Behold, a visual guide to the inside of a SalesDroid's brain, or more specifically, an Enterprise Software SalesDroid's brain, as viewed from Product Management. Yes, the lack of artistic merit in this drawing is profoundly pitiful. Thank goodness the Cranky Product Manager has a day job. If you receive posts via email, you probably didn't see the image below. So visit the blog http://wp.me/po3Ly-wr
Product Management
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Most Topular Stories
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The Brain of a Sales Droid – A Visual Guide
The Cranky Product Manager12 Dec 2011 | 10:31 am -
Why has Apple been so successful in the marketplace, when most products fail?
Optimal Product Management and Product Marketing ™2 Sep 2011 | 3:36 pmWe know from multiple studies that over 70% of products fail in the marketplace. Given that, then why has Apple has had such a significant streak of hit products over the past decade or more? Is it all Steve Jobs? Are there other factors, other causes? A strong set of best practices? Do you believe the often-repeated statements that Apple does no market research? As a product manager or product marketing manager, what do you think? -
The Top Product Management Blogs 2012
Strategic Product Manager23 Jan 2012 | 2:15 pmThis post if a bit of ruse, considering my foray into these top blog posts in the past (The Top Product Management Blogs 2010). However, I am going to keep it simple this year and repeat that the best list for the top product management blogs is Alltop – Top Product Management News. Here is a list of the key blogs represented: Optimal product management and product marketing Rocket watcher Tyner blain Productmarketing.com Brainmates – product management people The accidental product manager Lead on purpose The experience is the product Web ink now Product management meets pop… -
2012 Tech Marketing Priorities – From 50 Tech Marketing Execs
Technology Marketing30 Dec 2011 | 5:18 pmUnderstanding the priorities of fellow tech marketers is a great way to tune one's own 2012 initiatives. Over the past two months, my Forrester Technology Council colleagues and I have spent quite a bit of time surveying and talking with members (~ 50 tech CMO's and VP's of Marketing) about their priorities for 2012. Before the champagne pops up here in Boston, I wanted to share a few of the priorities my colleagues and I are hearing most about for 2012:Read moreCategories:Brand Management Community Marketing Demand Generation Demand Management content marketing thought leadership -
Important Customers – Comparing Products Part 5
Tyner Blain15 Dec 2011 | 8:08 amA good product is one that solves valuable market problems. To be successful in the market, a product needs to solve the problems that the right customers are willing to pay to solve. To know if those customers are willing to pay, you need to understand how they perceive your product relative to alternative solutions. If you’re new to the series, head back to the intro article on comparing products, and catch up with this article, where we look at pulling together the information about which customers are important. Overall Product Comparison Process This is a relatively long…
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Optimal Product Management and Product Marketing ™
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Optimal Product Process Book
16 Jan 2012 | 11:31 amOptimal Product Process book now available! We are VERY excited to announce the availability of our newest book in the 280 Group Press series: Optimal Product Process A Modern and Flexible Standard for Highly-Effective Product Management and Product Marketing. The book describes the standard product process that all products go through, including seven phases during the lifecycle. Based on the worldwide standard ProdBOK from AIPMM, the Optimal Product Process can help your company to do Product Management and Product Marketing much more effectively. And the best thing is that you can download… -
Product Management New Year’s Resolution: Just Say No (Gracefully)!
9 Jan 2012 | 4:18 pmAs product managers we are constantly bombarded with requests: Put this new feature in the product! Drop everything - I need you to travel to a customer and do a product demo! Quick, give me a competitive selling sheet by tomorrow! We don't have a tech writer - you need to write the manual! You have to talk to this customer and explain why our product can't do what they want! And the list could go on and on... If you don't learn to firmly say "No" then you become what we here at the 280 Group call a "Product Janitor" - always cleaning up other's messes and doing the work that no one else… -
Lean Product Management Book
27 Oct 2011 | 11:32 amLooking for some new ideas on product management? Want to know the four key product-market fit challenges? Check out 280 Group’s latest book, Lean Product Management. Download the advanced reader copy now! -
Henry Ford and the Faster Horse
21 Sep 2011 | 12:44 amGuest post by Jeni Sall, CEO of Genesis Research Associates You’ve probably heard it a hundred times, even though there’s no evidence that Henry Ford ever said it: “If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would’ve said ‘a faster horse.’” Regardless of whether he said it or not, though, the statement does capture a widespread belief: “I know better. I’m the expert. Why should I take the time or spend the money to ask those [ignorant] consumers about an area they know nothing about?!” Let’s pretend that Henry Ford did say that consumers would ask for a “faster… -
Why has Apple been so successful in the marketplace, when most products fail?
2 Sep 2011 | 3:36 pmWe know from multiple studies that over 70% of products fail in the marketplace. Given that, then why has Apple has had such a significant streak of hit products over the past decade or more? Is it all Steve Jobs? Are there other factors, other causes? A strong set of best practices? Do you believe the often-repeated statements that Apple does no market research? As a product manager or product marketing manager, what do you think?
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Rocket Watcher: Product Marketing for Startups
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Industry Analysts: Can You Buy Coverage?
11 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amI had a B2B startup founder ask me if it was possible to buy placement in a Gartner Magic Quadrant. The question shows a fundamental misunderstanding that the big industry analyst firms like Gartner Group and Forrester are “Pay for Play”. That simply doesn’t make any sense. You care about analyst coverage because customers care. Customers care because vendors can’t purchase it. The only reason marketers care what some industry analysts have to say is because some customers respect their opinion. The moment customers suspect that this opinion can be bought, they would… -
Pitching to Bloggers (and Journalists) – Tips for Startups
5 Jan 2012 | 1:37 pmMost early stage startups don’t have the budget (or the desire) to hire a PR agency to help them get news coverage. Getting coverage for a startup is (in my opinion anyway) easier than it has ever been – there are loads of online publications that cover startups and they’re easy to find and contact. But as least favorite engineering prof used to say to me “April, just because I say it’s easy, doesn’t mean you can’t mess it up.” Here’s my list of Do’s and Don’ts Do This Cultivate relationships before you need them – Did… -
Infographics – The Lindsay Lohan of Content?
4 Oct 2011 | 7:00 amI’m sick of infographics. I’m sad about it too because I used to love them. I was excited about the potential for infographics to help us get more visual in the way we communicated messages and told stories. Sadly this isn’t the way it played out. We got beautiful graphics alright. Lovely ones. But somewhere along the way Infographics became all about the look and the story was forgotten. They’ve become the web version of shouting “Hey look a rainbow!!” and we look, even though we know most of the time it’s a trick and there isn’t a rainbow there at… -
Lousy Marketing Messages: 5 Causes and Solutions
27 Sep 2011 | 7:29 amI was chatting with a startup CEO about marketing messages and how important it was to create a great story. His company has an awesome story and even though they only have a junior part-time marketer on staff, their messages are great. “I don’t get it,” he says to me “I see all this lousy messaging out there and yet we manage to do it! What’s wrong with people?” That got me thinking. Why is there so much bad messaging out there? Here’s what I think: 1/ The Team Stinks at Message Creation - The company has a good story but the team stinks at message… -
Hiring Marketers for Cultural Fit
18 Sep 2011 | 10:00 pmCulture fit is always a big deal when you’re hiring but it’s particularly important for marketing jobs which are notoriously difficult positions to fill successfully at a startup. Marketers are also really hard to interview – their great communication, interpersonal and sales skills make them potentially full of bullcrap very difficult to read. I’ve been building a team where culture fit has been one of the biggest challenges. The folks I’m hiring not only need to deal with a TON of ambiguity (and a certain amount of chaos), they also have to be able to deal…
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Tyner Blain
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Tally the Score – Comparing Products Part 8
19 Jan 2012 | 1:41 pmAfter building an understanding of which problems are important to your each customer you want to serve, and rating each competitive product , you’re ready to tally the scores and see how your product compares with your competition. This tells you if you’re likely to crush it, and if not, lets you know where you should invest later. This series on comparing products starts here if you need to get caught up. And now, on to the finale… Overall Product Comparison Process This is a relatively long series. Each article will start with a recap of the overall process. -
Rating Your Competition – Comparing Products Part 7
12 Jan 2012 | 8:22 amAt this point in the product comparison series, you know who your customers are, which problems are important to them, and which products compete to solve those problems. It’s time to score the competing products and see how the solutions your product provides (or will provide) will stack up. This is the latest in a series on comparing products, jump back to the start of the series if you came here first, but hurry up :). Overall Product Comparison Process This is a relatively long series. Each article will start with a recap of the overall process. Getting useful information… -
Know Your Competition – Comparing Products Part 6
21 Dec 2011 | 10:08 amYou start with a point of view about what makes a minimum viable product. When your product launches, it is your customer’s point of view that matters. You must understand which problems your customers care about solving, and what solutions are available to your customers today. You need to understand your competition to make informed decisions about your product. This is the latest in a series on comparing products – jump back to the beginning of the series to catch up, we’ll wait. Overall Product Comparison Process This is a relatively long series. Each article… -
Important Customers – Comparing Products Part 5
15 Dec 2011 | 8:08 amA good product is one that solves valuable market problems. To be successful in the market, a product needs to solve the problems that the right customers are willing to pay to solve. To know if those customers are willing to pay, you need to understand how they perceive your product relative to alternative solutions. If you’re new to the series, head back to the intro article on comparing products, and catch up with this article, where we look at pulling together the information about which customers are important. Overall Product Comparison Process This is a relatively long… -
Important Problems – Comparing Products Part 4
6 Dec 2011 | 11:11 amIf you understand the important market problems, you can make a good product. If you understand how important each problem is, for each group of customers, you can make a great product. If you’re new to this series, go back and start at the first article, we’ll wait for you right here. Overall Product Comparison Process This is a relatively long series. Each article will start with a recap of the overall process. Getting useful information from comparing products requires you to: Introduction & Overview (so that the step-numbers align with the article numbers) Identify…
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ProductMarketing.com
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The Art of the Compelling Software Presentation | Sandhill
17 Jan 2012 | 9:04 amThe risk for software companies in a highly competitive market is that their marketing presentations must always “hit the mark” in order to inspire the customer. There is no place for losing listeners due to boring and ineffective presentations either in content or delivery. Software executives must start to break the cult of the average presentation habits. It is crucial to understand and put into practice proven communication skills of authentic presence and voice that will maximize results every time. Good tips on presentation technique in The Art of the Compelling Software… -
It is easy to find a Scrum Master, it is hard to find a good one
15 Jan 2012 | 7:24 amFor those of you in the Denver area, Pragmatic Marketing alum Michael Swansegar is leading an event to explore: Is a Project Manager automatically a good Scrum Master? How can a Scrum Master impact the culture of the company? How can a Scrum Master be an ‘agile champion’ with The Development Team and Product Owner? Do certificates for a Scrum Master actually carry weight? These are just some of the questions explored at the PMI event in Feb 2012. The event is in person (Denver) and online. Primary Theme: It is easy to find a Scrum Master, it is hard to find a good one. -
Know Your Competition – Comparing Products Part 6
10 Jan 2012 | 5:19 pmScott Sehlhorst at Tyner Blain writes: You start with a point of view about what makes a minimum viable product. When your product launches, it is your customer’s point of view that matters. You must understand which problems your customers care about solving, and what solutions are available to your customers today. You need to understand your competition to make informed decisions about your product. via Know Your Competition – Comparing Products Part 6. If you haven’t you should read the entire series. Excellent point of view, as usual. PS. I’m coming to Toronto on… -
Case Study: The Zhivago Method | SixEstate
6 Jan 2012 | 7:16 amZhivago’s main principle is deceptively simple: If you want to know how to increase sales, ask your customers.There is a whole philosophy twisted up inside that sentence. Notice that you don’t ask your employees, as some suggest, because they’re usually not your biggest customers. You don’t ask suppliers. You don’t ask the Internet. You don’t implement some plan you read about in a book or online — unless it’s based on first asking the customer. via Case Study: The Zhivago Method | SixEstate. Nothing beats a direct interaction with a customer. Why do marketers loathe talking… -
Moving Up To Director | Rich Mironovs Product Bytes
3 Jan 2012 | 10:43 amRich M always brings an interesting perspective to any topic. This week he tackles the move from Senior PM to Director. In the second of four posts about the product management hierarchy, we’ll focus on technology product managers who’ve been in their jobs long enough to consider what comes next. Read more in Moving Up To Director | Rich Mironovs Product Bytes.
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brainmates - product management people
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Looking to finish summer with a new job?
24 Jan 2012 | 8:35 pmAre you refreshed from the summer break and looking for a new job? brainmates has been made aware of a few product management job vacancies in the software industry. PageUp People is looking for a Technical Product Manager, to be based in Melbourne. If you are interested in helping PageUp People be the market leader in talent management through creating and implementing innovative products that meet their clients needs, contact Bryce Dunn, Senior VP of Product Management, if you’re interested in applying. Objective is also looking for a two Sydney-based Product Managers. If you are… -
2012 Product Management Predictions
19 Jan 2012 | 11:36 pmWith years of experience in Product Management and a love of the professional domain, brainmates took to predicting the top Product Management trends that will directly affect you as a Product Managers in 2012. Prediction 1 – Roles within Product Management will become more specialised. Product Management covers a wide range of activities. In 2012 we expect to see further clarification and specialisation around the different areas of expertise. Product Marketing will focus on better understanding the market, the buyers and the users, while Product Experience will focus on exploring the… -
A Game Plan for the New Year
17 Jan 2012 | 5:29 pmJanuary represents the opportunity to refresh and recalibrate your thinking. By the time you get to mid February the year has well and truly started and you would have lost that opportunity to take some quiet time to think about what you should do for the rest of the year. Do more than that just clearing out your mailbox. That can feel restorative but it doesn’t necessarily add that much value to the start of the new year. Start the Game Right Instead you should kick start your strategic planning thinking and use the next few weeks to write up a basic strategic Product Plan that will set… -
The Year That Was 2011
21 Dec 2011 | 11:18 pmbrainmates are proud to share the Product Management community highlights of the year, together with our own personal brainmates milestones for 2011. Training and Development We saw over 150 Product Managers come to brainmates for product training across 8 different courses and formats. We launched a new course, the Business Case Master Class this year, which has been so successful that we are currently product developing a related course to be launched in the new year. Our most popular training course for 2011 was our 3-day Strategic Product Management Course, followed by the Product… -
White Paper: A Fresh Perspective on Australian Retail
21 Dec 2011 | 7:31 pmIn October 2011, brainmates, in partnership with Nine Rewards, conducted a nation-wide survey of over 1000 Australian consumers to uncover the key issues and attitudes that are driving their purchase decisions. The results of the survey are outlined in this brainmates white paper - a must read for product manager’s seeking to better understand the mindset of today’s consumer and deliver ’valuable’ end to end product experiences. For those specifically working in the retail industry, this research provides insights that will answer the burning question of the…
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Technology Marketing
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Calling All Sales Enablement Leaders, Wherever You Are: SE Forum 2012
25 Jan 2012 | 12:02 pmI have the privilege of talking with many of our clients and, surprising as it may sound, many don't have titles that match their real jobs! Who does these days? Maybe the CFO. So, as we gear up for our second annual Sales Enablement Forum, I want to make sure we don't miss inviting any of our Tech Marketing friends who do a little enablement on the side, or a lot of it as their full-time focus, title or not... We chose the lead image for this year's Sales Enablement event to grab your attention because we believe you can truly be a HERO to your CEO. But it won't be an… -
Yes, Content Must Be Managed Internally As Well
17 Jan 2012 | 8:46 amPeter O'Neill here. My first report on content management came out last week and it has already generated several conversations - please keep those comments and inquiry requests coming. Content management was also a significant part of a one-day workshop I delivered to a client in Lisbon last week. They offer eProcurement and eMarketing software-as-a-service. So an interesting discussion we had was, "Do you need different content as a SaaS provider compared to a product vendor?" We concluded that the information would be the same, but the sense of urgency about delivering digital content… -
2012 Tech Marketing Priorities – From 50 Tech Marketing Execs
30 Dec 2011 | 5:18 pmUnderstanding the priorities of fellow tech marketers is a great way to tune one's own 2012 initiatives. Over the past two months, my Forrester Technology Council colleagues and I have spent quite a bit of time surveying and talking with members (~ 50 tech CMO's and VP's of Marketing) about their priorities for 2012. Before the champagne pops up here in Boston, I wanted to share a few of the priorities my colleagues and I are hearing most about for 2012:Read moreCategories:Brand Management Community Marketing Demand Generation Demand Management content marketing thought leadership -
Lead-To-Revenue Management Automation Made In Europe
16 Dec 2011 | 7:38 amWell, it finally got published by Forrester! Peter O'Neill here and my long-promised overview of lead-to-revenue management (L2RM) vendors "Made in Europe" got out last week. We were delayed because I had to wait for my US colleague to publish on some of our research ideas on L2RM automation in her introductory report, to which I refer in my report - and she had to negotiate her text around the wishful thinking of around 45 different vendors, all of whom have their own view of a L2RM architecture. That meant that my research done in the summer of this year may look a little out… -
Brand Advice For B2B Tech Marketers: Q&A With Siegel+Gale
14 Dec 2011 | 9:22 am"Branding & rebranding" is rising fast on the list of priorities for tech marketers in 2012. Over the past few months, my colleagues and I in the Tech Marketing Council have been engaging in a rising number of client discussions around the topic of "brand." These conversations with our CMO and VP of marketing clients have come in a few different flavors: Branding for Emerging Firms. Small, but not startup, vendors seeking to create better brand position and differentiation to take on the established sector players. (e.g., David and Goliath) Rebrand for Maturing Firms. Midsize…
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The Accidental Product Manager
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What A Video Rental Store Can Teach Product Managers
23 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amImage Credit Can you even remember racing to the video store to avoid late charges? Not to date myself or anything, but can anyone else remember going to the video store on a Friday or Saturday night? I’d wander the aisles and take a look at every movie on the “just released” rack in order to decide which one or two videos I was going to rent. Netflix and the Internet have pretty much killed the video store these days and so what’s a video store product manager to do? (Streaming) Video Killed The Video Store To be a video store product manager in the 1990s was the… -
Is Being Yellow The Worst Product Management Job In The World – Or Not?
16 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amImage Credit Should A Product Manager Let Their Customer's Fingers Do The Walking? When I was first out living on my own, the arrival of the latest copy of the yellow (and white) pages was a big deal. Since my parents had always received these huge volumes, when I got mine I felt that somehow I was now a “grown up”. Fast forward to the 21st Century and man have things changed. There still are Yellow Pages®, but is it possible that owning this product is the worst product management job ever? What Happened To The Yellow Pages Once upon a time the Yellow Pages ruled the world… -
What A High-End Boutique Can Teach A Product Manager About Marketing
9 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amImage Credit Just because you are a boutique doesn't mean the big boys can push your products around… So there you are, a happy product manager creating and delivering products that meet your customer’s needs. All of a sudden (but you should have seen it coming) a big box competitor with tons of selection and low, low prices shows up in your backyard. Oh, oh – what’s a product manager to do now? It turns out that we can learn some lessons from the world of women’s fashion. Boutiques have been dealing with this very situation for awhile and they have a thing or two… -
Video: Stop Giving Your Customers Too Many Choices — They Don’t Want Them!
4 Jan 2012 | 8:28 pmwww.youtube.com/watch?v=yW5jkXWEPL4 It makes sense that the more choices that a Product Manager gives to his or her customers, the happier they’d be, right? Dr. Anderson takes a look at what happens when we present our customers with too many decisions to make. Dr. Anderson discovers that the one thing that our overloaded customers really don’t want is to have to make more decisions. If product managers can find a way to simplify the way that customers find and select their product, then their product will become an even bigger success! To get more great product management tips… -
Why Product Managers Need To Learn How To Do Visioning
2 Jan 2012 | 7:00 amImage Credit Can you see where your product will be 5 years into the future? Being a product manager is a hard job. It seems like there is always too much to do every single day. Keeping yourself focused on what needs to be done today or maybe even tomorrow is enough to keep you fully booked. Oh wait, there is one other thing that you need to be doing – visioning. What Is This Visioning Thing? I’m pretty sure that we’re all familiar with the concept of a business case – creating one is a basic part of every product manager job description. It’s the written document that…
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Lead on Purpose
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Leadership and integrity
21 Jan 2012 | 11:34 amIntegrity is one of the top attributes of a great leader. It is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcomes. It connotes a deep commitment to do the right thing for the right reason, regardless of the circumstances. People who live with integrity are incorruptible and incapable of breaking the trust of those who have confided in them. Every human is born with a conscience and therefore the ability to know right from wrong. Choosing the right, regardless of the consequence, is the hallmark of integrity. In his recent post 10 Mistakes… -
Making tough decisions
14 Jan 2012 | 12:37 pmMaking big decision is not easy; in fact it might be one of the most difficult things we ever have to do. The tendency is to postpone decisions as long as we can and put of the pain. At its root the word of decision means to cut off. When you make a decision you go with one thing and leave all the rest behind. Cutting yourself off from other choices is not easy, and that’s at the root of why we tend to put off big decisions. We postpone decisions for various reasons: we don’t want to offend people; we’re not sure who or what to choose; we’re afraid we’ll be wrong… -
Tenacity in 2012
31 Dec 2011 | 1:57 pmSuccessful people share several common traits; tenacity is at the top. Merriam-Webster defines tenacious as “persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired.” Think about your favorite athlete, actor, business leader, or other successful person and you’re sure to find tenacity as one of their defining characteristics. Tenacity fuels persistence. Persistence is analogous to running a marathon. To run a successful marathon you have to spend ample time (months or more) preparing. The time you spend, and what you do leading up to the race, will determine how… -
Guest Post: How to Encourage Your Team Members to Stand Up and Lead
23 Dec 2011 | 11:24 amBy Andrea Gordon To be successful in today’s market, team members need to step up and be ready to take a leadership role. It is not easy to develop leadership skills in others, however, so it’s very important to understand that some people do not share your goals and aspirations. Keep an open mind and learn to use varied techniques to inspire different team members to stand up and lead. 1. Challenge – Issue a challenge. (In today’s market environment, you probably have many challenges to issue!) Some people need a specific challenge to motivate them. By laying down a… -
Guest Post: Begging For Leadership Won’t Get You A Pocket Full of Change
23 Dec 2011 | 11:15 amBy Kaity Nakagoshi Change is inevitable and so is the resistance to change. People are often not welcoming of change unless it is implemented by leadership correctly. It’s natural that people become complacent with the status quo and perform rote tasks without giving their actions much thought. Change brings about fear of the unknown, which creates an atmosphere of unnecessary anxiety. That doesn’t have to be the scenario if employees understand the change, the strategies that will be used, and their role in accomplishing the goals. Effective leaders need to understand that their primary…
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Joca on stuff
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Restriction driven simplicity
20 Jan 2012 | 6:52 amI just returned from vacation and was reviewing some photos in my cel phone when I found some old photos from a previous trip to SF. In the airport there was an exhibition about TV sets and some old remote controls got my attention. Here’s a picture of them: Old TV remote control Checkout the number of buttons in the remote control. The maximum is 4. There are some remotes with only one button. When I was a kid I remember the first TV bought in my house with a remote control that had only 2 buttons, one for volume and other for changing channel. That simple! That was around 1975. At the… -
Using checklists to deal with the unexpected
2 Jan 2012 | 6:13 pmI mentioned earlier about “The Checklist Manifesto” book. The post was originally written in Portuguese but you can find a Google translation here. In this post I mentioned about the use of checklist in surgeries and other medical procedures and how we could use checklists in the IT environment. I was reviewing my Kindle highlights for this book and found this highlight: Surgery has, essentially, four big killers wherever it is done in the world: infection, bleeding, unsafe anesthesia, and what can only be called the unexpected. For the first three, science and experience have… -
Agile Product Discovery in a Non-Startup Environment – Building MVPs
29 Nov 2011 | 7:24 pmAs mentioned in my first post about Agile Product Discovery, I’m trying to take the ideas I used in my lean startup experiment (phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3) in a non-startup environment. Locaweb has almost 700 employees now. We ended 2010 with approximately $100M in revenue. We have around 130 people in our engineering group which include software developers, system administrators, user experience designers and product managers. We decided to use the SaaS team – around 25 people – as the group who will be part of the experiment. In phase 1 we worked on figuring out what to do. The next… -
Lean startup validation experiment phase 3
30 Oct 2011 | 7:50 pmMy lean startup validation experiment is an experiment I’m running to see if it is possible to launch a successful product (product = customer facing software system) without spending too much money and in a short period of time. In phase 1 I had 5 product ideas and wanted to know in which should I invest. In phase 2 I pick the idea with more interest from phase 1 and invested in creating the MVP (Minimal Viable Product), ContaCal, a calorie counter system. My phase 3 objectives were: website launch online campaign (Google, Facebook, Orkut, etc.) real users feedback! Website launch I… -
#BoS2011 day 3 notes
26 Oct 2011 | 11:59 amToday was day 3 of Business of Software 2011, aka, #BoS2011. Checkout my notes on day 1 and day 2 if you haven’t done that yet. Again good speakers and interesting topics, but again nothing really new for those who follow product management, agile software development and startup related feeds. I guess the good thing of attending BoS is not exactly the content, that you can get through the net. It’s the opportunity to meet in person lots of people from the software industry and exchange experiences and opinions. Below are some tweets and references. And again from the number of…
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Product Management News
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Coming Soon: An 'IBM Edition' of Apache OpenOffice
28 Jan 2012 | 2:57 amIBM's Lotus Symphony office suite has offered users a free Microsoft Office alternative since 2007, but last week saw the release of what's very likely the last version of the software. -
Cisco aims to simplify, unify collaboration products' design, interfaces
27 Jan 2012 | 10:48 pmCisco is in the midst of a major initiative to better integrate its various collaboration products and to give their interfaces a uniform, consistent design in order to make them easier to use and more effective at helping employees work with each other. -
Staples to open e-commerce innovation center
27 Jan 2012 | 6:33 pmStaples will open an e-commerce innovation center in Massachusetts in May that will house teams "responsible for designing and implementing innovative new e-commerce solutions" for Staples' business customers, the company said in a Jan. -
Investors Bet $16 Million on Growth in Application Delivery Market
27 Jan 2012 | 2:29 pmNetwork World - When investment firm Edison Ventures decided to contribute the majority of a recent $16 million round of funding for application delivery controller provider Kemp Technologies, investment manager Lenard Marcus acknowledged that some initial risk was incurred. -
OneDesk introduces new Application Program Interface
27 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amProduct management software company OneDesk has released new public Application Program Interface , expanding its all-in-one blended application for product managers, innovators, engineers, marketers and customer support professionals.
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The Experience is the Product
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You Shouldn’t Use a Survey If…
26 Jan 2012 | 2:44 pmSurveys are an incredibly useful market and customer research tool. But you use them too often. (Not, you know, you personally. But ‘you’ in a global companies and organizations kind of sense.) You shouldn’t use a survey if: You aren’t sure which type of people you should ask to take your survey. There are almost zero contexts where you’ll get useful data out of having “anyone” take your survey. (And thinking, “I’ll just get thousands of responses, and then filter by some criteria later” is both a copout and unlikely.) … -
All Customers Are Not Created Equal (part 2)
19 Jan 2012 | 1:37 pmYou can read part 1 here. So how can you apply customer development techniques to large enterprise customers and existing customers? They’re still people, so fundamentally they also have problems and pain points and constraints. But there are some things to keep in mind if you want to maximize how productive your conversations are. Large enterprise customers Expect anything they see to look ‘good’. This doesn’t mean that you need to show a working app — trust me, big company folks are plenty accustomed to being sold products by PowerPoint deck — but… -
All Customers Are Not Created Equal (part 1)
12 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pmCustomer development and lean startup techniques have been so loudly touted by, well, startups, that many people in non-startup or non-technology companies think these tools don’t apply to them. “The rules are different when you’re talking to large enterprise customers,” they say. ”This doesn’t work when you’re dealing with customers who are already using your products and have certain expectations,” they say. Yes and no. YES, the techniques I write about on this blog WILL work on your customers. NO, you can’t blindly apply them… -
The Biggest Risk in Hiring Product People
2 Dec 2011 | 12:27 pmThe biggest risk in hiring product people is… THE UNKNOWN. What if we hire this person and they aren’t able to execute? What if they can’t negotiate with our engineers? What if they can’t operate under conditions of uncertainty? What if they worry over every little detail until they’ve totally missed the big picture? What if they just say “yes” to everything so we lose our focus? What if they blithely accept our broken processes and bad habits so that we keep making the same mistakes? In the past month, I’ve spent quite a bit of time being the… -
It’s valuable because I said so
4 Nov 2011 | 12:07 amI was lucky today to have a day to spend with my 2-year-old daughter. In the morning we walked up and down ten city blocks, stopping to pet dogs, sit on stoops, and inspect leaves and spiders. In the afternoon we went to the Exploratorium, which is a ridiculously award-winning and enriching museum. Truth be told, I’m pretty sure she had more fun just walking around for free. But as the adult who had to pull out a credit card to pay for museum tickets, I can’t help but feel a tiny bit like she ought to have had more fun at the Exploratorium. Has anyone ever tried telling a…
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The Cranky Product Manager
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Why Sales Bitches About Product Management & What to Do About It
26 Jan 2012 | 3:34 pmYou've heard that old chestnut. You've seen it in a million articles. The big advice Sales Droids offer to Product Managers is "Don't just talk about features. Tie the features to problems." And whenever the Cranky Product Manager sees Yet Another Article offering this advice, she thinks, "Doesn't every product manager already know this stuff? Duh? How is the Cranky Product Manager going to create a blog post from this nugget of obvious non-wisdom?" But then the Cranky Product Manager thought about it. Then she had a nice glass of Chardonnay. Then more thinking. And then… -
The Brain of a Sales Droid – A Visual Guide
12 Dec 2011 | 10:31 amBehold, a visual guide to the inside of a SalesDroid's brain, or more specifically, an Enterprise Software SalesDroid's brain, as viewed from Product Management. Yes, the lack of artistic merit in this drawing is profoundly pitiful. Thank goodness the Cranky Product Manager has a day job. If you receive posts via email, you probably didn't see the image below. So visit the blog http://wp.me/po3Ly-wr -
What Do Five-Year Olds and Product Managers Have In Common?
28 Nov 2011 | 3:38 pmSeems like everyone in the Product Management blog-o-universe just loves to chat about where Product Management should report in the organization. (Sorry, I don't have time to provide the links right now,... maybe someone can provide some in the comments?) Unsurprisingly, among us Product Management weenies of the world, the overwhelming consensus that Product Management should report directly to the CEO. Thing is, asking this question of product managers is a little like asking a five-year old if candy should be served with every meal instead of vegetables. OF COURSE… -
How Did They Survive While the Cranky PM Was on Maternity Leave?
22 Nov 2011 | 1:43 pmThe Cranky Product Manager has returned from the land of sweatpants and spit-up (aka maternity leaave), and is now back at Dysfunctosoft three days a week. She's still sleep deprived and cranky, but is enjoying the conversations with adults and the astonishing luxury of going to the bathroom BY HERSELF IN PEACE without someone having a mammoth conniption fit. 50s mom We'll see how it goes, being a part-time product manager. The Cranky Product Manager is skeptical about the plausibility of such an undertaking. Can product management be done part time? The Cranky Product Manager would love to… -
Not Dead, Just Wearing Sweatpants and Spit-up. Every. Single. Day.
29 Jul 2011 | 6:17 pmPlease be informed that the Cranky Product Manager is not dead, not stuck under something heavy, and has not (yet) given up the fine art of blogging. Her recent absence can be explained: Kids. Or rather, a new kid. Kid #2, to be exact. And apparently the Cranky Product Manager pissed off the universe by referring to kid #1 as the "CrankyKid," cuz OMFG kid #2 has genuine Cranky Superpowers. Let's repeat that: OMFG. The Cranky PM made a vow. No work-related anything during this maternity leave. Not even cranky blogging. Not even READING blogs. Or reading _anything_, really. Because…
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Tips & Articles
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WHITE PAPER: A New Class of B2B Product Manager…Because Something Has to Change!
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 and a new gauge for measuring success. -
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. -
Making Product Strategy More Strategic
17 Nov 2011 | 9:16 amThe strategic value of most product strategies is worth questioning. Do they offer so much measurable benefit to customers that your company’s market position will advance significantly? If not, your product strategies are probably a “nice-to-have” in today’s business climate. -
Beating Your Competition at a Level Above Product Features
27 Oct 2011 | 6:49 pmWhy should I buy from you? Whether verbalized or not, most buyers want an explicit answer to this question and not just during the sales process. Most providers answer with product features and service capabilities but never really answer the question. It’s a major disconnect that can cost you in both the short and long term if your competitive strategy rests entirely on your products. -
Why Product Management & Product Marketing Teams Need a Strong Brand Identity to Succeed
28 Sep 2011 | 10:03 amA strong brand builds credibility that influences and motivates people to buy your products and services. It’s also a measuring stick the market uses to evaluate your performance. If you don’t define your brand, the market defines it for you and the result can easily become the biggest impediment to your success. In B2B product and service organizations the same concepts apply to product management and product marketing teams for the same reasons. Consider colleagues in engineering, marketing communications, sales and the executive team to be the market.
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Web Ink Now
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Thinking Right (and Left) about Content Marketing
27 Jan 2012 | 3:11 pmAs I evaluate Web marketing such as blogs and websites, one thing I look for is evidence of both left-brain and right-brain thinking in the creation of the content. This obsession might seem trivial, but I guess my right-brain outlook on life causes me to take a holistic view of content. The right-/left-brain concept is widely credited to have developed from the thinking of American psychobiologist Roger Sperry in the late 1960s. Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning work opened whole fields of psychological and philosophical debate including the idea that there are two different sides of the brain,… -
Playing for Change
23 Jan 2012 | 9:28 amWhen I first saw the original Playing for Change video Stand By Me on YouTube I was moved and fascinated and jumped for joy. Wow. As a music lover and collector of social media success stories, here was both music and social media triumphantly on display and coming together to support a good cause. I talked up the videos via social and in person to everyone I saw. Stand By Me now has 37 million views on YouTube and has sparked a movement. Now, Playing for Change has 15 videos in the Songs Around the World series with a combined 140 million views. If you haven't seen a Playing for Change video… -
Stop SOPA Silliness
18 Jan 2012 | 5:36 amIt didn't work with music: The music industry killed Napster and sued 16-year-olds to protect their dying business model of selling "albums" via top 40 radio. Instead of understanding the immense power of social media like YouTube as a marketing tool to sell single songs (iTunes) and streaming subscriptions (Spotify), the music industry honchos preferred to destroy in a ridiculous attempt to save the status-quo. Listened to top 40 radio recently? It didn't work with email: I get many times more unsolicited (and illegal) email than I did prior to CAN-SPAM. Tons of it from legitimate companies… -
Content Arbitrage
16 Jan 2012 | 12:45 pmWhen I worked my first job on a Wall Street bond trading desk, I was fascinated by financial arbitrage, one of the ways that traders made money. This technique involves taking advantage of a temporary price difference in two or more markets and is usually executed by simultaneously buying and selling the same security. A pure arbitrage involves nearly zero risk. For a simple example, imagine the price of gold is at $1,600 an ounce in London and at the exact same time it is $1,620 in New York. A trader could simultaneously sell in New York and buy in London to lock in a $20 profit. (This… -
Go Mobile
11 Jan 2012 | 9:38 amIn Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district you find several hundred bars within walking distance of the subway station. Yet only a few are visible from the main street; the vast majority are tucked away on the upper floors of back-street buildings. To differentiate, many cater to highly refined customer preferences. So if you want to listen to classic reggae while sipping a Red Stripe, there is a bar for you in Roppongi. But how do you find these establishments when you’re thirsty and confused in an unfamiliar city? Your mobile of course! Because buyers use their mobiles to search for…
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Product Management Meets Pop Culture
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Reflection? Who Has Time For Reflection?
2 Jan 2012 | 9:56 pmWe’ve all been there. Reflecting on the past year is a great way to gear up for the new year. A chance to review, to understand, to benefit from what we’ve learned. But who has time for any of that? We All Do Because we have to. I now understand that on a very personal level. The last 12+ months have been filled with major life lessons. A big one: The best time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for one. Conceptually, I understood the need for distance to see things clearly. In reality, I was always full steam ahead, the less stops the better. So What Changed? -
I Believe Them Because: A Difference In Value Proposition Frameworks
11 Nov 2011 | 4:00 pmBoth heroes understand the emotional benefit of being able to fly. Earlier this week, ProductCamp Boston held a Value Proposition workshop featuring Neil Baron of Baron Strategic Partners. Neil’s lecture provided many insights into customer perception, product experience, and customer analysis. And he shook up my go-to value proposition framework. Emotional Benefits I’m most familiar with the kind of value proposition framework put forward by Harry Yang: For [user persona], [product brand name], a product of [frame of reference], provides [solution] for [user problem] by [distinct… -
Top 3 Product Management Lessons From Steve Jobs
7 Oct 2011 | 3:49 pmHere’s to the crazy ones… Adam Costa recently gave us some innovation lessons from Steve Jobs. It’s a good list, and you should read it. As I’m sitting here thinking about how much of an impact Steve Jobs had on me and so many people, I’m thinking of other lessons Steve Jobs provided. Three general — but critical — product management lessons I wanted to share with you… Computer Science Is A Liberal Art “In my perspective … science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least,… -
Netflix: Making things more complex and inconvenient isn’t the answer
19 Sep 2011 | 8:07 amOver the weekend, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings apologized for hubris in the way Netflix rolled out its pricing changes a few months back and announced plans to separate their DVD-by-mail service from their online streaming video service. The streaming service will be called Netflix. The DVD service will be called Qwikster. Unclear: Hastings names new service based on love of SpongeBob? On one hand, the split makes sense With two separate companies, it’ll be easier to wind down the DVD business and eventually spin it off or sell. In the meantime, the split allows the two very different… -
Why is Netflix screwing me over? A product management perspective
18 Jul 2011 | 5:35 pmNetflix recently announced a 60% price hike to a popular plan that combines streaming content and DVD rentals — a plan to which I subscribe — without adding any real value to the overall service. Once I decided whether or not I was going to stick with the combined plan or just go with streaming for $7.99/month, I got to thinking: Where is this price hike coming from? Is Netflix just covering costs or is there something greater in play? “Deliberately creating dissatisfaction” Eric Garland — CEO of Big Champagne — told CNET he believes Netflix is doing this…
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spatially relevant
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Market Adoption By Region for Mobile, Social and Digital
19 Jan 2012 | 8:42 amThis is a series of infographics on the adoption of critical categories for product managers and marketers – social media, mobile and digital. Many thanks to We are Social for creating the presentation, if you haven’t read their blog you might want to add it to your reader. We Are Social's Guide to Social, Digital and Mobile Around the World (Jan 2012) View more presentations from We Are Social Singapore -
Will convergence drive specialization?
12 Jan 2012 | 9:44 amI typically dislike predication posts, since many of them are a rehash of buzzwords without any meaningful insights or strategic extensions of what many of us have been reading on tech crunch for years. The 2012 Predictions I’ve read are pretty cookie cutter for the most part. If you haven’t read them, let me do an overview for you on 99% of them: Cloud Facebook Killer The Year of Google+ iPhone 5 iPad 3 Smart Phones Android New Buzzy Thing blah Frog Design took a different and refreshing approach to the formulaic January content creation from many with their slides. The… -
Social Media Research: Solutions, Integration, Fragmentation and Governance
6 Jan 2012 | 8:20 amAltimeter produced a recent report which nails exactly what I hear when I talk to many marketers, IT folks and customer service leaders at businesses. The common theme I hear is “There are just too many options, so much integration required and limited vendors which solve for all parts of social that our organization is increasingly challenged just know what assets they have and how to govern them”. This is also similar to the feedback we received in our social media survey in November, social media governance and policies are still gaps for many. Many thanks to Jeremiah… -
5 Key Management Blunders Which Impact Sales and Revenue
5 Jan 2012 | 11:21 amInteresting presentation on key issues which can drive sales in the wrong direction. While the piece is centered on executive leadership, I think it is pertinent to product leaders as well. Here are the 5 big takeways in the eBook: Sales Reps decide which marketing activities get done. Making Sales Reps responsible for their own marketing work. Allowing Sales Reps to be responsible for the customer qualification matrix. Expecting Sales Reps to take on an educating/nurturing role for prospects and customers. Turning Sales Reps into overpaid secretaries and clerks 5 Management… -
2011 In Review: Top Posts and Alike
29 Dec 2011 | 7:21 am2011 was a fantastic year for me on many levels and Spatially Relevant has been around officially for 4.5 years, so thanks to all who have been around here the past year and more. This is technically the 5th year in review since the blog started in 2007. So every year I try to spend time looking at posts which folks liked and those which I liked which may have not been part of the top posts with reader engagement. So here they are: Top 10 Posts of 2011 These posts are the posts which had the most views, comments and alike from y’all here. Roadmap Audit: This post is an audit of…
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effectivus.com
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Adoption and e-books
9 Jan 2012 | 5:29 amAdoption is a lot more tricky than we like to think More → -
Hearing Customer Needs
14 Dec 2011 | 6:02 amWhat Steve Jobs said and Henry Ford didn’t More → -
Flex Your Creative Muscle
12 Dec 2011 | 5:53 amCreativity is like a muscle – use it or lose it! More → -
Standards, Sockets and Secret Sauce
11 Dec 2011 | 5:29 amStandards may be good for some, but it can hinder innovation for others? More → -
Smell
15 Sep 2011 | 11:24 amTime for cinema to wake up and smell the roses? More →
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Launch Clinic
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The One Thing That Makes You Better
26 Jan 2012 | 8:08 amGetting better at what you do or who you are takes commitment. It doesn’t happen by accident and no one is going to do it for you. Each day you have an opportunity to become a better professional, a better dad, a better sister, a better friend, and a better spouse. Find The One Thing you can do today to make you better. Then tomorrow find another. Don’t stop. -
Launch Clinic Top Product Management Blog for 2012
24 Jan 2012 | 9:27 amStrategic Product Manager listed Launch Clinic as a top product management blog for 2012 – booya! Thanks, Stewart! Hopefully this whole ‘the world is going to end thing’ doesn’t pan out and I’ll earn my way onto the list for 2013. -
How to Say ‘No’ Without Getting Fired (part 3)
24 Jan 2012 | 8:38 amPart 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Marketers struggle to say ‘No’ to requests they know are frivolous. Sometimes it’s just easier to go with the status quo than make waves. But admit it: you (and your team) do a lot of extra stuff that is a waste of time and resources. Part 1 was about linking everything you do in marketing to the goals the CEO values. Part 2 discussed the importance of knowing your buyers. The final installment of “How to Say ‘No’ Without Getting Fired” is an exploration into one more thing effective product marketers need to know: the buyer’s… -
iBooks Author: A Game Changer for Marketers
19 Jan 2012 | 1:37 pmToday Apple announced iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, effectively disrupting the business of school textbooks. I wrote that the “Apple iPad Will Be a Game Changer for Education” when the iPad was originally announced, but it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure that out. iPad-based textbooks in the K-12 marketer are well within Apple’s distinctive competence. iBooks Author a Game Changer for Marketers The implication for marketers is immense. Let me get the conversation started… Deliver rich, interactive marketing collateral where you can not only create a… -
How to Say ‘No’ Without Getting Fired (part 2)
17 Jan 2012 | 2:00 amPart 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Product marketing managers struggle to say ‘no’ to requests they know are frivolous. Sometimes it’s just easier to go with the status quo than make waves. Admit it: you (and your team) work on stupid stuff that you know is a waste of time and resources (believe me, you’re not alone). In Part 1 of How to Say ‘No’ Without Getting Fired I discussed the importance of understanding the goals that matter most to the CEO and translating it into what you do as a product marketing manager. But even if you have a clear understanding of the business…
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Strategic Product Manager
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The Top Product Management Blogs 2012
23 Jan 2012 | 2:15 pmThis post if a bit of ruse, considering my foray into these top blog posts in the past (The Top Product Management Blogs 2010). However, I am going to keep it simple this year and repeat that the best list for the top product management blogs is Alltop – Top Product Management News. Here is a list of the key blogs represented: Optimal product management and product marketing Rocket watcher Tyner blain Productmarketing.com Brainmates – product management people The accidental product manager Lead on purpose The experience is the product Web ink now Product management meets pop… -
One Good Release
22 Jan 2012 | 11:29 amI am reminded today that one mistake can erase a thousand good deeds. Customers respond the same way. They appreciate what you have done, but remember they owe you nothing. Wrong them or worse yet, forget them and they’ll find something better. You’ll be left with a legacy of one mistake. -
Product Management Is…
19 Jan 2012 | 6:10 pmIntroducing the beaten horse, but this is my current thinking on how to define product management. Product management is… one part listening, one part thinking and one part storytelling. The only real change is the storytelling component. Comments? -
TED: How complexity leads to simplicity
18 Jan 2012 | 12:16 amGreat, quick presentation on embracing complexity for understanding and being able to identify simplicity. Check out Eric Berlow: How complexity leads to simplicity -
Webinar: How Sage Is Using VersionOne
14 Jan 2012 | 3:19 pmMy friends at Sage, Erik and Guillermo, are doing a webinar for VersionOne. In this webinar you’ll hear about Sage’s customer-driven approach to product planning and development. Learn how the Product Management team uses VersionOne to engage directly with customers and manage agile projects from idea through to delivery. The idea is to bring PM’s in as its a technology that would support to be more Market Driven. More information here: http://pm.versionone.com/HCUV1-Sage.html Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM until 1:00 PM EST. Erik Kaas is VP of Product Management for…
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A Girl's Guide to Project Management
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Carnival of Project Management #38
27 Jan 2012 | 12:24 amWelcome to the January/February 2012 edition of the Carnival of Project Management. The Carnival is a round up of the best project management articles (according to me) over the last two months. Brad Egeland presents Watch Out for Warning Signs posted at Project Management Tips, saying, “Four warning signs that things may not be going well with your project and how to tackle them.” Bruce McGraw presents Cognitive Science Insights into Decision Making posted at Fear No Project Blog, saying, “how you make your decisions? Are you watching for other cognitive clues from staff… -
Focus on Coaching: Interview with Kevin Ciccotti
25 Jan 2012 | 12:57 amKevin Ciccotti In the last part of the Focus on Coaching series, I’m interviewing Kevin Ciccotti, CPCC, ACC. Kevin is a coach who has chosen to work specifically with PMPs (although I expect he’d work with any project managers). I asked him why. Kevin, how did you get into coaching? I will say my path to coaching was not exactly a straight line. I spent many years working in different organizations, from hotel-casinos (I grew up and still live in Reno, Nevada), to airlines, and a few others before ‘settling in’ and working for more than 25 years for a world-class manufacturing… -
How do you deal with a bad day?
23 Jan 2012 | 12:44 amIn this video I ask 9 project managers how they deal with a bad day at work. With thanks to Todd, Samad, Nathaniel, Cindy, Adrienne, Cornelius, Taryn, Dave and Melanie. Filmed on location at PMI Global Congress North America 2011 in Dallas/Fort Worth. Related posts: Video Diary: PMI Global Congress North America, 25 October 2011 This episode of my video diary from Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, covers my final day at PMI’s Global Congress North America. Thanks to Taryn, Jeff, Satish,... Video Diary: PMI Global Congress North America, 24 October 2011 This episode of my video diary from… -
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome contest winner
20 Jan 2012 | 12:51 amAt the end of last year I ran a contest to giveaway a pile of books worth about £65 to one of the people who bought Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: Ten Steps to Stop Feeling Like a Fraud at Work when it was first launched. The winner was… Lucy from Milton Keynes, UK. Congratulations, Lucy! You won copies of: All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource by Curt Finch A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management by Penny Pullan and Ruth Murray-Webster Get Started Using Social Media on Your Projects (ebook) by me Social Media for Project Managers by me If… -
Focus on Coaching: The Project Management Coaching Workbook
18 Jan 2012 | 12:43 amThis short series is looking at coaching in a project management environment. Today, I’m reviewing The Project Management Coaching Workbook by Susanne Madsen (Management Concepts, 2011). “It is not your ability to manage tasks and resources that will set you apart,” writes Susanne Madsen in her new book, The Project Management Coaching Workbook. “It is your ability to manage relationships and lead the team to success through your vision and engagement. As much as knowledge matters, it is your drive, confidence, and attitude that will really help you get your projects…
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B2B Bliss
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Beyond the Crisis
20 Jan 2012 | 8:19 amI’ll never forget where I was on May 21, 2007. What’s the significance, you might ask? Well, I was just about seven months into my first healthcare public relations job when the news broke. The New England Journal of Medicine published results of an analysis of data from over 40 clinical trials that found a 43% increased risk of heart attack among type 2 diabetes patients. These were not just any patients though. These were patients treated with a blockbuster diabetes medication – the very medication that I and a team of 10 strong had been working to support. A marquee client, if you… -
What Pharma and Finance Marketers Can Teach One Another
19 Jan 2012 | 8:17 amLast week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Drug Reps Soften Their Sales Pitches.” In it, Jonathan D. Rockoff reports that several drug companies (including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck& Co and Eli Lily & Co) told sales reps to stop “detailing” doctors with aggressive, tightly-scripted sales pitches and instead provide information that doctors really want – i.e., patient education materials, caregiver resources and reimbursement guidelines. In the process, physician satisfaction has improved and drug sales are rising. With this shift, big pharma has discovered… -
Why CEO Passion Matters for B2B Public Relations Programs
18 Jan 2012 | 12:04 pmThe idea for this post struck me as I was reading the back of a frozen fish sticks bag. I’m sure it sounds odd, but so was the fact that the messaging stuck with me. I was first drawn in by the description – that they add only 35% breading vs. 50% of most national brands. But what really caught my attention, surprisingly, was the picture of the founder and chairman of the company (Trident Seafoods) on the bag, followed by a message describing the fish they catch, the preparation process and his commitment and confidence in their products. The note ends with an email address and invitation… -
The Client Project that Made Me Smile the Most This Year
12 Jan 2012 | 8:42 amFun, for me, is: Holding my 6 year old upside down until he giggles Watching the Golden Globes instead of the Giants this weekend Sneaking a good piece of fiction into my business travel Sometimes work is not fun. There are lots of good reasons for that. Budgets grow smaller, project scopes change and turnover happens. Once in awhile, you have a project that puts a smile on your face. This one made my year a little brighter. Our client, Life University, is the world’s largest chiropractic school. They have a mission that goes way beyond Chiropractic, though. Simply put, they want you to… -
SlideShare: B2B Marketing’s Dark Horse
9 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pmSlideShare is the flickr of PowerPoint presentations (or as we sometimes dread to call them – decks). Similar to the popular photo sharing site, SlideShare allows users to publish presentations they’ve created, while viewers can download the presentations, embed them in blog posts or web sites, or share them with social networks. In case you haven’t figured it out yet – this makes SlideShare an ideal platform for B2B companies. B2B businesses tend to be chock full of presentations. For the most part, these are presentations that can easily be repurposed for marketing…
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Blog
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Accept Customer, Ultimate Software, is Named #25 of the Top 100 Places to Work
24 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pmLast week, Ultimate Software, a provider of HR solutions, was named by Fortune as the #25 of the 100 best companies to work for in 2012. We’d like to take a minute to congratulate one of our longtime customers for a job well done. -
Who Knew Accept Software Was So New?
20 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pmBig Data. First companies collected it, then they processed it, and then they trapped it, siloed it, and caused the collective scratching of heads. Voila, a new data problem of mass proportion. -
The Story of the Little Accept Sticker
17 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pmOkay. So with all the permutations of branding a small company goes through to get to the one that drives their success, we are not sure if this little Accept sticker is really ours. But, gosh, what if it is? And what if this Fortune 500 phone company whose name we can't mention was so happy that we solved their Complex, with a capital "C", product planning issues that they made this little sticker themselves? Maybe they wanted to proudly show off the people who let them go home early because they have software that doesn't require them to run around collecting data for their stressed out… -
When the Stars Line Up
13 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pmInc. Magazine's senior editor and tech expert Lindsay Blakely wonders what it will take to keep the thousands of startups like those at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) from becoming shining stars. Accept Software CEO John Hamm thinks they need to "get their innovation right." -
Cindy F. Solomon on Product Roadmapping
7 Dec 2011 | 4:30 pmJoin us for a live webinar featuring guest speaker Cindy F. Solomon (@cindyfsolomon) of Global Product Management Talk (#prodmgmttalk) and Hari Candadai of Accept Software as they discuss the strategic and technical roadmapping capabilities and expertise necessary to communicate product direction and strategy with the right level of detail to the right audience at the right time. During this session, learn to use roadmaps as a strategic tool to communicate an objective and compelling story to key audiences and stakeholders, sustain customers, and respond to changing market dynamics and…
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OutsideIn View
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Not Everyone Wants to Play Games
20 Jan 2012 | 7:55 am(Cross posted on onproductmanagement.net) All over the web and in all the product management communities, there are articles and discussions about gamification. If you’ve been offline for a while, gamification is about applying design and development efforts to software in a way to make it more engaging, more “fun.” Not only have whole applications been born under the premise (i.e. Foursquare), but gamification has also had great impact in some of the more traditional business software, (ie. Salesforce.com) allowing for more interaction and amusement when performing daily tasks. I’m… -
Santa Claus is Coming to Town…for Product Managers
16 Dec 2011 | 10:31 am(Cross posted on onproductmanagement.net) This year’s holiday tune was a bit harder to write. It seems that people are all over the place with how their year has progressed – some good, some bad, some hurried, some slowed. But, isn’t it great to know that a life in product management is certainly unpredictable? Happy Holidays. (To the tune of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, preferably in the styling of Bruce Springsteen. It is a bit clunky, but it works. ) ——– You better watch out You better not pout Better plan well For this I can tell The planned release is due up right now… -
Make it Simple
8 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm(This article is cross-posted at onproductmanagement.net) This is a simple post about being simple. I was thrilled and honored to have a visit by my good friend, Jim Holland, for the recent Product Camp in Minnesota. While he was here, he scanned my business book shelf and borrowed a book, my copy of Seth Godin’s “Poke the Box.” Jim enjoyed the short read and wrote a nice blog post based on his learning from it; in exchange, he brought me a small token gift, a simple non-descript cube that has somehow changed my life. The product is the One Less Drop by Heckler Design. What does it do? -
Bad to the Bone
3 Nov 2011 | 11:00 pm(This article is cross-posted at onproductmanagement.net) In this week’s #prodmgmttalk, (on Twitter Mondays at 4 pm pacific) there was a big discussion on what to do with “bad” customers; how did they get to be called “bad”; how do we know they are “bad”; and, what do you do with them. It’s amazing how many points you can make in 140 characters, in a 20 minute timeframe! While there was enough content to write a book on a “bad” customer, the focus here is to understand why your product even has “bad customers”. First, let’s get rid of the word “bad”. It implies… -
Get Some Rhythm
14 Oct 2011 | 12:30 am(This article is cross-posted at onproductmanagement.net) In several online forums/blogs recently, there has been a lot of talk and discussion about “how often do I update this?” “Change that?” “Do this?” There was a specific thread that was related to a question about a product roadmap, but I’ve also seen the same question about web content, marketing communication pieces, customer visits and other outward facing activities. Our product professional peers are looking for some schedule so they can plug the activity into their calendar and update x, y or z regularly. But, a…
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A Random Jog
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The Rise of the Product Marketer
23 Jan 2012 | 12:42 pmLast week we had a guest post from Dave Wolpert that resulted in a thoughtful discussion on the role of Product Marketing and whether or not it was on the decline. In this follow-up, I am going to give my thoughts on the role. In most businesses there is a gap between marketing and product that must be filled. Without an audience, a great product has nowhere to go. Likewise, a great marketing strategy can’t save you from a woeful product. I believe that business success can be found when you match a great product with a great marketing plan and this is where Product Marketing can have… -
The End of Product Marketing
18 Jan 2012 | 3:41 pmI would like to introduce our guest blogger Dave Wolpert who has a very interesting opinion on the state of Product Marketing to share. Dave is the Founder and Principal of Swordfish Communications, a product marketing and content marketing services firm in Austin, Texas. Previously, he was a product marketer at pcOrder.com, BroadJump, Convio, and LibreDigital. You can also find Swordfish on Twitter at @SwordfishComm. Enjoy the post and looking forward to hearing your thoughts. The product marketing function in tech companies is heading for extinction. The work product marketers… -
Start With The Customer Product Marketing Podcast #10 – Getting a Product Job
12 Jan 2012 | 7:47 amIn this week’s edition of the Start with the Customer Product Marketing Podcast, I am honored to be joined by Tim Johnson, of It’s About Value, and Scott Sehlhorst, of Tyner Blain. Our topic of the call was how to get a job in product marketing or product management. Tim and Scott both share their advice and experience on transitioning into the role and what they would look for when hiring now. We also touch on some of the expanding responsibility of a product marketer and the growing need for customer engagement. You can listen here: or download from iTunes and from TalkShoe… -
Groupon Wants You To Punish Derrick
8 Jan 2012 | 9:53 pmDuring the holidays, I went through my inbox and unsubscribed from the many vendors that over the last 12 months have continuously sent me offers with little to no value. The process to unsubscribe is usually pretty straightforward and uneventful. Then came Groupon with this short video: Needless to say that I did punish Derrick (it’s not you Derrick, it’s me). The simple addition of this video actually got me to re-consider whether or not I should unsubscribe from Groupon. Well just for a few seconds. Seriously how many more white teeth cleaning offers can I consume within a… -
24 Marketing Books for 2012
5 Jan 2012 | 4:58 pmOne of my New Year resolution is to read more books. Author and blogger Julien Smith spent 2011 reading a book a week. Why a book a week? Julien’s answers, It feels awesome. It gives you an amazing amount of ideas. It helps you think more thoroughly. It’s better than TV and even the internet. It makes you understand the world more. It is a building block towards a habit of completion. Did I mention it feels awesome? I love the idea and the commitment to making it a habit. However, with work, family, and finding some time to write a few blog posts and podcasts, I don’t think I…
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svpg blog
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Product Management Then and Now
23 Jan 2012 | 8:09 amOccasionally in my work with technology product teams around the world, I run into product managers that are still practicing the role as it used to be defined back in the PC era of technology. These organizations are inevitably frustrated, as the role was not terribly effective and often not respected. There are many possible reasons why these organizations have never moved forward. Perhaps the leaders are simply perpetuating what they learned many years ago. Perhaps the organization received "training" from one of the many non-technology firms that try to apply their models of… -
Measuring Innovation
11 Dec 2011 | 7:07 pmMeasuring innovation is a popular topic lately. Many product teams use Product Scorecards to keep their focus on outcomes rather than output. Eric Ries introduced the term “Innovation Accounting” for this purpose as well. However, as much as I like and advocate for these techniques of measuring true improvement to your products rather than just adding features, if this is all you look at, over time you run the very real risk of falling into The Innovator’s Dilemma.I am perhaps overly attracted to the concept of building enduring companies. I attribute… -
Product Manager vs. Product Owner
6 Dec 2011 | 10:11 amAll too often I run into companies that have resigned themselves to having two different people covering the product role. Usually the way they split it is they have one person responsible for interacting with customers and stakeholders (which they often call the product manager), and another to interact with the development team and manage the backlog (which they usually call the product owner).The reasoning is typically because they don’t have someone with either the skills or the time required to commit to covering both.There are many “product managers” that are not… -
MVP vs. Product Vision
31 Oct 2011 | 3:40 amEarlier I expanded on the notion of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and I promised a series of articles that explores aspects of MVP that often cause product teams confusion. In this article, I’d like to discuss the relationship between the MVP and the Product Vision. As a reminder, the Product Vision describes the types of services you intend to provide, and the types of customers you intend to serve, typically over a 2-5 year timeframe. When I meet a startup, or begin working with a team that has an ambitious new project, we typically start with the Product Vision. … -
Lean Thinking
13 Oct 2011 | 2:13 pmA while ago I posted an article on people that I think have something really valuable to say to product leaders. One of those people I discussed was Eric Ries, author of the blog http://www.startuplessonslearned.com. I also promised that I’d share a glossary to map the nomenclature and concepts he uses with the terminology I use in my writing and my work with product teams. I held off a little on this because he has been working on a book which has just recently been published, called “The Lean Startup” and in this article I’d like to discuss the key…
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Optimal Product Management and Product Marketing ™
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Optimal Product Process Book
16 Jan 2012 | 11:31 amOptimal Product Process book now available! We are VERY excited to announce the availability of our newest book in the 280 Group Press series: Optimal Product Process A Modern and Flexible Standard for Highly-Effective Product Management and Product Marketing. The book describes the standard product process that all products go through, including seven phases during the lifecycle. Based on the worldwide standard ProdBOK from AIPMM, the Optimal Product Process can help your company to do Product Management and Product Marketing much more effectively. And the best thing is that you can download… -
Product Management New Year’s Resolution: Just Say No (Gracefully)!
9 Jan 2012 | 4:18 pmAs product managers we are constantly bombarded with requests: Put this new feature in the product! Drop everything - I need you to travel to a customer and do a product demo! Quick, give me a competitive selling sheet by tomorrow! We don't have a tech writer - you need to write the manual! You have to talk to this customer and explain why our product can't do what they want! And the list could go on and on... If you don't learn to firmly say "No" then you become what we here at the 280 Group call a "Product Janitor" - always cleaning up other's messes and doing the work that no one else… -
Lean Product Management Book
27 Oct 2011 | 11:32 amLooking for some new ideas on product management? Want to know the four key product-market fit challenges? Check out 280 Group’s latest book, Lean Product Management. Download the advanced reader copy now! -
Henry Ford and the Faster Horse
21 Sep 2011 | 12:44 amGuest post by Jeni Sall, CEO of Genesis Research Associates You’ve probably heard it a hundred times, even though there’s no evidence that Henry Ford ever said it: “If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would’ve said ‘a faster horse.’” Regardless of whether he said it or not, though, the statement does capture a widespread belief: “I know better. I’m the expert. Why should I take the time or spend the money to ask those [ignorant] consumers about an area they know nothing about?!” Let’s pretend that Henry Ford did say that consumers would ask for a “faster… -
Why has Apple been so successful in the marketplace, when most products fail?
2 Sep 2011 | 3:36 pmWe know from multiple studies that over 70% of products fail in the marketplace. Given that, then why has Apple has had such a significant streak of hit products over the past decade or more? Is it all Steve Jobs? Are there other factors, other causes? A strong set of best practices? Do you believe the often-repeated statements that Apple does no market research? As a product manager or product marketing manager, what do you think?
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MindTheProduct
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A Skype Group Chat for Product Managers
23 Jan 2012 | 8:52 amOkily dokily, this is a bit of a lunch-time experiment. @bfgmartin, @simoncast, @simplybastow and I are always in a group Skype chat together – primarily for MindTheProduct/ProductTank/ProductCamp stuff but we’ve found it really useful to be able to bounce ideas and ask questions from three other Product Managers and get a quick response. I’ve been wondering if this might work on a larger scale, so I’d like to try it out quickly.“But there’s Twitter and hashtags or IRC or email?!” – yes yes but there must be a reason that the four of us prefer… -
What would you do as a Product Manager on Google+?
13 Jan 2012 | 7:32 amMy real gripe with the Product Vision behind Google+ is… it doesn’t appear to have one. Forget the criticisms of Google+ tactics – instead let’s take a look at their strategy and get constructive.In order to make this worthwhile, we first have to reverse engineer what the goal of Google+ might be. I don’t work at Google and admittedly, I know nothing more than the average outsider but one could assume quite safely – regardless of whether the objective is social signals, data, or advertising – that the goal looks something like “own a major social… -
Gift Ideas for your Favourite Product Manager
16 Dec 2011 | 2:19 pmWith the holiday season just around the corner, we’re all scrambling to find the perfect gift for those who made a difference in our lives this year.Have you got a product manager you’d like to treat to something special this holiday season? We’ve compiled a list of great gifts your producteer will surely drool over.Ultimate Ears 600vi Noise-Isolating HeadsetIn the bustle of an active office, it can be tough to properly get your scope down and focus on either those finer details of a product or the larger vision. Tune out with a pair of noise isolating headphones, without… -
API’s in your product – the good, the bad, the ugly
12 Dec 2011 | 6:30 amIt is all the rage to use 3rd party APIs in products, such as Twitter, Facebook Connect, DirectedEdge and more. APIs provide additional data or functionality such as user-authentication or product-recommendations. They can provide your product with fast access to data and features that would otherwise take a lot of resources and time to do yourself. They are particularly useful for getting that prototype up and running.But there are drawbacks to using 3rd party APIs. Unless you go in with open eyes, these drawbacks can cause serious problems for your product as it matures.Lack of control… -
“The Week” iPad App – Lessons Learned From A Product Manager
8 Dec 2011 | 5:30 amThis is a guest post by Alex Watson, Head of App Development at Dennis Publishing, recalling his lessons learned as product lead on a major iPad app.Empathy maps are a really good way of pooling everyone on the team’s knowledge about your users, and what they’re thinking, saying and feeling.The biggest digital project at Dennis this year has been the development of an iPad edition of The Week magazine. Representing over nine months of hard work, we launched the app in November, and now that I’ve had time to look back on the project, there are some important lessons from it that I…
