Product Management

• 
  Ask A Good Product Manager

• How do I position a new version of an existing product and avoid cannibalization?

  jefflash

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:21 pm

  Question: How do I position a new version of an existing product and avoid cannibalization? We have a server-based software product and we are introducing a new desktop-based product. The products have the same features, they just differ in how they are installed. Rather than the new product replacing the existing one, we want both products to continue to exist in parallel, though obviously the goal is to increase revenue overall. What are some techniques and approaches to launch the new product without it having a negative impact on our sales? Answer from Mara Krieps of Pivotal Product…

• What goes in to a product strategy besides goals, objectives, and tactics?

  jefflash

  21 Jun 2009 | 6:40 pm

  Question: How do product goals, objectives, and tactics relate to the product strategy? Are your goals/objectives and tactics essentially the product strategy? If you’ve defined what you want to achieve (goals), the way that they can be measured (objectives), and then the plans for how to get there (tactics), isn’t this essentially your product strategy? Answer from Janey Wong of brainmates: A product strategy does include goals, objectives, and tactics; however, what differentiates it from other strategic documents is the purpose and supporting content that explains — and…

• How can I avoid cannibalization with a new product?

  jefflash

  1 Jun 2009 | 7:32 pm

  Question: How can I avoid cannibalizing sales of an existing product with a new product? I have an existing product that I am planning to introduce a new update version. The update version is needed due to competition. My question is how to manage the new product planning so that it will not impact the sales of the existing product, or at least minimize impact on current sales. For example: How late I should go to avoid letting sales and/or customers know about the new product? And what are the considerations to migrate existing customers to buy new product? Answer from Bob Corrigan of…

• How to go from sales engineer to product manager?

  jefflash

  21 May 2009 | 7:00 pm

  Question: How can I transition from being a sales engineer to being in product management? I have been a sales engineer for the past 10 years or so, and would like to move into product management. How can I best make the transition? Should I target specific sizes or types of companies? My thoughts are that a startup would want a seasoned professional, but perhaps a mid- to large-size company might be willing to hire someone who had not had a PM position before. Answer from Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing: Small companies seem more inclined to take risks; larger companies may tend to…

• How can I determine the saleability of an innovative new product?

  jefflash

  29 Mar 2009 | 4:34 am

  Question: How can I determine the need and saleability of a “new to the world” of product? I am developing an innovative product which is truly “new” to the industry. How can I determine the need and saleability of this type of product? Answer from Alain Breillatt of Picture Imperfect: This is a question every product manager will likely face at some time in his or her career and it is one of the more complex challenges due to the multi-faceted answer it requires. But let’s start at the most basic assumption: you know who your initial customers are and…

• 
  Rymatech - PMV Webinars

• Towards Compositional Software Product Lines

  Val Workman

  11 Nov 2009 | 5:05 am

  Jan Bosch, VP Engineering Process at Intuit About the Webinar: RYMA's December 2nd Webinar will be presented at noon Eastern Time by Jan Bosch of Intuit. Software product lines present the first successful approach to intra-organizational reuse. Companies that successfully deployed software product line technology were able to achieve order of magnitude growth over a decade or achieve major business milestones and the talk will present several of these. Our experience with dozens of companies shows that successful product lines, however, over time suffer from increasing dependencies the…

• Introduction to the SEI Framework for Software Product Line Practice

  Val Workman

  3 Nov 2009 | 12:12 pm

  Patrick Donohoe, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University Download Slides HERE About the Webinar: RYMA's November 11th Webinar was presented by Patrick Donohoe of the SEI. This is part two of a three-part series on Software Product Line Management. Also watch for part three "An Implementation and Maintenance Case Study." Software product lines have emerged as a new software development paradigm of great importance. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems sharing a common, managed set of features, that satisfy the specific needs of a particular market…

• "Where the Wild Thngs Are":Social Media's Influence on Market Research

  Val Workman

  21 Oct 2009 | 7:03 am

  Jim Holland, Founder and principle consultant Mission Creek Partners DownLoad Slides Here About the Webinar: RYMA's October 28th Webinar was presented by Jim Holland. Social media - its conversations and content have opened avenues to untapped audiences, unconstrained demographics and unbridled opinions. But lurking in the forest are all types of distractions, information and potential monsters that may lead you astray. As product management, is there value lurking "where the wild things are?" In the forest of conversations, connections and content, should product management venture in search…

• Software Product Lines: An Effective Business and Development Strategy

  Val Workman

  19 Oct 2009 | 6:51 am

  John D. McGregor, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Clemson University Down load slides Here About the Webinar: RYMA's November 4th Webinar was presented by John McGregor. This is Part-One of an exciting Three-Part Series on Software Product Line Management. Also watch for Part-Two from SEI, presenting the Software Product Line Framework, and Part-Three "An Implementation and Maintenance Case Study". By attending this webinar you will take away an improved understanding of the characteristics that are indicative of product line success and how these characteristics support innovation,…

• "Why" Frame of mind

  Val Workman

  29 Sep 2009 | 5:49 am

  This is the fourth webinar in our CxO webinar series, where the C-Level perspective is presented concerning issues and objectives, and in this case mindset of product marketing and management.Gregory Yankelovich, co-founder of Amplified Analytics Inc. Down Load Slides HERE About the Webinar: RYMA's October 21th Webinar was presented by Gregory Yankelovich. He presented a discussion on a CxO frame of reference. He provided examples of translating product business requirements, marketing slang and political statements into economically meaningful proposals. Many times it can become a challenge…

• 
  Product Management 2.0» Product Management & Product Marketing Experts

• When to quit your product management job

  Brian

  9 Nov 2009 | 9:16 am

  Not sure whether to leave your current product management job? In my opinion one of the worst things you can do is stay too long if you are unhappy. If you do then  you may become branded as being jaded or negative, which can hurt your career for years to come. I have personally stayed in a few positions for too long only to realize once I moved on that it was a huge relief. With that as the background here are the top ten reasons why you might just want to brush up that resume and start looking: You have an engineering group that has no desire to be part of a team You are no longer…

• PM 2.0 Newsletter Oct 30, 2009

  Brian

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:14 pm

  Events Product Management Education Conference (PMEC) Nov 16-17, San Jose, CA. I am delivering the keynote address “How to be a Phenomenal Product Manager” at the PMEC, will be doing a book signing for The Phenomenal Product Manager and will be part of the Product Management Battle of the Bloggers (anyone can attend the blogger battle for free). Greg Cohen of the 280 Group is also delivering our new course, Excellence in Agile Product Management, as track one during the first day. You may have attended a Pcamp or a local Product Management Association event, which are great ways…

• Product Management Education Conference Nov 16-17 San Jose, CA

  Brian

  23 Oct 2009 | 1:32 pm

  Please join us at the 2009 Product Management Education Conference (PMEC) in San Jose, CA November 16 and 17. The theme this year will be “Cracking The Code: Deciphering The Secrets From The Inside”. To make sure you can’t resist attending the AIPMM and the 280 Group have put together an incredible deal for you - you can save up to $999 when you attend the conference and purchase the Certified Product Manager Self-Study Course and Exam  OR the Agile Certified Product Manager Self-Study Course and Exam and the Product Management Office Professional. If you haven’t…

• “All About Product Management Certification” webinar now available.

  Brian

  19 Oct 2009 | 11:08 am

  Recorded webinar is available at http://bit.ly/kk8g8. Slides are at www.280group.com/cert.pdf. Complete comparison of 280 Group certifications can be found at: http://bit.ly/1WoYO1 Comparison table of all 280 Group certs at: http://www.280group.com/cpm/280certs.pdf. NOTE: The $300 special offers for the AIPMM CPM/CPMM and Agile CPM as well as the $500 specials for the 280 Group Blackblot training course and cert are still good, but expire shortly.

• Competitive Analysis Toolkit & New PM Office Released

  Brian

  14 Oct 2009 | 5:48 pm

  We are very excited to announce the release of our newest product: The Competitive Analysis Toolkit ™. The competitive analysis toolkit is a comprehensive set of templates and a narrated training course that will help you to quickly and thoroughly tear apart your competition in record time. We are also releasing version 2.0 of our award-winning Product Management Office™ Professional. Version 2.0 adds the competitive analysis toolkit to give you all seven of our toolkits (Product Manager’s, Roadmaps, Launches, Product Reviews, Beta Programs, Competitive Analysis and Developer…

• 
  Rocket Watcher

• Trafcom News Podcast: Product Management and Social Media

  April Dunford

  9 Nov 2009 | 7:17 pm

  At ProductCamp Toronto a few weeks back I got a chance to sit down with Donna Papacosta of the Trafcom News Podcast.  Donna does a high quality podcast that's a must-listen for communications, PR or Marketing folks.  In our conversation we touched on the subject of how Product Managers should be using social media and talked a bit about how Product Managers should work with PR/Communications to get to "Communications Utopia".Go ahead, click on the link to have a listen.  It's not every day you get to hear my awe-inspiring Canadian accent in all its glory.Subscribe to this blog or follow me…

• Marketing Lessons from Foursquare

  April Dunford

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Foursquare is a location-based social networking application that's been described "Twitter for locations."  It lets users subscribe to each other and the information shared is about where you are rather than what you are doing.  It's been rolling out on a city by city basis over the past few months.  I finally got a chance to try it and I think there are some interesting things that marketers can learn from foursquare.   Winning is Fun - unlike Twitter, foursquare has been designed as a game. Users earn points for checking in and foursquare publishes a leaderboard for your friends…

• Can B2B Products be "Social Objects"?

  April Dunford

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:26 pm

  A couple of weeks back I attended MeshMarketing and Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid was the keynote speaker.  In his talk he discussed "social objects".  By his definition a "social object" can be a thing a person or an idea that people talk about.  Hugh talked about working at an ad agency where customers would ask them to get people talking about products like it was as easy thing to do.  His comment was (I'm paraphrasing) "Getting people talking is magic!  They were asking us to perform magic but their perception was that we were just pulling a lever."  His described how people talk about…

• Microsoft and the Market for "Everything"

  April Dunford

  19 Oct 2009 | 9:53 am

  The lead story in the Sunday New York Times Business section this week focused on Microsoft's broad business strategy.  Titled "Forecast for Microsoft: Partly Cloudy", the piece included interesting quotes from various Microsoft executives discussing how cloud computing fits into their overall strategy and how they differentiate themselves.  This paragraph caught my attention:(Microsoft CEO) Steve Ballmer contends that Microsoft is the only company prepared and positioned to merge computing from both ends - the desktop and the cloud.  "We're just investing more broadly than everybody…

• Collateral Damage: Building a Content Plan

  April Dunford

  14 Oct 2009 | 4:26 pm

  I remember when building collateral used to be a large part of a product marketer's job.  A lousy part.  I remember the last brochure I worked on like it was yesterday.  Getting it done was a nightmare of epic arguments over screen shots, customer quotes and whether or not to include the mailing address for the European office we expected to close within a month.  The project went on for weeks and once it was done we didn't look at again for a year, mainly because we didn't have the budget to update it but also because we were traumatized.Old-style collateral was all centered around the…

• 
  Tyner Blain

• SEO Product Management

  Scott Sehlhorst

  10 Nov 2009 | 7:36 am

  SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is an area that every online website needs to think about.  The idea is that the more traffic you can get to your website, the more products you’ll sell.  Just because you can lead a horse to water doesn’t mean you can make him drink.  What a great opportunity to product manage your website and ask why about SEO. SEO When you’re building a website, you have four primary channels by which you get traffic (visitors) to your site: Direct Traffic – people who type in the URL (address) of a page on your website directly into their…

• Design-Free Requirements

  Scott Sehlhorst

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:16 am

  Design-Free requirements are important for two reasons, and hard for two other reasons. Design-free requirements are hard because you “know what you want” when you should be documenting “why you want it.”  Writing design-free requirements can be hard when you don’t trust your development team to “do the right thing” even though it is not your job to design the solution. Design-Free Requirements – Revisiting It has been three years since I wrote Writing Design-Free Requirements as part of The Big Ten Rules of Writing Requirements.  In that…

• Foundation Series: Cross-Selling and Upselling

  Scott Sehlhorst

  28 Oct 2009 | 9:40 pm

  You have an eCommerce site.  You sell products online.  Do you cross-sell additional products?  Do you upsell to better products?  This article explains the difference between cross-sell and upsell, and looks at some real-world data about the effectiveness of both. Cross-Sell and Upsell – What Are They? Cross-selling and upselling are marketing techniques that are applied during the sales process to increase the value of the transaction to both the buyer and the seller.  Technically, they only increase the value to the seller – but they should also be increasing the value to…

• Agile Prioritization: Which Widget?

  Scott Sehlhorst

  19 Oct 2009 | 8:54 pm

  Your company is building out a toolkit to support third-party developers.  You’ll need a bunch of different types of widgets – combo-boxes, text entry fields, domain-specific controls, etc.  You’ve got a long list of desired controls from your customers.  You’re agile.  What do you build first? Agile In A Soundbite Being agile is about delivering incremental value, quickly, getting feedback, and then delivering more incremental value.  Repeat until “done.”  Good agile adds a qualifier – do the most valuable thing quickly, get feedback, do the…

• Modeling User Competency

  Scott Sehlhorst

  13 Oct 2009 | 9:40 pm

  Perpetually intermediate (competent) users.  Users who briefly exist as novice users and never become experts. Most of your users are competent, and you should design for them.  Competent users have different needs and different expectations than novice or expert users.  How do you know your user’s competency levels, so you can design for them? User Competency User competency is a concept I first read about in Alan Cooper’s The Inmates Are Running The Asylum.  Cooper’s contention is that the level of expertise of your users follows a bell curve, or normal distribution.

• 
  ProductMarketing.com

• product management survey: comments for the president

  Steve Johnson

  11 Nov 2009 | 4:44 am

  "If you could say one thing to your company president without fear of reprisal, it would be..." Want to add your comments? Take Pragmatic Marketing's Product Management and Marketing Benchmark Survey for 2009-2010. (image courtesy of Wordle)

• Let's play "Req or Spec": import text files

  Steve Johnson

  10 Nov 2009 | 5:15 am

  There's often confusion about what is a requirement and what is a specification. Let's play "Req or Spec." Is this a requirements or a specification? Which is this? How would you improve it? Add your comment below. See On Reqs and Specs for more.

• Readibility

  Steve Johnson

  9 Nov 2009 | 10:10 am

  Have you checked out Readibility? It makes most websites easier to read. And a great design itself! But alas, not a great tool for reading productmarketing.com.

• 6 Nov 2009 | 6:21 am

  Steve Johnson

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:21 am

  Join me later today for Role of Product Management When Development Goes Agile with Rich Mironov of Enthiosys on November 6, 2009 at 10am-11am PST (1pm-2pm EST). We'll explore the new Pragmatic Marketing framework with focus on agile teams. Some old material and some new stuff. Maybe even some new jokes!

• Friday fun: Cell Size and Scale

  Steve Johnson

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:14 am

  Well, this is just totally cool! Cell Size and Scale.A clever product management remark about data visualization should go here but I can't think of what it would be so just imagine that I said some clever, if you please. (Thanks to Kathy Sierra @KathySierra for the link)

• 
  On Product Management

• Surprise us: Seeking examples of SURPRISING positioning statements

  Alan

  10 Nov 2009 | 10:37 am

  We write a lot here, and we hope that it helps you. Now I’m looking for your input. Can you help? If you do, I will feature you on our blog. But I need the responses within 1 day! The request I am looking for examples of positioning that takes the buyer by surprise. The classic example of this is AVIS, as told and retold by Ries and Trout in their classic books on marketing and positioning. AVIS was not the leader in its category, so it claimed a different position: “We are only #2, but we try harder.” Very few companies would be willing to admit that they have a #2…

• Battlin’ Bloggers

  Ethan

  8 Nov 2009 | 12:10 pm

  On behalf of Saeed, Alan and myself, I’ll be speaking on November 17th at the 2009 AIPMM Product Management Educational Conference in the Battle of the Bloggers. Come and see me prove that three heads are better than one when it comes to Product Management blogging. (The full conference runs Nov 16th & 17th) Posted in Ethan, PMEC, Product Management Blogs

• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 4)

  saeed

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:31 pm

  This is part 4 of the series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. In this part, I’ll take a look at whether the industry can get out of the mess it’s in. Looking back Before looking forward, let’s take a look back at some ads from a couple of decades ago. Click each image to enlarge. Notice something about these ads? They all look rather similar. Pictures of (similar looking) computers and lots of text! Check out those headlines. “A new way of personal-professional computation”???? What’s that all about? Is it a personal computer or a professional…

• PM Open House Nov. 5 @ Forrester Research

  saeed

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:49 pm

  If you in the Bay Area on Thursday November 5, make sure you take some time in the afternoon to attend the Product Management Open House at Forrester Research in Foster City. Location: Forrester Research HQ Address: 950 Tower Lane, Suite 1200, Foster City Time: 4:00 to 5:30 PM More details can be found here. Kindly RSVP  Marsha Versen (mversen@forrester.com, 650.581.3851) if you are interested in attending. If you have questions about the event, please contact Tom Grant (tgrant@forrester.com, 650.581.3846). I honestly miss being in the Bay Area because of the numerous events like this one.

• Taking the “mess” out of Messaging (part 3)

  saeed

  1 Nov 2009 | 5:34 am

  Continuing this series (click the links for part 1 and part 2), let’s look at the following question: How can we get out of this mess? Given the problems cited in part 2 – laziness, review committees, truthiness – it’s not easy. There are many other reasons of course, and the combination of them makes it difficult to change the behaviour of an entire industry. Differentiate yourself It takes effort, skill and planning to create great messaging. Like many other things, it’s difficult to describe what makes great messaging, but you know it when you see it (or read…

• 
  Write That Down

• Product Management Open House

  Adam Bullied

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:02 am

  There is an open house tomorrow at Forrester being hosted by Tom Grant of the Heretech fame. It starts at 5:30pm, and is happening in order to host lively discussion on, what else, product management and product marketing issues. Specifically for this first session, there will be a focus on how social media is changing product roles within all types and sizes of organizations. If you are in the bay area, be sure to stop by and say hi to Tom!

• reBlog from avc.com: A VC

  Adam Bullied

  28 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  I found this fascinating quote today: If you look at our portfolio, you’ll see quite a few startups created by young visionaries and quite a few startups created by serial entrepreneurs who are swinging for the fences. There isn’t much else to be honest.avc.com, A VC, Oct 2009 You should read the whole article.

• My New Gig

  Adam Bullied

  30 Sep 2009 | 6:25 pm

  I posted earlier today about enjoying my first day at a new gig. And I did – a lot. I thought I would flesh out where I’ve ended up a bit more and what I’m up to. It’s for a company here in Toronto called Frameworks, as their product manager. The software is awesome – it’s B2B, specifically in business performance management. I’m really excited to be working with the talented group there and look forward to doing my part to bring some great products to market! Surely now that I am back to the grindstone, blogging here will pick-up again, which…

• Competitive Analysis – Gathering Marketing Data

  Adam Bullied

  11 Sep 2009 | 8:45 am

  The last component I’ll discuss of the competitive analysis process is culling marketing and sales collateral from your list of identified competitors. Why do this? You want to be acquainted with what they are putting out there. It should give you a sense of how their products are being positioned (however poorly or not). In turn, that should give you a sense of a) how strong your own positioning is and b) positioning around that competitor as a result. These materials can also be used as a quick way to give others in your organization an idea of the lay of the land. It’s better…

• Competitive Analysis Series – Pricing

  Adam Bullied

  9 Sep 2009 | 8:45 am

  One of the regular questions I (and I’m sure others) face when it comes to competitive analysis is, “what are they charging?” This is an especially tricky question to answer accurately. I’ve gone about this in a couple of different ways – obviously, when you are dealing with B2C companies that publicize their prices, it’s simple. But before getting in to potential methods for gathering this data, I wanted to bring up a point as to why this is important information to acquire. The first is sales. When you are assisting your sales team, it’s beneficial…

• 
  Brainmates

• Treat a Website like a Product

  Paul Gray

  11 Nov 2009 | 6:13 pm

  A product is a solution to a customer problem. Whilst this definition may seem simplistic, it applies for most products and services. A website is a tool that solves customer problems and can be defined as a product with a lifecycle and a roadmap. What sort of problems? From a customer perspective: A website solves a specific problem or requirement. These can be categorised as follows: Learn: Share information about new products or services, announcements etc Interact: Users can carry out functions via a website, such as online banking Transact: The sale and purchase of other products or…

• “How To…” Get Customer Feedback and Input Quickly and Easily

  Paul Gray

  9 Nov 2009 | 2:05 pm

  At our recent brainmates Product Talks event, we discussed incorporating customer feedback and input into the product development and ongoing management process. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the attendees felt that despite the importance of this input, many product managers may not spend enough time actually talking with customers - the normal grind of day-to-day work, busy schedules, budgets and other administration means customer interaction often slips down the priority list. All present though said that talking or engaging with customers was invaluable and it got us to thinking of different…

• “How To… ” Position a Product

  Paul Gray

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:44 pm

  Standing out from the crowd Product positioning is an important part of a product marketing strategy. It helps buyers and users understand where a product ‘fits’ in terms what it offers, and how it compares with competing products. Simple example: think of a major car manufacturer like Toyota. It has a number of distinct brands, each of which are designed with particular buyers in mind. Its utility vehicle Hilux is designed for guys that get their hands dirty; it’s small, zippy Yaris on the other hand is for urbanites who use their car for short trips. Why does product…

• Battle of the Bloggers

  Janey

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:41 pm

  On November 17th, I’ll be representing and defending brainmates’ Product Management blog at the PMEC conference in San Jose! I’ll be up against US Product Management bloggers who will also be defending why their blog is the best. To win the battle brainmates needs your help - we need Product People to support us with their vote. If you can’t attend the conference you can support us here by leaving a comment about what you like about our blog. It would be great to share your comments with the audience and judges there. Spread the word and vote brainmates! Thanks to…

• Product Power: LifeStraw

  Janey

  27 Oct 2009 | 6:26 pm

  Although launched several years ago by Vestergaard Frandsen, the LifeStraw is a great reminder of how simple day-to-day products can inspire life-saving products. The LifeStraw is a water filtration system that purifies water at the point-of-source, meaning if you get thirsty while outside of the home all you need to do is find a water source and drink out of this special straw. Limited Access to Safe Drinking Water Statistics from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council state that “more than one billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water - i.e.

• 
  Forrester: Product Management

• The Heretech, episode 27: Rob Koplowitz on SharePoint adoption

  Tom Grant

  10 Nov 2009 | 5:23 pm

  Forrester's Rob Koplowitz tells us how organizations adopt SharePoint, and the lessons learned for other technology vendors. But first, a recap of last week's open house on "social product management," and some musings on the product strategy for Google Wave. (c) 2009 Tom Grant.

• And when Mr. Customer gets angry, PEOPLE DIE!

  Tom Grant

  10 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

  Not every unwelcome change is necessarily a fiasco. It's how you handle the transition that determines, to a large extent, whether people perceive it to be a fiasco. Case in point: Oracle's transition from its creaky but familiar Metalink support site to the new support portal. I'm sure that anyone who has ever been involved in the transition from one web application to its replacement has learned just how many unexpected glitches can creep into the process. Certainly, Oracle has faced similar scenarios, such as when it switched the main corporate web site from a custom-built…

• Is "social product management" for real?

  Tom Grant

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:09 pm

  Here's an important rule of thumb, if you're a researcher such as myself: Don't name something unless it really exists. That sounds fairly obvious, but unfortunately, in the history of the technology industry, there's a sad history of failed neologisms. In some cases, these phrases exaggerated the importance or complexity of some relatively mundane aspect of the world. That's how the superheated usage of the term knowledge management turned into a four letter word. In other cases, people use neologisms designed to describe things that might (or might not) exist in the…

• Reminder, open house on social PM is tomorrow

  Tom Grant

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:12 am

  Just a quick reminder that the "open house" for product managers and product marketers is tomorrow at 4 PM PST at Forrester's office in Foster City, CA (click here for a map). As my earlier post explains, the intent is to kick off a series of informal conversations about topics of interest. For this first open house, we'll be discussing how social media are changing the job descriptions, priorities, deliverables, and required skills for PMs. All are welcome, the event is free, just come on down.

• The Heretech, episode 26: Brian Drummond on Agile at Yahoo!

  Tom Grant

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:10 pm

  Brian Drummond tells us how Agile adoption worked at Yahoo! How did it start? How did different teams share best practices? How do you make Agile the status quo in a big software company? Plus, news of the first PM open house at the Forrester office in Foster City, CA. (c) 2009 Tom Grant

• 
  The Accidental Product Manager

• Is Your Marketing Message Missing The Point?

  Dr. Jim Anderson

  10 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Image Credit Your Marketing Message Has To Be Aligned With Your Customer's Needs If you were going fishing, how much luck catching fish do you think that you would have if you didn’t use any bait on your hook? Sure, there are probably some either dumb or near-sighted fish that might still bite, but you’re going to be doing a lot of sitting around waiting. Is it possible that as a product manger you are fishing for customers for your product without bait? The Problem With Market Assumptions As a product manager you work hard to create a product that meets what you think the…

• Learn To Read Your Customer’s Mind In 3 Simple Steps

  Dr. Jim Anderson

  8 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Image Credit Teach Your Sales Teams How To Get In Their Customer's Heads... Just shut-up and buy my product! In fact, while you are at it, buy a lot of my product. If only we could really tell our potential customers this then life would be so much simpler. However, try this little verbal outburst just once and then you’ll have a chance to sit back and spend some time polishing your resume as you look for your next product manager job. If you really want people to buy more of your product, then do what I’ve done – learn how to read minds… How Most Product Mangers…

• AccPM Poll Results: Do people read and take actions based on your emails?

  Dr. Jim Anderson

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. The question this past week was “Do people read and take actions based on your emails?“ The take-away from your responses to this week’s question is two-fold: first, people are reading your emails (that’s the good part), secondly it sure looks like it’s a mixed bag as to your emails having the impact that you are looking for. The sad thing here is that if your emails are not causing the actions that you want / need to have happen, it sure looks like…

• Product Manager Why Aren’t You Doing A Better Job Of Managing Your Sales Team?

  Dr. Jim Anderson

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Image Credit Product Success Depends On How Well You Manage Your Sales Team... I don’t care if your product turns lead into gold, if your salespeople don’t go out there and do a good job of selling your product then you won’t be a product manager for long. I’ll agree that you are not running the sales department, in fact you are probably not even part of the sales department; however, your product’s life depends on what that department does with your product so you had better start managing your salespeople. Walking A Very Careful Line For those of you who may be…

• Too Much Choice Is Bad: Customers Don’t Want To Do Your Job For You

  Dr. Jim Anderson

  1 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Image Credit Asda Is About To Make A Terrible Product Management Mistake... Shopping for groceries is a pain. Being forced to do a grocery store’s job for them is a bigger pain. The U.K. supermarket chain Asda (owned and operated by Wal-Mart) is #2 in their market and they want to be #1. Their product managers have come up with a truly horrible plan to get there. A Bad Plan From The Start Sure, product managers everywhere would like to find a way to get closer to our customers. The grocery store business is no exception – it’s hyper-competitive. However, over at Asda…

• 
  enthiosys agile product management

• Nov-11-09: Transitioning to Agile Product Development - Lessons Learned

  rich mironov

  9 Nov 2009 | 4:39 am

  PDMA Los Angeles hosts a panel on Agile development: What: “Transitioning to Agile Product Development – Lessons Learned” Where: The Olympic Collection, 11301 W. Olympic Blvd. at Sawtelle Blvd. / West Los Angeles When: Weds, Nov 11th, 6-9PM Register here Members $35 in advance / $45 day of event. Non-members $45 in advance / $55 day of event. Students $30 with ID Learn about the benefit of agile product development as well as the pitfalls and best practices from agile experts and practitioners about transitioning to an agile product development environment. Experts panelists…

• Nov-11-09: “Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” at Business of Software 2009

  rich mironov

  9 Nov 2009 | 2:54 am

  Luke Hohmann joins a renowned set of presentations including Geoffrey Moore and Don Norman at Business of Software 2009, Nov 8th through 11th. What: “Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” presented by Luke Hohmann When: Weds Nov 11th, 10am to 10:30am Where: Westin Market Street Hotel, 50 Third Street, San Francisco Registration and more information The conference brings together attendees and speakers interested in building long-term, sustainable and profitable software businesses. Fifteen speakers over two and half days will talk about how to succeed in the…

• Nov-17-09: Battle of the PM Blogs at PMEC

  rich mironov

  9 Nov 2009 | 2:49 am

  Rich Mironov will moderate a panel at PMEC called “Battle of the PM Bloggers.” As a long-standing writer and practitioner of product management, he brings a few decades of PM podium time to the event. What: “Battle of the PM Bloggers” panel and competition Part of: PMEC 2009, AIPMM’s Product Management Education Conference When: Tues, Nov 17th at 4:00 – 5:00 PM as part of a two-day event Moderator: Rich Mironov Participants: top 10 PM bloggers Where: The Fairmont San Jose, 170 South Market Street, San Jose, CA Registration and fees: www.aipmm.com/pmec AIPMM…

• Nov-17-09: “Agile Product Manager Dilemma” at PMEC

  rich mironov

  9 Nov 2009 | 1:05 am

  Rich Mironov present a talk on “The Agile Product Manager/Product Owner Dilemma” at PMEC in San Jose. This should generate some lively discussion about how Product Management is different in agile organizations (especially Scrum teams) and the challenges of Product Owners who lack Product Management support or experience. What: “The Agile Product Manager/Product Owner Dilemma” Part of: PMEC 2009, AIPMM’s Product Management Education Conference When: Tues, Nov 17th at 11:00 AM as part of a two-day event Where: The Fairmont San Jose, 170 South Market Street, San…

• Site Licenses and Other Real-World Intrusions

  rich mironov

  8 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  The Enthiosys team just finished up a major pricing exercise with a start-up in the enterprise software space: tuning up their prices, improving their upgrade model, and looking at alternative pricing metrics (i.e. what to meter when quantifying the customer’s usage). A great opportunity to match quantitative models against actual customer behaviors. During the engagement, the client’s sales team identified some real-world messiness that we (as product managers) would prefer to ignore: high-end customers who demand enterprise-wide licenses – instead of limited-use licenses…

• 
  How To Be A Good Product Manager

• Save some features for later

  jefflash

  10 Nov 2009 | 5:34 am

  If you want to be a bad product manager, release all of your features at once. If you have some cool functionality, why would you wait to show it to the world? You need to get as much out as you can right away — if users don’t see everything that you have to offer the first time they use the product, there’s a chance you might lose them. Sure, there may be some features that they don’t care about, but customers will gladly sift through extra functionality to find the few pieces which might be really worthwhile. If you want to be a good product manager, save some…

• Product management is more than prioritizing features

  jefflash

  24 Sep 2009 | 7:54 pm

  If you want to be a bad product manager, just focus on prioritizing features. That’s what product managers do, after all — just collect features from customers and decide which are the most important ones to add to the product. Plus, now with all these great tools that let you collect features directly online and have customers vote on them, it’s even easier since your customers are doing all of your work for you! If you want to be a good product manager, realize that your job is much more than prioritizing features. Sure, a product manager needs to understand what features…

• Learn from the mistakes of the iPhone 3G S

  jefflash

  22 Jun 2009 | 8:16 pm

  If you want to be a bad product manager, copy everything that Apple does. Everyone knows that Apple has some of the best products in the world, so you’d be a fool not to copy what they do. If you want to create a product as successful as the iPhone or the iPod, then just follow their lead. If you want to be a good product manager, learn from the mistakes of Apple, including those related to the iPhone 3G S. Apple has produced some legendary products which have been wildly and there are many aspects of their product development process which product managers would be wise to understand…

• Consider your market window as part of your product strategy

  jefflash

  31 Mar 2009 | 6:34 pm

  If you want to be a bad product manager, start developing a product and release it as soon as possible. If you’ve got a good idea for a product, why wait? You need to get it defined, get it developed as quickly as you can, and then release it right away, without any delay. Everyone knows that the first product to market usually wins, and the sooner it’s released, the quicker you’ll be profitable. If you want to be a good product manager, consider your market window as part of your product strategy. Often companies come up with what they believe to be a fantastic idea for a…

• Define the problem before solving it

  jefflash

  9 Mar 2009 | 8:00 pm

  If you want to be a bad product manager, don’t worry as much about defining the problem as quickly finding the solution. Problems are usually very obvious and clear, and any time you spend dwelling on it is wasted time that could be spent on solving it. The sooner you start solving the problem, the soon you’ll have it figured out. How hard is it to define a problem, anyway? If you want to be a good product manager, get a good understanding of the problem before you try and solve it. Product managers and many others unfortunately assume the problem is evident and jump right to…

• 
  Lead on Purpose

• Book Review: The Three Laws of Performance

  Michael Ray Hopkin

  10 Nov 2009 | 7:12 am

  “One of the flaws of management in this day and age is that we fragment accountabilities and then everyone focuses on their own piece.” In The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life, authors Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan discuss laws that govern individual, group and organizational behavior. They lay out a framework to help leaders at any level envision a positive future filled with success, based on the Three Laws of Performance: How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them. The first law addresses why things occur to…

• Three steps to the next big opportunity

  Michael Ray Hopkin

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:26 pm

  One of the keys to career progress (advancement) is identifying and taking advantage of new opportunities. Most of the time the new opportunities are not obvious; after all, when things become obvious they are usually past the “opportunity” stage. The crucial habit for progress is watching, learning and becoming aware of trends and changes going on around you. Here are three steps to help you prepare yourself for the next big opportunity: Demonstrate flexibility: The word ‘flexible’ has various meanings; in this context think of ‘willingness.’ Be the person…

• A new Leadership Development Carnival

  Michael Ray Hopkin

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:14 am

  The Lead on Purpose blog is featured in the November Leadership Development Carnival of Dan McCarthy’s Great Leadership blog. The latest Leadership Carnival brings together links to more than 30 fresh posts on topics such as mentors and role models, leading teams and maximizing your performance. You’ll find posts from great bloggers such as Wally Bock, Steve Roesler, Chris Young and others. The Leadership Development Carnival is a great way to expand your leadership knowledge and get to know the bloggers who are making it happen.

• Trust in business

  Michael Ray Hopkin

  1 Nov 2009 | 12:13 am

  One of the things I’m finding as I continue to read The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey is the abundance of leadership quotes he has included in the book. They give excellent insight into the importance trust plays in your success. The following quote points out the importance of trust in business: You can’t have success without trust. The word trust embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same…

• Keeping the best

  Michael Ray Hopkin

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:14 pm

  One of the keys to creating a successful organization is hiring and retaining the best talent available. During difficult times, management too often forgets that their people are their greatest asset. The Wall Street Journal tackles the issue of retaining executives in a recent article How to Keep Your Best Executives. The key, according to authors Elizabeth Craig, John R. Kimberly and Peter Cheese, is this: “make it easier for them to leave.” In difficult economic times many companies focus less on retention and keeping their employees happy. That can be a big mistake.

• 
  Product Management Tips

• Customer Visit: 2 creative ways to get a budget

  gopalshenoy

  8 Nov 2009 | 7:06 pm

  Times are tough, budgets are being cut, there is a travel ban in companies, so as a product manager, how do you get a travel budget so that you can get out of your office for on-site customer visits? It is hard, but here are two creative ways you can make it work. 1) Think local [...]

• What is product simplicity?

  gopalshenoy

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:39 am

  The KISS principle – Keep it simple stupid – something all of us have heard it one time or another. But when it comes to products, what exactly is product simplicity? Product usability and simplicity typically falls into three different categories, in my perspective. This perspective is based on my 13 year experience building products [...]

• Death by a thousand paper cuts ….

  gopalshenoy

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:48 pm

  In my last post, I discussed the benefits of doing an on-site customer visit where you get to observe customers/prospects use your product or competitive products to get their job done. In my experience doing these visits, I often discover what I call “death by a thousand paper cuts” issues. These issues are essentially annoyances [...]

• Five reasons customer visits beat other requirements gathering techniques

  gopalshenoy

  7 Oct 2009 | 3:15 pm

  I am a big fan of customer visits – ones where you visit customers on-site and observe them using your or competitor’s product. Now why do this? What are the benefits of doing this over talking to the same customer/prospect over the phone, while at a conference/trade show or doing a survey etc. Here are [...]

• How do you find usability testing participants?

  gopalshenoy

  24 Sep 2009 | 8:56 am

  In the last post, I talked about best practices for doing usability testing. But how do you go about finding participants for usability testing. Here are some tips: 1) Define your target user who will benefit from the product/feature you have developed. If it is an IT management software, is it the IT admin? Or is [...]

• 
  Seilevel's Software Requirements

• Resource with Tips for Virtual Teams

  Joy

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  I am a huge fan of Thiagi's work on games to use in training. He has made many games publicly available for use in your own training environments. In the past I've done some writing (here) about how we've adapted his games to Requirements Engineering training courses. But today I was browsing his site and found something I thought might be useful to others. He has posted a list of tips for virtual teams. There are just over 100 simple tips, that if you just skim the list I'm sure you'll find a handful of them can be applied immediately in your organization. Does anyone have comments on ones…

• Delivering Business Value with Agile Approaches to Requirements, continued

  Joy

  30 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  This post is a continuation of a previous post found here. Changes Dave believes are coming with respect to agile-run projects and my own commentary on these: Requirements engineers make decisions, they are not just documenters. Expect to see that product owners are the BAs. They will less often be called systems analysts, and more often called product owners. A few years ago, we shifted from calling our requirements team members “Business Analysts” and started calling them “Product Managers” because that’s really what they have to do – own the product, even if it’s just an…

• Delivering Business Value with Agile Approaches to Requirements

  Joy

  28 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  I attended a keynote at RE’09 in Atlanta that I wanted to go back and post a summary of and my thoughts on. And just to be completely honest, this is a rarity. For whatever reason, I really tend not to get much value out of keynote talks – either they are too technical, the speaker isn’t great at well, speaking, or they are so out there I cannot engage in it. Today was different though, it was captivating for me. This one was given by Dave West of Forrester Research. The talk was titled “Developing Business Value with Agile Approaches to Requirements”.To be fair, he had my attention…

• An example of Blueprint in Use on an Agile Project

  Joy

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  I attended a talk by folks from BluePrint and Lexis Nexis at BAWorld on Tuesday at BAWorld: Boston called "Requirements Definition for Agile Projects". The first bit of the talk was just an intro to agile and why it is useful on the projects. The part that I found most interesting was from Kathleen McGoey who owned business analysis on lawyers.com - she effectively gave a verbal case study of their team using agile and Blueprint to deploy this site. This was refreshing because she was brutally honest about the state of their organization 2 years ago, some of her dislikes about other tools,…

• BluePrint Tool

  Joy

  23 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  I attended a talk by folks from BluePrint and LexisNexis at BAWorld on Tuesday. The first bit of the talk was just an intro to agile and why it is useful on the projects. The part that I found most interesting was from someone who owned business analysis on lawyers.com - she effectively gave a verbal case study of their team using agile and BluePrint to deploy this site. This was refreshing because she was brutally honest about the state of their organization 2 years ago, some of her dislikes about other tools, and their experiences with agile not going well. However, she also then talked…

• 
  ack/nak

• link: the software maven

  29 Oct 2009 | 6:51 am

  If you're a developer or a product manager who has come up through the software development ranks, you probably already know about Travis Jensen's blog The Software Maven.What I really enjoy and value about Travis' writing is his focus on how the product development and product management roles relate (or don't relate, as the case may be) to each other over time, which is to say at different points of the software development life cycle. Each season of the product development process brings different challenges; Travis' insights into these different seasons makes for terrific reading.So how…

• hello: visitors from pragmatic marketing

  14 Oct 2009 | 12:54 pm

  If you've just finished reading my article in October's Pragmatic Marketing newsletter and have decided to pay a visit, welcome. You may skip the next line.If you have not read that article, please refer to the link above, then come back.For your amusement and edification I have made it easy for you to find what you want here at ack/nak. Simply use the tags found on the upper right hand side of the page, relax with a delicious beverage and your choice of snacks, and enjoy.

• idea: the LRD (life requirements document)

  6 Oct 2009 | 9:53 am

  In one of my first posts here I wrote about the importance of writing the MRD first. It's amazing to think that was almost four years ago. Gosh I'm long-winded.Recently I've come to appreciate that there's a document that must be written prior to the MRD.It has nothing to do with your market, your products, or your company. It has everything to do with you.I can't take credit for this - my wife made it clear to me that I needed to write down "what I wanted" if I was going to conduct a successful search, whether it was for consulting clients or a full-time gig."If you're such a hot-shot…

• nice: persona-driven demo

  23 Sep 2009 | 8:35 am

  If you're one of those folks on the prowl for news about the alleged Apple tablet, you probably saw reports of an equally alleged Microsoft device surface in recent days.Well kids, MSFT beat APPL to the punch today by leaking (releasing?) a concept video that shows the Microsoft "Courier" device in action. OK, it's not the real thing - it's all animation and shadow-hands and a soothing hipster voice over.But it does do something very, very well - it demonstrates a typical use case, and shows how the product supports that use case. It doesn't focus first on features - it focuses on value. I…

• review: gfeller field notes cover

  21 Sep 2009 | 1:40 pm

  Readers of ack/nak know of my great regard for Steve Derricott's wonderful Moleskine covers. Since their debut back in 2007, they've become the must-have cover for serious note-takers who want to protect their moleskine notebooks (both large and small) in the field.A few months ago Steve sent me a prototype of a new notebook cover he's been fooling around with, with the request to try it out and let him know what I thought of it.The Gfeller Casemakers Field Notes cover is fashioned of the same natural kip leather Steve uses to make so many of his professional products.It is a "soft cover"…

• 
  Google News: Product Management News

• You can study while you work, companies tell their employees - Livemint

  11 Nov 2009 | 11:52 am

  You can study while you work, companies tell their employeesLivemint“As a product management group head, studying for a formal MBA course has provided me with a solid theoretical framework for decisions otherwise taken based

• Mu Dynamics Appoints Test Industry Product Veteran Simon Berman Vice President ... - Business Wire (press release)

  11 Nov 2009 | 11:10 am

  Mu Dynamics Appoints Test Industry Product Veteran Simon Berman Vice President Business Wire (press release)Berman is responsible for all aspects of the company's product management and marketing initiatives and will oversee the strategic planning and execution of and more »

• Google to Acquire admob, a Mobile Display Ad Technology Provider, for $750 ... - Chicago Press Release Services (press release)

  11 Nov 2009 | 8:18 am

  Mobiletor.comGoogle to Acquire admob, a Mobile Display Ad Technology Provider, for $750 Chicago Press Release Services (press release) AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google. Android Ads Get Boost from Admob DealMarketing Vox NewsGoogle Acquires admob to Bolster Mobile-Display BusinessAdAge.comGoogle to acquire ad firm AdMobdomain-BISI - Emerging Markets -Research Magazine -China Postall 92 news articles »

• Using Self-Reflection to Decide on the Next Career Move - Wall Street Journal (blog)

  11 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

  Using Self-Reflection to Decide on the Next Career MoveWall Street Journal (blog)Mr. Jones, 43, spent 11 years at the company with roles in IT operations, software development, business development and product management.

• Capario Launches Updated Version of Its Revenue Cycle Management Portal for ... - Business Wire (press release)

  11 Nov 2009 | 6:33 am

  Capario Launches Updated Version of Its Revenue Cycle Management Portal for Business Wire (press release) vice president product management and business development at Capario, “We're excited about this portal update as well as our future plans for further and more »

• 
  Product Management News

• Google to buy mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million

  10 Nov 2009 | 10:50 pm

  The Great Disrupter continues its buying spree. Think of it as Google on the go.

• Luxury Link's Bob Bennett Promoted to Chief Operating Officer

  10 Nov 2009 | 2:47 pm

  Luxury Link , a leading luxury travel site, has announced the promotion of Bob Bennett to the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer.

• Mathemagenic as a thesis, still familiar

  10 Nov 2009 | 6:39 am

  After a brief hiatus due to leaving the book on an airplane , I have finished Lilia Efimova's PhD thesis, Passion at Work: Blogging Practices of Knowledge Workers , and the words are still familiar from reading her material over the years.

• Google to buy AdMob in bid to reach mobile users

  9 Nov 2009 | 10:37 pm

  Google Inc. took another major step in its quest to ensure that wherever consumers go -- whether to their laptops to search sports scores or videos or to their phones to find a restaurant -- advertisers will be there too.

• AIPMM and Two West, Inc. Bridge the Gap between Cultural Anthropology and Global Marketing

  9 Nov 2009 | 2:56 am

  The Association of International Product Marketing and Management and Two West, Inc.

• 
  The Experience is the Product | Better product management and products

• Why “Innovation Teams” Fail (and how to prevent it)

  Cindy

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:25 am

  It’s OK to say you belong or reside within and have an innovation team within a corporate/business environment. Innovation is not a dirty word. - Carl Knibbs, Cup of Innovation, Anyone? I agree!  I’ve seen two reasons why “innovation teams” are poorly regarded within larger organizations.  Actually, they apply to pretty much any type of “special [...]

• Why You Must Solve the First User Experience, First

  Cindy

  29 Oct 2009 | 11:40 am

  The Bay Bridge is closed, shutting down the major commute artery for thousands and thousands of people.  Luckily, there are public transit alternatives - the BART trains that run under the bay and the high-speed ferries. That doesn’t mean people are using them. Judging by local news radio reports and anecdotes I’ve heard the last few [...]

• Front-Load the Pain

  Cindy

  21 Oct 2009 | 12:15 pm

  This is a story about a bug that I still think about. It could have been avoided if I’d been able to successfully convince us that we should sacrifice a little bit of backwards-compatibility.  It would’ve meant customer complaints. Some customers would have delayed their upgrades; some may have even threatened to not renew their contracts [...]

• The “Good Enough” Formula for Segmenting an Existing Market

  Cindy

  15 Oct 2009 | 10:01 am

  The recent press about Mint’s acquisition and the “Good-Enough Revolution” has gotten me thinking that there’s an emerging pattern here that more startups (and established companies!) should be capitalizing on. The Formula Look for markets where the existing solution is incredibly powerful but people dread using it, or feel stupid using it because they haven’t invested enough [...]

• Is Your Pricing a Dot or a Triangle?

  Cindy

  8 Oct 2009 | 6:58 am

  Most product managers I know secretly (or not-so-secretly) dread pricing.  Price too high, and you risk alienating customers; price too low and you’re undervaluing yourself and making it harder to raise prices later. We stress so much about that number that we tend to forget that “price” isn’t a single number to our customers.  When customers [...]

• 
  The Productologist

• Book Review: Product Manager’s Desk Reference

  Ivan Chalif

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:56 am

  Product Manager’s Desk Reference by Steven Haines There are books and there are Books, and with 700+ pages, the Product Manager’s Desk Reference (PMDR) definitely falls in the latter category of capital B books. It’s not a book you can throw in your laptop bag to read on the plane (or train). Actually, you could, but you might not have room for your laptop! There are many books (and blogs) out there that purport to tell you how to be a Product Manager. I have discussed some of them here before and there are many reviews on sites like Amazon. The PMDR is unique among them in…

• Las Vegas as a Model for Products

  Ivan Chalif

  28 Oct 2009 | 5:30 am

  The BW and I took a trip to Vegas this summer (her first) as long weekend getaway. Our experiences there were quite different, even though we were together 99 percent of the time. Vegas is many things to many people and we had different expectations (from each other) going in and by the time we were headed home, we had different views about the experience. On the outside, Las Vegas is flashy. A large, shiny diamond with many facets, twinkling in the light. Everything blinks or flashes or emits sound. Sometimes all three. Sometimes, all the time. Everything in Las Vegas is vying for your…

• Product Management Reader: 5Oct09

  Ivan Chalif

  4 Oct 2009 | 5:53 am

  Travel usually makes for a very productive Productologist (long waits in airport terminals and poor in-flight entertainment typically give me the time to crank out the great blog posts you all have become accustomed to). But lately, I have been worshiping at the altar of the Red-Eye trans-continental (or trans-Atlantic) flight, which has resulted in a decrease in blog productivity, but an increase in actual work productivity and familial relations. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that I don’t LIKE-like you. Sorry. Here, take this pen. It’s a really nice…

• Product Management Question Corner: Amita Paul, ObjectiveMarketer

  Ivan Chalif

  21 Sep 2009 | 5:46 am

  Well folks, this is it. The FINAL PMQC.  Today we are talking with Amita Paul, Founder of ObjectiveMarketer, a solution for extending Marketing, Sales and Customer Service into Social Media. This session has been in the works for a looong time. Originally, Amita was going to write some guest posts for The Productologist, but we couldn’t quite get the timing right. Then she started working on ObjectiveMarketer and as anyone who has started their own company knows, there is not much time for extracurricular activity. Ideally, this interview would have fit in with the entrepreneurial ones…

• Temporary PM gig in NYC

  Ivan Chalif

  10 Sep 2009 | 9:39 am

  Another opportunity, albeit, a temporary one for a Web Product Manager in New York City. Unfortunately I don’t have any details other than those below. Send me a note if you are interested. It’s  a 3- or 4-month position with the following responsibilities– Perform research and analysis to shape product vision and strategy in pursuit of business goals Define and write product requirements and functional specifications Identify potential vendors and partners Create and maintain development and production schedules Obtain necessary legal clearances Manage the flow of assets…

• 
  The Cranky Product Manager

• It Ain’t Happening. Sorry.

  The Cranky Product Manager

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:20 pm

  This is brief, because it hurts to type.  True physical pain. The Cranky PM has H1N1 – 0r as one reader termed it, “porkulosis”.  No doubt, it is some kind of cosmic retribution for her executing a near flawless product launch earlier this week, and then bragging about it on Twitter. Unfortunately, this means that the Cranky Product Manager will be unable to speak at Business of Software 2009.  She is SO sorry and very, very disappointed.  She had her wig and sunglasses all set to go, and had been working on her presentation for weeks.  (Maybe she’ll record it…

• Need Your Help (Biz of SW 2009)

  The Cranky Product Manager

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:36 am

  Hello, As you might know, the Cranky Product Manager is scheduled to speak at the Business of Software 2009 conference. In a crazy-ass wig and sunglasses. As if that really disguised anyone. Maybe the CPM should get one of those Scooby-Doo Villain masks…. Ack.  Focus, CPM! The topic: the Cranky Product Manager is gonna talk about the big dysfunctions that seem endemic to nearly all B2B software vendors: 1. Marketing lies – intentional and unintentional. 2. Ridiculously complicated licensing, option-itis, and near-malignant product proliferation. 3. Wrongly applying the 80/20 rule…

• The Cranky Product Manager Sez Go Big or Go Home

  The Cranky Product Manager

  20 Oct 2009 | 2:15 pm

  Oy.  Product managers create business cases and business plans all the time.  The Cranky PM has created and seen a bajillion of them in her day.  Lots. But, cripes, so many of them suck.  In particular, so many business cases use a device that is a major peeve of the Cranky Product Manager.  Oh yes, you know it.  You’ve probably done it yourself.  It’s the “one percent of the market” argument.  It usually goes something like this:  “The total market is $X.  If we manage to garner just 1% of that total market, we will have $Z in revenue per year.  $Z…

• 10 Things The Cranky Product Manager Has Learned About Product Management

  The Cranky Product Manager

  29 Sep 2009 | 4:23 pm

  Here’s some stuff the Cranky PM has learned during her (not that) long and (wicked) illustrious career. Readers, add your own “10 things” that you’ve learned about product management in the comments. 1. On overly-complex pricing models: If the sales force wants you to give them a training class on the pricing model, then your pricing model is too complicated.  If your price list is more than 6 pages, it is too complicated.  If you have more than 3 basic product configurations (example: Starter, Standard, Enterprise), it is too complicated for your Sales Droids, your…

• The Cranky Product Manager Speaks

  The Cranky Product Manager

  3 Sep 2009 | 1:18 pm

  The Cranky Product Manager has gone all new-agey — doing yoga and eating organic food and crap like that…rethinking life, trying to think positive (”I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”) and all. (What’s next? Macrame?) Anyway, perhaps as a result, the Cranky Product Manager’s body has become less poluted and her psyche a bit more courageous.  More intrepid. Less of a chicken-shit. And as such, the CPM has actually started SPEAKING… out LOUD!  And you, gentle readers, can even listen in. First, there was a…

• 
  Web Ink Now

• Eugene Mirman is on television, is very nice, and likes seafood

  David Meerman Scott

  9 Nov 2009 | 10:33 am

  "There is no middleman between me and an audience," says Comedian Eugene Mirman, known for his work in Flight of the Choncords, his book of satire The Will to Whatevs: A Guide to Modern Life, and appearances on Comedy Central and Late Night shows. He has a blog, a Facebook page and is on Twitter. "I want to be entertaining on the web," he says. "That's what's fun for me. While there is a store on my Web site, the push is to provide things to entertain people." And entertain he does, Eugene's Twitter bio reads: "I am television's Eugene Mirman. I am very nice and like seafood." Sample tweet:…

• To gate or not to gate? Data from an ebook offer

  David Meerman Scott

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:21 am

  At my keynote speeches, one of the most frequent questions I get is around my position that it is almost always best to make valuable content (such as white papers and ebooks) totally free vs requiring an email address to download. The essence of this raging debate is that with a gate, each person downloading becomes a valuable sales lead, however making the content totally free with no registration required means many more people will download and spread your content via email, Twitter, blogs, and the like. Frequent readers of this blog know that I write about this topic from time to time,…

• Grateful Dead at the forefront of marketing technology

  David Meerman Scott

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:14 am

  This week I had a chance to hang out with Jay Blakesberg, long-time Grateful Dead tour photographer, in his San Francisco studio. We discussed how the band (now called The Dead) is at the forefront of using technology for marketing. This video is about 9 minutes and includes highlights from the discussions. Please take the time to hear Jay describe what a true marketing powerhouse of a band is doing more than 45 years after they originally formed. I suggest letting the video load before watching. Direct link to the video here. Details of what we discussed in the video: :00 - 1:50 Through a…

• Stupid press release spam

  David Meerman Scott

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:24 pm

  I want to know why companies insist on sending me press releases via email in areas that I clearly do not cover. What a pain in the butt to have to wade through these things in my inbox every day. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of using press releases as a tool to reach buyers. You can read more about that in my free ebook The New Rules of PR. Press releases can be a valuable way to communicate. I'm also a fan of sending personal messages to people to alert them to things that they may find interesting. I really do welcome the many emails and direct messages that people send me about things…

• Who the hell ARE these people?

  David Meerman Scott

  26 Oct 2009 | 6:14 am

  Maybe you can help me. I really want to know: Who the hell are these people? Who are these young, happy, pretty, multi-cultural people with great teeth and even better hair who hang out with notebook computers in sleek and modern conference rooms on B2B company Web sites all over the world? Who are these international inhabitants of virtual corporate locales? The reason I ask is because I've personally been inside hundreds and hundreds of B2B company offices in over 20 countries and have spent time in probably a thousand conference rooms over a 25-year career. Yet I have never seen these…

• 
  Product Management Meets Pop Culture

• Great Apologies Product Managers Can Learn From (Plus, One Of My Own)

  Christopher Cummings

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:11 am

  Last time we looked at three truly terrible ways businesses have apologized to customers. Today, we’ll discuss the elements of truly great apologies–with examples. And see what we can learn from the experience I had recently apologizing to thousands of confused, angry, and irritated customers… Apologies Ranked Seth Godin’s blog ranks corporate apologies on a 1-10 scale, with #1 being “You can always take your business elsewhere” (ouch) to #10 being “We’re so sorry… we’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again… how can we make it up…

• Terrible Corporate Apologies Product Managers Can Learn From

  Christopher Cummings

  29 Oct 2009 | 7:05 am

  “I’m sorry.” Two tiny words. Two tiny words that said the right way can help repair broken trust, and said incorrectly can burn bridges forever. Brought to you by the marketing department at Pepsi Business school didn’t teach me the art and science of how to apologize appropriately and effectively. (That’s something life and server outages have drilled into me.) Judging from some of the corporate apologies we’ve seen recently, we all have a lot still to learn. Today, we’ll look at three examples of truly terrible ways to apologize. Next time,…

• Celebrating One Year Of Product Management Meets Pop Culture!

  Christopher Cummings

  20 Oct 2009 | 7:55 pm

  Exactly one year ago today, Product Management Meets Pop Culture officially debuted on The Internet with the post What Does A Product Manager Actually Do? — and 105 Posts later, here we are! 105 posts. One hundred. And five. That’s roughly 2.02 posts per week, which exceeds the minimum posting rate I’d set for myself (1 post/week) but falls short of the max I’d set (3 posts/week). That feels like success. But what’s way more gratifying are the 716 Comments and 3,143 In-Bound Links those posts have generated. For a blog started to help me muddle through my own…

• Career Advice From Captain Lou Albano

  Christopher Cummings

  15 Oct 2009 | 6:34 am

  Iconic pro-wrestler and entertainer Captain Lou Albano passed away yesterday at the age of 76. Some will remember him for the rubber bands. The penchant for Hawaiian shirts. The boisterous rants. But I’ll remember him best for demonstrating what it takes to make it in business… Lesson #1: Always Leave Them Wanting More Probably the most obvious, given the persona of Captain Lou. Whether he was in the ring himself or managing other wrestlers, Lou understood the point was not winning or losing–it was about making an impression and making people want to come back, again and…

• Does Product Management Require Confidence? Sho’Nuff!

  Christopher Cummings

  8 Oct 2009 | 9:33 am

  Yesterday: We’re recapped 1985 martial arts cult classic “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon“, where Bruce Leroy searches for the mystical kung-fu power known as The Glow, and ends up dating Vanity. Today: We’ll use that story recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: The importance of confidence in product management. And I don’t mean just the outside world’s confidence in product management; I mean our own confidence, in ourselves, as product managers. Because some of this week’s conversations on Twitter made me question whether or not…

• 
  spatially relevant

• Attitudes, Latitudes and Boundaries: A fractured reality

  Jon Gatrell

  11 Nov 2009 | 12:10 am

  Pew research’s pulse presentation on attitudes on capitalism and democracy post the berlin wall collapse has some interesting insights by geography and cohort groups. The change in attitudes and opinions are expected for the most part, but interesting nonetheless to look at. Pew Global Attitudes – Public Opinion Two Decades After the Fall of the Berlin Wall View more presentations from Pew Research Center. Related articles by Zemanta Capitalism and democracy a disappointment to people of former communist countries (dvorak.org) Why was Berlin the key to the Cold War? (slate.com)

• Customers are the Brand

  Jon Gatrell

  10 Nov 2009 | 3:26 am

  While I’m not sure if it is appropriate to quote yourself in a presentation, Graham Brown does and it works. Well at least it did seem too forced. Customers Are The Brand View more presentations from Graham Brown.

• Why I’d fail a Google interview and be glad I did

  Jon Gatrell

  9 Nov 2009 | 7:58 am

  Image via CrunchBase So the Seattle interview coach’s insights on the Google interview process is fairly interesting and made me think about how I might handle these alleged actual interview questions. Google’s hiring process has been talked about online by many folks and the experience of being a member of Team Google is varied from a great freakin thing to just a bad experience.   While the interview below is fiction, I did have a strange call with Google HR myself in 2005 which I only remember as odd. So in the spirit of trying to think how I might have actually done with…

• Civil Product Management: Libraries are cool man

  Jon Gatrell

  9 Nov 2009 | 2:05 am

  Not every product manager is a so titled person, often the have other titles like Mayor, Transportation Director or Superintendent of school system. Basically most public administrators are a product manager of some sort. Customer satisfaction, increased value, decreased cost and an improved perception of security. The Library: An Undifferentiated Product in a late stage market I came across a pitch David Lee King of  Topeka and Shawnee Public Libraries did and I have to suspect that being a library science guy and sustaining relevance in today’s content rich internet is though. The…

• Relevant Reading – November 7th to November 8th

  Jon Gatrell

  8 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

  here you go, been slacking for a couple of days or more: Readership Stats – avc.com reader census – Hunch Zynga To Remove All In Game Offers The LIMBO Economy The 19 bloggers Inc. thinks you should read Fabulous First Look- Droid Phone by Motorola SalesGrok: To Social or Not to Social SaaS Company Valuation Trends

• 
  Effectivus: Product Management and Marketing

• Get Lucky

  Chris

  11 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  My favourite columnist in The Economist, Schumpeter, had a little rant last week about “The three habits of highly irritating management gurus”.  What caught my cynical eye was towards the end of the piece when he points out how frequently corporations cited in the gurus’ books as model, end up in trouble a few years later.  He cites a piece of research[i] by Andrew Henderson of the University of Texas in which Henderson looked at the firms cited in “success studies” like “In Search of Excellence” and “Good to Great”. “We evaluated 287 allegedly high-performing companies…

• Engineering accuracy

  Chris

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  On the 31st of October the Oasis of the Seas passed under the Great Belt Bridge as it sailed for the first time out of its birth waters of the Baltic and into the North Sea.  At 360 metres long, 64 metres wide and 65 metres high it is the 40% larger than any other cruise ship.  This extraordinary vessel can accommodate over 6,000 guests, supported by over 2,000 crew.  Amongst its many superlatives it has 24 elevators, a beach pool, a Broadway show and a bar that moves slowly up and down by 3 decks.  But what really attracted me to the story of the Oasis of the Seas was none of this glitz,…

• We don’t make that sort of product here

  Chris

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:45 am

  We were relaxing after a dinner in a busy restaurant on the waterfront in Stockholm.  We had been with the product designers all day, thrashing through the issues of the physical design of our new product.  It was tough and we’d filled wipe boards, notebooks, cut stuff out and mocked up prototypes.  We’d walked through user scenarios and talked about different personas.  We’d discussed materials and components and littered the tables with samples of them.  We’d talked ergonomics, about comfort, about how your hand met the product and what it would be like to use the product for…

• Has Dyson lost his way?

  Chris

  24 Oct 2009 | 8:38 am

  I know it is an act worthy of excommunication amongst the congregation of inventors, innovators and technology entrepreneurs to criticise Sir James Dyson.  All those stories of success in the face of huge challenges, the amazing 5,126 prototypes that it took to develop the Dual Cyclone™ technology (vacuum cleaner) and “15 years of frustration”, makes criticism heresy. The latest product to come from the legendarily inventive stable of James Dyson is the “Dyson Air Multiplier”™.  This is a £200 ($300) desk fan. The website shows people being amazed by the fact that air is coming…

• Management Science or just Superstition?

  Chris

  16 Oct 2009 | 2:58 am

  How often have you taken a sensible, rational, informed decision about management issue and seen the result turn out differently from what you expected?  Come on, can you even count the times when the reverse happened? Subjects in MBA courses are often categorised by the students as being either “hard” or “soft”.  Examples of “hard” topics are Economics, Finance, Law and Accountancy.  They are “hard” because they are based on hard facts, and hard numerical data.  There is a presumption of a direct and predictable relationship between action and reaction.  We can rely upon…

• 
  Launch Clinic

• How to prevent your whitepaper from being read

  David Keith Daniels

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:23 am

  You spent a lot of time and effort to create a new whitepaper. Assuming the goal of a whitepaper is to build thought leadership and help drive sales velocity, would you put a big fence in front of it and force people to provide a bunch of information that isn’t needed at this stage? How many people would just skip it and move along? If the goal of a whitepaper is to build thought leadership shouldn’t you make it easy for people to read it and share it? Running the whitepaper gauntlet I know why you put a registration form in front of your whitepaper. You think that visitors will place so…

• FUTURELAB: Why Thought Leadership is Your Most Valuable Asset

  David Keith Daniels

  22 Oct 2009 | 8:03 am

  Jon Miller posted on his blog about thought leadership over at Futurelab and he really nailed it. Many marketers focus so much on doing “stuff” (my technical description for deliverables) from a menu item of tactics when they should be focusing much, much more attention on (my term for this is “obsess over”) thought leadership. Why? “In down economies, prospects conduct even more research leading up to the purchase. This means B2B marketing professionals must help educate prospects in the early stages of the buying cycle; doing this well can help frame their buying process and…

• Don't forget about internal communications

  David Keith Daniels

  21 Oct 2009 | 7:36 am

  One of the things we talk about in our Effective Product Marketing seminar is how to roll out a new message. We recommend starting out internally first before rolling it out to the market. In your rush to get the product launched are you failing to roll it out internally first? I caught a post that talks about internal communication over at BrandCentralStation in a blog post titled Why internal communications may provide the highest marketing R.O.I. of them all Internal communications programs that get employees on board when it comes to spotting new business opportunities can also result in…

• Sales velocity webinar October 16

  David Keith Daniels

  15 Oct 2009 | 11:13 am

  I’m delivering a webinar on Friday, October 16 at 10am Pacific time titled “Product Launch Readiness: Planning for Sales Velocity”. Click here to register. Hope you can make it – I’m expecting lots of good questions!

• PDFs are great but not a substitute for content

  David Keith Daniels

  14 Oct 2009 | 6:04 am

  I find it really annoying when companies put minimal content on their web sites but feel like they’re doing visitors a favor by providing links to PDF documents. This is lazy, pure and simple. Even worse is when they’re too lazy to optimize the PDF for online use and I have to endure downloading a 10MB 1-page brochure. Bad form. We’re in the 21st century now and this kind of stuff should be outlawed. The real question I have is “Is all that wonderful content you have in those PDFs may getting indexed by the search engines?” After getting some conflicting answers to this question I…

• 
  Strategic Product Manager

• Guest Book Review: “User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development” by Mike Cohn

  Stewart Rogers

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:37 am

  by Jason Brett As a <type of user> I want <some goal> so that <some reason>. Whether you are new to story-driven software development or have been managing products or development with user stories for a decade, “User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development” (Mike Cohn) is a great read. I’m personally new to writing user stories, so I dove into Cohn’s book from a relatively fresh perspective, and found the entire book highly digestible. Mr. Cohn makes no assumptions about the readers level of expertise or familiarity with Agile methods. At the…

• November… already? And Random Bits

  Stewart Rogers

  1 Nov 2009 | 2:53 pm

  Next thing you know it has been 23 days since your last post. Oddly my subscribers have risen. Thanks for reading! There is lots going on in my life and reading and writing has sadly slipped below my capacity to process. I am hopeful that will change in November, but my travel schedule for the month is already pretty full. We shall see. Generally when I am lost for blog ideas I have a book review to do, but the current book (How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer) is a bit heavy and proving to be a slow read. The upside, I am learning lots about brain activity. Random Bits: 1. I want to acknowledge a…

• Roadmap Discussions

  Stewart Rogers

  7 Oct 2009 | 6:39 am

  Seems to be a hot topic this week, there has been many discussions about strategy and roadmaps. Is it roadmap update season already? Steve Johnson said: “Roadmaps are evidence of strategy. Not a list of features.” OnPM said: “re:Roadmap: R a hi-level *plan* based on what is known today. May include strategy (good or bad) but may not.” OnPM also offered up a couple posts to read: What’s the deal with Product Roadmaps? and Agile/Scrum and Product Roadmaps. It seems from the discussions and comments that the general consensus is that if you open PowerPoint, plot out a…

• Authority vs. Influence

  Stewart Rogers

  24 Sep 2009 | 8:15 am

  Leadership is a frequent topic of discussion within the product management community. You won’t find much of a debate on the topic of whether product management is a leadership position, but you will find much discussion on the depth of the leadership. The discussion will span across whether product management should have people management responsibilities, whether they can be accountable for key performance indicators or just generally how to be a better leader. In a recent webinar , David Locke suggested he though the product manager role was more accurately as titled as Product…

• Repost: Use Cases vs User Scenarios

  Stewart Rogers

  21 Sep 2009 | 8:06 am

  This is a repost of a post that I did on the Product Management View. There were some interesting comments on the original. Finally, documented clarity around the difference between use cases and user scenarios. Let me summarize the difference. A use case is a step-by-step account of system behaviour associated with one or more actors. A user scenario is concrete description of a very specific interaction, but one that is chosen to be typical or representative. OK, now what does that mean? Use cases are very detailed and typically define the actors, a brief description, pre-conditions, the…

• 
  A Girl's Guide to Project Management

• Complexity in mega IT projects

  Elizabeth

  10 Nov 2009 | 10:01 pm

  “Everyone thinks they are the big boss,” says Laura Aziz.  “Everyone thinks they are managing the others.”  It’s one of the complexities that Laura is managing as part of putting the IT systems into a massive 7-star hospital in the Middle East: complete with wifi, electronic mediccal records and video conferencing.  It’s a multi-year, multi-phase project with a multi-layer matrix structure providing the chain of command.  The technology is complicated, but the people side of things also takes some managing.  “Technology alone is not enough,” she adds.  “Hopefully the…

• Book review (and giveaway): IT Enabled Business Change

  Elizabeth

  8 Nov 2009 | 9:22 pm

  “Change happens in organisations,” writes Sharm Manwani.  “Sometimes you have a choice – to be in the driving seat, ride as a passenger or not to get onto the bus.  At other times the choice is made for you.” IT-Enabled Business Change is a book about – surprise! – change in organisations.  But it’s a project book with a difference: it breaches that murky divide between IT and the ‘business’.  I hear this a lot, as if IT isn’t part of the business.  Manwani’s book is an attempt to bring the two areas together, in what he calls a ‘hybrid’ change:…

• Happy International Project Management Day!

  Elizabeth

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:40 pm

  It’s International Project Management Day!  At least, I think it is.   PMI celebrated on 3rd November (although their UK Chapter is celebrating on the 17th and their Greece Chapter on the 6th), IIL celebrated yesterday and I actually have 17th November in my diary – not sure where that came from. Regardless – of when it actually falls, it’s about now so what are you doing to celebrate? There are events going on around the world, but personally, I’ll be kicking back with a glass of wine tonight, toasting all my project management buddies! It’s also an…

• Carnival of Project Management #29

  Elizabeth

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:09 pm

  Welcome to the October/November 2009 edition of the Carnival of Project Management.  Lots of good links for your entertainment, including one from Anticlue.  Yey, healthcare IT! Josh Nankivel presents How Do You Define Project Management To Your Friends? posted at pmStudent.com, saying, “This one generated a lot of comments and discussion.”  I’m not surprised.  Got to love pmStudent. nissim ziv presents Project Management Interview Questions and Answers posted at Job Interview Guide, saying, “This article provides wide-ranging project management interview questions…

• Giveaway winner: The Lazy Project Manager

  Elizabeth

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:22 pm

  Congratulations to Lissa, from Eugene, Oregon, who won a signed copy of Peter Taylor’s book The Lazy Project Manager. Lissa, your book is on its way – enjoy! Related posts:Giveaway winner! Congratulations to Norma from Northumberland who’s name was first out of the hat for the copy of Rita Mulchay’s book PM Crash Course. Norma, your...Giveaway (only for lazy people) I had a huge response to my book review of The Lazy Project Manager, so I have a copy signed by Peter Taylor himself...Lazy Giveaway: last few days Let me guess: you’re adopting Peter Taylor’s…