On a product management manifesto

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. --Machiavelli

I've often wondered about creating a product management manifesto or treatise or statement of direction or personal oath. I have participated in discussions with Graham, Saeed, Alan, and others. I was truly inspired by the call to arms known as The Agile Manifesto because I completely agree: we do spend too much time writing about writing code and not writing code; we do seem to blindly follow a plan rather than adapt to changes. So hat's off to Kent Beck et al for rejecting conventional wisdom and refocusing development on the things that really matter.

As for product management, Alan Bullied may have the right idea; he has this to say. Brian Lawley took a shot at it with his Product Management Manifesto but Tom Grant at Forrester had a fairly strong reaction to it.

I find, in the end, that I keep coming back to Peter Drucker's definition:

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.

Call it marketing or call it product management, that's my product management manifesto. And for me, the articulation of it for technology businesses continues to be the Pragmatic Marketing Framework.