not dedicated to your product, it will die. If there is not enough marketing muscle put behind your product to create awareness and interest, it will likely fail. So what can you as a software product manager do, to get this “momentum”? Earn customer capital: If you… -
My new poster child for exceptional customer service – Koopman Lumber Hardware store
8 Apr 2012 | 7:55 pmI have been living in the small town of Grafton, MA for the last 6 years. Being a home owner, I have had the need to visit the hardware store almost every week to buy stuff to fix/install things around the house. Until recently, these trips have always been to the big box hardware retail stores such as Lowe’s and occasionally to Home Depot. Ironically, I used to drive by my local hardware store Koopman Lumber but never used to stop there dismissing it as a small store compared to Lowe’s. Lowe’s being bigger was considered to be the store of choices and also perceived as the… -
Started new gig at Care.com
1 Mar 2012 | 6:20 pmI started my new job at Care.com this week as Director of Product Management for the International initiative. Had a good 2 year stint at Gazelle before this great opportunity came by. Care.com enables consumers to find babysitters, nannies, senior care providers, pet sitters, tutors, housekeepers and a lot more. The service has existed in the US since 2006 and has become the largest and fastest growing service used by families seeking high-quality care providers, providing a place to easily connect with hundreds of thousands of care providers, share care giving experiences and get… -
Senior Product Manager position – New York City
28 Feb 2012 | 5:43 amOne of the ways this blog helps me is when readers reach out to me asking for advice and also for help. Recently, Jonathan Hoefler, CEO of Hoefler & Frere-Jones (www.typography.com) reached out asking for help in recruiting his company’s first software product manager. Jonathan and I went through needs analysis to make sure I understand where the product manager would fit into their org and also what would be expected of the product manager. I helped Jonathan write up the job description for the position which is given below. If any of you are interested, please respond directly…
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Product Management News
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Cloud Expo New York: How the Cloud and Mobile Are Improving Business
16 May 2012 | 1:18 pmCome learn real-world examples where cloud and mobile are changing the way business works and the impact they're having on efficiency and productivity. -
Blue Coat Appoints Venkat Raghavan as Senior Vice President of Research and Development
16 May 2012 | 9:08 amBlue Coat Systems, Inc., the technology leader in Web security and WAN optimization solutions, today announced that IBM veteran, Venkat Raghavan has joined as senior vice president of research and development. -
Ex-Ticketmaster Exec joins Rubicon as CTO, Yahoo veteran as SVP Product Management
16 May 2012 | 4:54 amThe Rubicon Project , a leading advertising technology company has hired Brian Pike, the former Chief Technology Officer of Ticketmaster, one of the world's largest and most complex exchanges, as its CTO. -
Twilio Client for Android: Now Every Android Developer Can Add VoIP to Their Apps
16 May 2012 | 3:49 amIn addition to the recently announced iOS SDK, the release of the Android SDK means that Twilio Client is now available for 75% of worldwide smartphones, according to recent data from "With the launch of Twilio Client for Android, we now support the vast majority of smartphones globally," said Thomas Schiavone, Director of Product Management for ... (more) -
Complete Turn-Key Ip PBX Solutions
15 May 2012 | 11:44 pmFor today's small and medium Enterprise, implementing a software-based IP PBX offers many benefits: substantial cost savings, greater scalability, easier management, robust feature sets, enhanced worker productivity, and more.
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The Experience is the Product
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What You Will/Won’t Learn from Usability Testing
8 May 2012 | 1:57 amYou will (probably) learn: Is it usable? Can people figure out how to navigate through your product? Are your calls-to-action visible? Do people notice the buttons or links that you want them to click on? Are the steps to use a feature clear? Can someone figure out how to complete a task that you set them? Is your copy clear? As people scan the words in your product, are they comprehending and moving forward smoothly? Or are they frowning and hesitating? Is your product intimidating / jarring / confusing / threatening? As people are going through testing, is their body language indicating… -
6 Goals for Product Design Teams
30 Apr 2012 | 6:35 pmDemand objectives from the people you’re working with. Your job as a designer is to solve problems, not to make things look pretty. To do your job, you need to understand the who, why, when, what, where, and how. People will try to hand you a spec or a list of requirements and say, “I’ve already thought about this a lot, just design it.” Don’t accept that. Insist, politely but firmly, that they tell you what the main goals of this project are. For any project, one can say, “if it doesn’t achieve X and Y, then we’ve failed”. Are… -
5 Secrets of Post-Conference Followups
20 Mar 2012 | 1:06 amIf you are like me, you have procrastinated instead of following up with all of those awesome people you met at SXSW. But fear not, because: It’s not too late. Promptness is for after one-off coffee meetings and job interviews. Conferences mean the recipient spent a couple days ignoring their inbox while they traveled and schmoozed — they’re probably a lot more receptive to your note if comes several days or a week later once they’ve caught up on sleep. It’s OK if they don’t remember you. That’s what “reminding people” is for. If you… -
Listening and Acting: Power Users vs. Mainstream Users
8 Mar 2012 | 6:37 pmLast week I wrote about the huge gaps that can (and probably do) exist between the power users and the mainstream users of your product. But what do you DO about it? Power users are your evangelists, your backup QA testers, and your visionaries. They’re also by far the easiest to get in touch with (just try to avoid them — they’ll find you.) It would be stupid to blindly ignore their feedback. It’s also really hard to tell sometimes: is this an issue that only affects the power users? Or is it a universal thing, and they were just the first to detect it? -
Orders of Magnitude: Power Users vs. Mainstream Users
2 Mar 2012 | 2:06 pmYes, you “know” that your power users are different (more vocal, more active, more tech-savvy, more exploratory) than your mainstream users. But do you know HOW MUCH different they are? Chances are, they’re not 10% more active. They’re not 20% more expert. It’s probably more like 100%. 200%. 500%. That translates into realities like this: Mainstream users send an average of 0.8 messages per day. Power users send an average of 27 messages per day. or Mainstream users have completed an average of 7 different tasks in your web app. Power users have completed…
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Tips & Articles
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What Happened to All Those Strategic Product Managers We Hired?
27 Apr 2012 | 12:01 pmThe words “strategy” and “strategic” are draped all over most B2B product management job descriptions like a cheap suit. But many organizations don’t realize the consequences of hiring product managers with skills, talents and experience to be strategic, setting expectations accordingly, and then placing them in situations that require nearly 100% focus on execution. It’s a reality for many product managers and it’s as counterproductive for organizations as it is for the individuals. On the bright side, the fix is relatively simple. The key is to recognize the… -
Clear Business Requirements IN, Powerful Value Propositions OUT
22 Mar 2012 | 2:12 pmThe most powerful value propositions in sales and marketing are derived from clear concise business requirements in product management. If organizations employ business practices that establish a direct connection between the two, they’ll receive exponentially greater benefits by first solving bigger problems than the competition, and then making it easier for marketing and sales teams to articulate that value in a language anyone can understand. Growth awaits! -
Two Things Senior Executives Value Most From Product Teams
18 Feb 2012 | 5:27 pmIf you want your product team to be the top advisor to senior executives, you have to think like an executive. Consider the various situations executives find themselves in and the types of information that make them stronger executives. Then make it a routine practice to brief your executives accordingly. Do it well and watch your product team’s influence skyrocket. -
WHITE PAPER: A New Class of B2B Product Manager
24 Jan 2012 | 5:34 amThere is a gaping hole that exists between corporate financial goals and the constantly growing slate of product initiatives. When that gap exists, every market opportunity and every product idea seems like a good one. It’s a path of distraction that’s stifling the growth of many organizations. Product management and product marketing teams collectively own the responsibility for closing the “strategy gap.” Through no fault of their own, few teams are structured to do so. It’s time for a new class of product manager, a new structure for product teams and a new… -
How Product Marketing Can Help Salespeople Call Higher in the Organization
19 Dec 2011 | 11:14 amMost B2B companies want their sales people calling higher in the organization because direct access to executives can wire deals in their favor and shorten sales cycles. But why do many companies find it so difficult to get executive access? It has a lot more to do with your value propositions than you think, and the remedy starts with Product Marketing.
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Web Ink Now
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Risk
15 May 2012 | 9:52 am"Don't do that, it's too risky." In business, people spend a great deal of time and money evaluating risk. It's one of those things they teach in MBA school. But are we looking at risk in the right way? According to the American Bar Association, there were 1,143,358 resident and active attorneys in the United States in 2007 (the most recent data I could quickly find). That's over a million people, many of them advising businesses on what to avoid because it is risky. They lawyers say things like: "Don't let people blog and tweet because they may say something that gets the company in… -
Content marketing in highly regulated industries
8 May 2012 | 1:26 pmOn the global speaking circuit, I frequently get pushback from audience members who work in highly regulated industries. They claim, erroneously, that laws like HIPAA and regulations like those from the SEC and the FDA forbid them from creating valuable content on the Web or engaging in social media. Nonsense! This is just a fear-based excuse perpetuated by lawyers in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and financial services industries who want to avoid risk at all cost. Ignoring the data The fear is particularly shortsighted when considering the data on how people make decisions related to… -
Acura uses Twitter to hashtag spam hundreds
6 May 2012 | 6:12 pmUPDATE - May 9, 2012 - Alison from @Acura_Insider commented (the 22nd comment down). Please be sure to read her explanation about what happened as you consider this story. +++++++++++++++++++++++ This afternoon, Renee tweeted me from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival because she knows I am a big live music fan. I tweeted her back using the #JazzFest2012 hashtag. Which resulted in a tweet from @Acura_Insider "Acura's official Twitter account. Get the inside scoop & other Acura news. On duty: Alison w/ Acura PR." This linked to a PURL that offered me a VIP experience at Jazzfest. (In… -
Google News now offers real time breaking coverage pages
5 May 2012 | 8:54 amToday when I checked out the Google News headlines as I do several times a day, I noticed a new feature. Now, for each breaking story covered, there is a button called See realtime coverage. Clicking the button brings you to the latest news. This is a cool development. As I've said for several years now the most significant development on the Web is the rise of real-time. Social media are tools. Real-Time is a mindset. As I write this, a breaking business story this morning is about Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson and the inaccurate educational information found in his biography. Clicking over to… -
Public relations is not the same as media relations
3 May 2012 | 11:19 amBack in the day, the only way to easily communicate with your public was to use mainstream media and analysts as your mouthpieces. So the public relations department and the agencies they employed spent a great deal of effort convincing editors, reporters and analysts that your company was one worth talking up. Prior to the Web, there wasn't an efficient way for organizations to communicate directly to the public. What's the role of public relations in the new world of the web? There has been an explosion of channels that organizations can reach their audience directly with valuable online…
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spatially relevant
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Turn Fans into Advocates
10 May 2012 | 11:33 amTurn fans into advocates through influencer engagement View more presentations from Ant’s Eye View -
ProductCamp DC: Manage Your Career Roadmap!
5 May 2012 | 11:29 amThanks to all for the wonderful discussion! Define Your Career Roadmap View more presentations from Jon Gatrell -
Google + vs. Facebook: A Social Survey
27 Apr 2012 | 7:27 amGoogle+ versus Facebook, A Social Networks Survey View more presentations from SurveyMonkey -
Content Marketing: 100 Use Cases for Marketers to Deploy Content
13 Apr 2012 | 10:21 amContent continues to be a critical item for marketers to influence behaviors, beliefs and drive engagement. This presentation demonstrates creative and effective use of content by companies big and small across all kinds of sectors. Content marketing campaigns are only online, the most effective are integrated across multiple online, IRL and print channels. See how folks are using different mediums to drive results across the following tactics: Blogs Webcasts Podcasts Magazines Websites Microsites Online Communities Social Media Events Customer Newsletters Videos Mobile Apps 100 Content… -
You need a business strategy, not a social strategy.
10 Apr 2012 | 7:32 amJust like other shiny objects which have come before, the tech is out front in many of the discussions – social media is no different. Tools, tactics and activities seem to rule the day and social strategy continues being infused into the discussion. Social media strategy is a consistent theme of blog posts, twitter stream tidbits and infographics and it might not be the discussion most folks need. I get the opportunity to work with a good deal of folks week in and week out from companies of all sizes and consistently I find that many organization’s are still trying…
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Launch Clinic
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Product Launch Planning: Sales Channel and Sales Cycle Complexity
15 May 2012 | 7:55 pmAs it relates to your sales channel and channel partner readiness, there are two things to consider when developing your own product launch time line. First is the size of your sales channel. The second is the complexity of the sales cycle. By focusing on the sales channel and channel partners you address what is typically the most time consuming and riskiest part of a successful product launch. Size and of Your Sales Channel and Channel Partners Get your sales channel and channel partners ready for product launch is often the most critical and time consuming part of product launch. You can… -
The Difference Between B2B and B2C Buyers
12 Mar 2012 | 12:20 pmMarketing to B2C buyers is the same as marketing to B2B buyers, right? Not one bit and to understand why you need to start by examining the buyer. In a B2C market the buyer is spending her own money. In a B2B market the buyer is spending his company’s money. In a B2C market the buyer makes the purchase decision without needing the input of others (except maybe my wife). In a B2B market there is likely multiple buyers fulfilling different roles: the one with the budget, the ones who will use the product, and the ones who have to make sure it will work. In a B2C market we connect with the… -
The Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation
29 Feb 2012 | 7:34 pmI’m often asked to describe the difference between lead generation and demand generation. It’s not uncommon for the terms to be used interchangeably, but they are very different. Let me explain. Lead Generation is about a single buyer. Demand Generation is about a market of buyers. Lead Generation is tactical. Demand Generation is strategic. Lead Generation is reactive. Demand Generation is proactive. -
The Stages of Awareness
21 Feb 2012 | 2:59 pmProduct marketing managers are often asked to create or increase the awareness of a product in the market. The belief is that awareness equates to leads. Buyers are complex beings and go through stages of awareness as I’ve outlined below. An awareness of these stages (pun intended) helps to understand why the trade show you did last month didn’t result in a gazillion leads. No Recognition The buyer has no idea that your company or product is an answer to their problems. You are wearing the Cloak of Invisibility. Aided Recognition Provided with clues, buyers can recall your company or… -
What Product Marketing Managers Really Do
21 Feb 2012 | 2:52 pmWhat salespeople think I do when they get what they want I am a tireless team player providing everything they need to be successful. What salespeople think I do when they don’t get what they want I am the devil who finds every opportunity to impede the progress of a sale. What product managers think I do Everything they don’t want do and it changes on a whim. What my boss thinks I do He’s not really sure, but tells me I’m doing a great job. What my family and friends think I do Travel in first class to exotic locations, waited on hand and foot. What I think I do I am a god-like,…
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A Girl's Guide to Project Management
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4 ways to use blogs on your project
16 May 2012 | 1:09 amGet Started Using Social Media on Your Projects is a practical guide to choosing and setting up a social media tool in a project environment Communication is always a problem on large projects: making sure everyone on the outside has a similar view of what is going on and that everyone on the project team knows how their role affects the others. You already have meetings with detailed minutes, phone calls with each team member, maybe even a dedicated intranet site, wiki or collaboration tool. What could a blog offer on top of all the communication you are already doing? Here are 4 ways that… -
Is your project team a sales force in disguise?
14 May 2012 | 1:28 amThis is a guest post by Jon Swain, President of Ten Six Consulting. Strong project sponsorship is critical to ensuring that your project is a success. One of the roles of a sponsor is to champion the project and the project team. This includes making sure the project gets the recognition and resources it requires. But it is not only the project sponsor who can shout about the project and spread the word about the team’s achievements. Your project team can be ambassadors for the project and sell the story of the change you are delivering. People often worry about using the word ‘sales’… -
Happiness is a ticked list
9 May 2012 | 1:08 amPoster at Reading train station This is a photo I took of a poster at Reading train station. It’s advertising a hardware store, but I thought it was relevant to project managers. I think “Happiness is a ticked list” is going to be my new motto! Related posts: Cross-border reading list Enjoyed the series on managing international projects? Here is some further reading that you might like: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers, Anthony Mersino (Amacom, 2007)... The Z-list It’s incredible that you can get onto lists without actually knowing what they are. The Z-list… -
The challenges of IT Project Management, with Dave Gordon
7 May 2012 | 1:28 amI was in Las Vegas earlier this year for the Pink Elephant ITSM conference. I took some time out of the conference to meet Dave Gordon, The Practicing IT Project Manager. We discussed IT project management, the challenges for project managers working on Software as a Service projects and the cartoon laws of physics. This video was filmed on location at The Beat Cafe on Fremont Street, Las Vegas, a very nice coffee shop and the only place I visited where food and drink didn’t come in bucket-sized portions. Transcript: Dave Gordon: It’s not that I’m practicing to become… -
4 Steps to becoming a better project leader: Book Review: The Shift from One to Many
2 May 2012 | 1:54 amAccording to Chrismon Nofsinger, there are 4 steps on the journey to being a great leader, but most people only get halfway. “Leadership is about facilitating the output of others and giving them recognition,” he writes in his new book, The Shift from One to Many: A Practical Guide to Leadership. This is a great way to define leadership, and this short book explains how you can be better at it. It’s not about you Leadership, whether you are leading a project, a sports team or a group of volunteers, is not about you. That’s where the title of this book comes from:…
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Gearhead Gal
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Is There Value In A Brand Ideal?
15 May 2012 | 9:52 pmExcerpted from Strategy & Business "Any brand is simply the collective intent of the people behind it. To everyone your business touches, from employees to consumers, the brand defines who you are and what you stand for as a business. If you want great business results, you and your brand have to stand for something compelling. And that’s where brand ideals enter the equation. A brand ideal is a shared intent by everyone in a business to improve people’s lives. The ability to leverage this ideal is what separates great business leaders from good, bad, or indifferent ones. A… -
Are Silicon Valley Companies More Innovative?
24 Apr 2012 | 1:45 pmAccording to a recent report from Booz & Co, there may be some truth to the theory that companies in the Bay Area have a distinct advantage in terms of cultivating innovation. The research Booz's team conducted showed, "[These companies] are almost three times as likely to say their innovation strategies are tightly aligned with their overall corporate business strategies." More than double the number of Bay Area companies in the normal population indicated their corporate cultures supported their strategies. On closer examination, the evidence does not suggest that the… -
An Interview with Bill Buxton on The State of Design
23 Apr 2012 | 5:24 pm"What do you see being the biggest trends in technology over the next three to five years? I see a shift to a place where we won't be dazzled just because a product is well designed and works well. Our collective customers should be able to take that for granted, and it is our job to make it so. But that is not enough. The problems of design and complexity do not go away, even if we all surpass that bar. Rather, they just move to a different place: the complexity that is emerging in terms of how all of these (individually) easy to use devices work together. We need a comprehensive ecosystem… -
Video Advertising: How New Consumer Habits Are Driving the Advertising Community to Innovate, and the Challenges with Scale
23 Apr 2012 | 4:29 pmTraditional television is moving to the Internet. Though today's consumer can effectively avoid watching advertising on TV through new time- and place-shifting technologies, the “opt-out” function and other choices make it easier than ever for consumers to skip ads online too. Yet when asked, 75% of consumers prefer advertising over paid subscription models. To keep up with these new consumer video viewing habits and trends towards watching video content online, content owners, advertisers, and technologists must turn into entertainers, or lose precious eyeballs and dollars. To… -
More On Creativity - John Cleese And The "Tortoise Mind"
16 Apr 2012 | 4:21 amIt is easy for a professional comedy writer to advocate making definitive time and space boundaries in your day to enable creative thinking, but before you completely dismiss the possibility that John Cleese is actually a voice of corporate reason, take a listen to this video excerpt from a several years old lecture that he gave. In the full lecture, Cleese references a British psychologist's study of the "tortoise mind, [which is] a slower, less focused, less articulate, much more playful, almost dreamy" side of ourselves that must be allowed time to roam in order to be…
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B2B Bliss
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Are you a good business listener? A 10 Question Self-Diagnostic
10 May 2012 | 10:36 amDo you hear it? That rumbling, dark rush of water? Wait, it’s changed. Now it sounds like the sweep of a hummingbird wing, rapid and delicate. But, in seconds, the noise evolves again, this time emerging as the steady, pounding whine of a buzz saw. Where are we? We’re in a business meeting. Make no mistake, those noises exist just underneath the surface of almost every meeting. That rush of water could be an eager project leader, the hummingbird could be a quietly smart junior professional and the buzz saw (you guessed it) might be the company’s resident cynic. The problem is, most… -
My 2¢ on Goldman Sachs’ Image Problem
8 May 2012 | 11:15 amLast week, Michael de la Merced wrote a column in The New York Times about Goldman Sachs’ reputational wake-up call. The article, “Once Remote, Goldman Sachs Puts on a Friendly Public Face,” discusses how chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, is trying to repair Goldman’s image by speaking publically about the company’s focus on clients and commitment to gay rights. “Goldman appears to embarking on a subtle campaign to repair its reputation,” de la Merced writes. “The bank’s message is simple: Goldman cares about its clients and its community.” While words alone are… -
Marketing the Wall Street brand of the future: Reshaping communications in the financial sector
2 May 2012 | 10:48 amThe future isn’t social media. The future is all media. Yes, that means you too, Wall Street. The channel agnosticism conversation is happening now and in 2012 it will reshape communications strategies in the financial world. The thrust of the concept is simple. Dispense a message using all vehicles at our disposal to reach key constituents. Whether the impetus is to garner loyalty, draw new customers or create brand awareness, the approach remains the same. Let’s look at two real examples that worked in 2011: Traditional Media: On Saturday morning, a sophisticated investor reads… -
The Banker’s Conundrum: Reputational Re-Set Required?
1 May 2012 | 7:50 amWhile recently thumbing through one of my favorite magazines, The Week, my eye was drawn to an advertisement for Ally Bank that read “Remember When the Word “Bank” Didn’t Make You Angry.” I was struck that this bank was highlighting the industry’s woes. It got me thinking. More than three years after the financial crisis that spawned the Great Recession, financial firms are still struggling to restore their reputations and regain their footing — among consumers, regulators, policymakers and the global investment community. Despite Congressional actions to pass massive… -
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES: Undressed by Bad Word Usage
25 Apr 2012 | 10:56 amIt’s not clothes that make the man (or woman), it’s words … and how they’re used. Now I may be biased because I’ve been in the word business for 40+ years. But I maintain that people who are sloppy with word usage will be equally sloppy in discharging managerial duties or being good team players. What do I mean by “sloppy?” I’m glad you asked. Here are some of my pet bugaboos: Compliment vs. Complement: The former means, of course, to praise or laud someone, while the latter means to add a positive element to something. There is no way these two words should be…
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Blog feed
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A Product Perspective on Win/Loss
7 May 2012 | 3:45 pmI am co-presenting a webinar next Thursday called ‘The Guide to Win/Loss Analysis for More Successful Products’ along with Steve Johnson of Primary Intelligence. In preparation for the presentation, I have given a lot of thought to the benefits of win/loss and why all of you product people out there should care. -
Would Sony’s Woes Be Solved by Listening?
30 Apr 2012 | 10:00 amThe New York Times in the span of 4 days put out super biting articles about how Sony is expecting big losses again and has missed the Tech Parade. Is there something Sony could have done to avoid the mess they are in? We here at Accept wonder if things might have different if Sony did a better job listening to customers. -
Open Innovation is More Than a Buzzword
25 Apr 2012 | 10:00 amIt’s clear that open innovation today is more than just a buzzword. Over the past few years, companies like P&G, Unilever, Intuit, and Shell have all launched open innovation programs focused at getting customers and consumers alike to get involved in creating new and improved products. These programs are great for building relationships with customers and ensuring products are aligned with their market. -
Motivation: The Key to Product Team Results?
16 Apr 2012 | 10:00 amNothing is more frustrating than putting time and effort into a project only to find out that the idea has been scrapped. This is part of the price of doing business… to a point. But repeated last minute direction changes without an adequate explanation of why start to wear on employees’ motivation to do their job and do it right. -
Three Webinars for Product Planning Success
12 Apr 2012 | 1:00 pmThe latest from our #360webinar channel- we’re launching a brand new three-part webinar series called Modernizing Product Planning! We’re sponsoring this program from April 19-May 10 to educate product professionals about the need to modernize product planning practices.
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A Random Jog
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There Is No Magic Bullet In Creativity
16 May 2012 | 8:52 amThe book Imagine addresses the monumental task of trying to figure out how creativity works. What makes people creative in the first place? How do you maximize creativity? What do you do when you hit the wall and can’t come up with an idea? Even though it did rely on a few cliché examples , e.g. Pixar and 3M, I enjoyed this book and the way it explored creativity from a thinking perspective. It should come as no surprise that there isn’t a magic bullet when it comes to new ideas but there are different approaches you can use that can help improve your odds of success. The book… -
You’re Trying Too Hard
3 May 2012 | 9:43 amHow Did You End Up Here? There was a void in your roadmap. Your competitor launched a new product. You had extra budget that needed to be spent. Whatever the reason, there was a gap and the pressure to fill was too great to resist. The good news is that you responded by shipping. You got something out the door and made a big deal about it. Isn’t shipping always a good thing? The bad news was the result. Your customers response varied from “meh” to “yuck“. The market ignored you. Or worse, the market did respond with a “WTF?” and other questions of… -
Start With The Customer Product Marketing Podcast #12 – The New Domain Challenge
25 Apr 2012 | 11:24 amIn this episode of the Start with the Customer Podcast, I am honored to be joined by Scott Sehlhorst, of Tyner Blain consulting. Our topic for the call was on the challenge of taking a product marketing or product management job in a new domain area. Scott and I both offered suggestions and tips on what has worked for us as you try to sift through the fire hose of new information. I hope you enjoy the call and would love to hear your feedback! You can listen here: or download from iTunes and from TalkShoe. Show Notes: Runtime: 27 mins Starting from the product… -
How to Create an Awesome Product Introduction Video
18 Apr 2012 | 11:00 amA few years ago, I gave a talk at Product Camp titled Start with the Story. One of my talking points was on the importance of a good product introduction. When someone first encounters your product, there needs to be a quick way for them to understand what it is all about – essentially your product elevator pitch. During the presentation I picked on a startup called PlanCast which was a schedule planning app that a lot of people were starting to use. Their home page made it impossible to tell what their application was supposed to do and why you should give it a try. As a counter… -
Product Design for a Price Point – Hitting on all Cylinders
13 Apr 2012 | 6:06 amDesigning a product to hit a specific price point is not easy. It means that you have to operate inside a set of constraints and make painfully hard decisions. Making these trade offs will result in some features not being included. These features may be ones that your customers will tell you are very important. These features also may be part of your competitors’ products. This is what makes it such an interesting challenge and a difficult task. When you find the right balance, you can deliver a product that stands out in the market even though it has limitations (think of the Kindle…
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svpg blog
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Product Marketing Contribution
28 Apr 2012 | 9:37 pmJane is supporting the launch of Product X, a new release her company is really excited about. She is on the marketing team. Armed with her launch checklist, she schedules a meeting with John, the product manager. At the meeting, John answers all of her questions, draws a market segmentation on the white board, and talks about the key features and why they are important. Jane takes lots of notes and asks John to review what she sends him. The first thing John gets is a press release. The features are mixed-up. There is no positioning – just announcing it’s… -
Defining Good
15 Apr 2012 | 9:37 pmI consistently get asked questions like the following: "Just look at Facebook/Amazon/Google (usually one of those three). Don't you think they have a terrible product? How could they possibly be so successful?" No matter how many times I hear the question, I always have to take a breath before I answer.I think there are three relatively minor confusions underlying this question, and two very large confusions. But they all get to the heart of what makes great products and great product people. So in that spirit, I thought I'd share my answer here.First the minor… -
Live-Data Prototypes vs. Production
3 Apr 2012 | 5:22 pmI have written earlier about the differences between user prototypes (simulations intended to test the user experience), and live-data prototypes (actual code intended to send live traffic to in order to test real behavior). See http://www.svpg.com/product-discovery-with-live-data-prototypes/ We use a live-data prototype (usually in the context of an A/B test) to prove something works, and we perform user testing to understand why it doesn't work, and what we can do to correct.I'm happy to see so many teams now doing live-data prototypes. However, I often find that teams… -
The Product Manager Contribution
18 Mar 2012 | 7:19 pmRecently I was asked by a very smart CTO: "I understand the need for a great user experience designer, but if we have a strong designer, and that person is paired with a strong technology lead, do we really still need a product manager?" For many teams, the contribution of the product manager is not at all clear. Either because they simply don't see the contribution because it's not happening, or because they don't understand the significance of what is being done.In this article I'd like to spell out very clearly what the product manager needs to contribute if they are to carry their… -
MVP vs. Minimal Product
7 Mar 2012 | 12:06 pmTo continue on the series of articles describing the critically important concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP), in this article I wanted to contrast this concept with what I call "Minimal Product." So often I meet teams that tell me that they have identified their MVP, and I ask them how they have validated this, and I'm told that they've tested their prototype on customers and the results are excellent. But then I ask them how they tested MVP, and they proceed to describe a series of tasks that they measured whether or not users could successfully use the product.Essentially, they…
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MindTheProduct
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The awesome final speakers for the Mind the Product 2012 conference
15 May 2012 | 11:52 amWe promised you an amazing final speaker for Mind the Product 2012 and we’re deliriously excited to announce not one, but two cracking speakers to complete our line-up and truly make this the product event of the year.Charles Adler, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Kickstarter. Charles is an entrepreneur with more than 14 years experience in interaction design. Formerly director of strategy and senior information architect at Agency.com, his work in user experience, design, and information architecture is driven by a commitment to all things clean and simple. Previously, he cofounded… -
MindTheProduct teams up with Silicon Milkroundabout
15 May 2012 | 6:04 amSilicon Milkroundabout is a jobs fair that matches the UK’s start-ups with the best developers, product managers, and designers. For the first time, together with Mind the Product, they are putting on a “Product Management & Design” day this year for jobseekers in the fields of Product Management, Intelligence/Analytics, and UX Design (Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Research and Prototyping). There will be hundreds of exhibitors and hundreds of jobs with the focus on product people with a few years of experience wanting to transition to startups.We’ll be there… -
The product event of the year just got better
8 May 2012 | 7:13 amWe’re delighted to announce that Tom Chi is coming to speak at Mind the Product 2012 in September! Tom is an Experience Lead for Special Projects at Google X, their in-house skunk labs that has brought us amazing products from augmented reality glasses in Project Glass to self driving cars. Tom has a rich background, having worked as a Designer, Product Manager, Developer, and Consultant. He was a key design driver on many products, including Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Outlook, and several other enterprise applications. Tom is also a co-creator of OK/Cancel, and has published… -
Beware the dogma of agile and lean
2 May 2012 | 4:10 amThe public discourse around startups, product management and UX has become a touch dogmatic for my taste lately. If you’re not following the Lean Startup(TM) to the letter, holding daily scrums, doing continuous integration, embracing failure or (pick your own buzzword) you’re apparently doing something wrong.But I think this sort of dogmatic thinking is what is wrong, and loses sight of the principles that led to the development of those techniques and tools in the first place. On Agile While I agree with the values set forth in the agile manifesto wholeheartedly, I fear the… -
Mind the Product 2012 – Product Management Conference
24 Apr 2012 | 4:22 amWe’re delighted to announce our first ever conference – Mind the Product 2012 – on Friday, September 28th at the Mermaid Conference Centre in London. Mind the Product 2012 is the first conference of its kind, bringing together product management leaders from around the world to explore the intersection of design, technology and business – the business of building great products.We’ve got some great speakers lined up, from right across the board:Marty Cagan, Managing Partner of Silicon Valley Product Group and the author of Inspired: How To Create Products…
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Product Talk
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User Stories Are Better Than PRDs
24 Apr 2012 | 10:00 amIn the previous post, we focused on how product managers share customer knowledge with engineers. We discussed how user personas are an effective way of telling the customer’s story. We also looked at how some teams share artifacts (videos, audio, written reports) from usability tests to help communicate customer pain points. But I left out a critical mechanism for how product managers share customer knowledge with engineers – the user story. Historically (let’s say before the internet), product teams wrote Product Requirement Documents (PRDs), long documents that outline… -
Sharing Knowledge: From Product Manager to Engineers
20 Mar 2012 | 10:00 amThis is the second post in a four part series on Sharing Knowledge in Product Management. The first part looked at sharing knowledge from customers to product manager. This part examines from product Mangers to engineers. Part three will examine from engineers back to product managers. Finally, part four will look at from product managers back to customers. Assuming all goes well, between customers and the product team, this is still only the beginning. The product team has to share this newly acquired knowledge with the engineering team in the form of product requirements. For many product… -
Sharing Knowledge: From Customer to Product Manager
13 Mar 2012 | 10:00 amThis is the first post in a two+ part series. I have content in mind beyond the first two parts, but want to gauge interest before deciding whether or not to continue. These first two parts are sections of a paper I wrote in a class called, “Creating and Sharing Knowledge” at Northwestern University. As a result, it’s a little more formal than my previous posts and includes citations to referenced material. I do think the material is very relevant to the world of product management and if you agree, I’ll continue to experiment with similar posts. In order for a… -
Interesting vs. Meaningful
16 Feb 2012 | 5:55 pmAbout a year ago, I was struggling. I was the CEO of a technology startup. We were going through some tough times, but we were okay. I wasn’t. Looking back, I realized that my struggle was that while I was interested in what we were doing, it simply wasn’t meaningful to me. Being a CEO is a tough job. I didn’t fully appreciate that until I became one. I’m not afraid of tough jobs. In fact, I run marathons because I believe the struggle is often the point of the journey. But it has to be meaningful. Otherwise, it’s just struggle for the sake of struggle. -
Should You Learn To Code?
24 Jan 2012 | 7:09 pmI’m launching a product today. I forgot how exciting it is to launch something that I made, from concept to launch. In this case, I didn’t just define the product, I also wrote a good amount of the code. I haven’t written code in five years, and boy did it feel good to dive back in. I hit a bunch of snags along the way. I’m learning a new language, a new environment, and a lot has changed on the web in five years. But I don’t care. Nothing feels better than being able to say, “I made this.” I often hear product managers and designers ask,…
