ProductMarketing.com

Unsticking the stuck deal — On Product Management

Welcome to the stuck deal. Sales reps, sale teams, sales managers, and sales VPs see this all the time. In the midst of some win/loss analysis work, several of my clients have started to send these deals to me. “See what you can find out,” they say.

via onproductmanagement.net

Based on dozens of interviews, my pal Alan examines why deals get stuck and what to do to get them moving again.

ProDuct manager != proJect manager

As the Wikipedia definition states, the product owner cannot be the ScrumMaster. For non-agile folks, that also means that the proDUCT manager cannot also be the proJECT manager. It’s the fox in the henhouse. It says the person who owns the scope of the project cannot also determine the schedule. And besides, it’s a different skill set. Project managers typically work with a product for one iteration or release; product managers work with a product throughout its life cycle.

ProJECT managers focus on scheduling the deliverables for a single release.
ProDUCT managers focus on the business over the product's (multiple) releases.

 

Need help selling the idea in your organization. Download one of our free ebooks. The Strategic Role of Product Management focuses on the strategic role. Living in an Agile World reexamines the role of product management in an agile environment.

 

Can you really work at work?

Elephants in the Room of Agile | NetObjectives

On a user group someone asked what the Agile elephants in the room were. As I was beginning to respond, I was thinking there were two or three. However, as I started writing, I came up with nine! I suspect I could have come up with more.

via netobjectives.com

An agilist reflects on some of the major disconnects between agile and business. Some good insights here. Are you and your team victims of any of these?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: branding gone awry

I'm sponsoring my friend Liz in the Walk for Lupus but it's awfully hard to get involved when the home page looks like this:

Logo-mania! AAArrrggghhhh!!!

Sarchasm aside, you can participate too. Go to http://www.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=447013

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: 10 Great Error Messages CIO.com

From the alphanumerically incomprehensible to the anger-abatingly astonishing, error messages have long been the computer's way of telling us we'll never truly understand it. Circular logic, tiny type, and an occasional flash of unexpected humor make error messages the Zeno's paradoxes of our time—and any PC's user all-too-frequent companion.

via cio.com

Your price is (probably) not the problem — On Product Management

You can’t make this stuff up. While the rest of the Product Marketing team was working on a new pricing model, Michael had uncovered a huge hole in the underlying logic. No one had thought to understand the customer value. They had heard that the price was too high, so many times, from so many sales people, that they stopped questioning it.

via onproductmanagement.net

Is price the driving issue? Do some win/loss (or hire Alan to do it for you) and find out what's really happening in your sales. Don't look at one; look at a bunch--and find the patterns.

MySpace’s death spiral: insiders say it’s due to bets on Los Angeles and Microsoft — Scobleizer

I’ve been asking people involved what went wrong and two common themes have evolved:

1. Their bet on Microsoft technology doomed them for a variety of reasons.
2. Their bet on Los Angeles accentuated the problems with betting on Microsoft.

via scobleizer.com

Nice assessment by Scoble, who believes that talent location and technology debt are the root causes of MySpace's failure. What decisions have you made that are limiting your opportunities for growth.

One "persona" that many product managers miss in their planning is "the system." Sometimes we have to do things to improve the health of the architecture or make it easier to build on. It drives sales people and execs crazy because features for "the system" don't demo... but, like a healthy work-out at the gym, you do it because it's good for you in the long-term.

Friday fun: Re-imaging the future with Microsoft

Some Thoughts on Roles and Responsibilities — On Product Management

To be honest, I’ve struggled with roles, responsibilities and differentiation. I often think we fixate on titles and ownership versus roles and action. In The Strategic Role of Product Management, Steve Johnson states; “Titles are meaningless; actions are meaningful.”

via onproductmanagement.net

Ah, I love being quoted! Holland offers a new look at roles and responsibilities plus a quick tool to help you align activities with titles.

ProductCamp DC, April 30

Announcing the Spring 2011 ProductCamp DC unconference on April 30th, 2011, at the Washington Dulles Airport Marriott.

Register (for free) today! This event will be packed with everything "Product Management." Join the conversation

via productcampdc.org

Pragmatic Marketing will be there! Will you?

The Importance of Differentiated Product Management Roles — On Product Management

And while there are certainly individuals who can do all this, the fact it, it can become an impossible task for most people, and leads to both individual and organizational failure. So here’s a simple solution. Understand the needs of these different groups and create differentiated roles WITHIN the Product Management organization and STAFF THEM appropriately. This will help create a scalable effective, and focused Product Management organization.

via onproductmanagement.net

Saeed explains the differentiated roles of Product Management as a follow-up to his post on How to Create an Effective Product Management Organization. As I like to say, "Just because you know the product doesn't mean that others don't have to." Great read!

Product manager = president of the product?

Is the product manager the "president of the product"? It a common metaphor.

In many ways, the product manager role seems similar to the president of a small company.  The president has an initial product idea and starts a company. In addition to focusing new folks on his vision, he sets up the email and web servers, and comes in on Sunday when those servers are down. He runs the backups and puts the backup drives in the trunk of his car. He investigates and purchases the security systems for the office.  He reorders hand towels for the rest room. He puts together a presentation for himself but shares it with others. He stays late on Friday to finalize payroll—or stays while his spouse does it. He is “all other departments.”

But this analogy falls apart when we expand the company. As the company grows and other departments come into existence, the president can no longer do payroll, and IT support, and development, marketing, and sales. He has people now with those responsibilities. And he holds those department heads accountable. If the servers are down, the IT department works through the weekend to get back online; the president no longer takes the responsibility nor is he really able to do the work since he wasn’t the one who set them up. When payroll is messed up, he expects the head of finance to stay late and fix it; he doesn’t do it himself.

And of course, a good president fires those department heads if these problems occur too frequently. A problem that occurs once or twice is an accident; a problem that occurs frequently is a trend. He replaces those who can't do the job with qualified people.

Maybe it's the “product manager equals president” mindset that causes us to micro-manage others. And maybe it causes us to enable the dysfunction of others. But unless we can fix the people and the process, product management is often just hiding the real issues.

If we see a problem and hide it, we’re part of the problem.

Need help selling the idea in your organization. Download one of our free ebooks. The Strategic Role of Product Management focuses on the strategic role. Living in an Agile World reexamines the role of product management in an agile environment.

Friday fun: Top 10 cities to date a nerd

With The Social Network nominated for an Oscar in 2011 and Mark Zuckerberg named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2010, it has never been cooler to be a nerd than it is right now. In this day and age of all things high-tech, we couldn’t think of a better time than now to celebrate the self-proclaimed nerds of Match.com. We researched our top 10 cities with the highest educated Match.com members (either in technical or educational occupations), and eureka! Sunnyvale, CA (in the heart of Silicon Valley) is THE number-one place to find yourself your very own nerd.

via yahoo.match.com

 

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Brilliant Forced Perspective Photography – Part 1 | Impact Lab

Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It is used primarily in photography, filmmaking and architecture. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera.

via impactlab.net

Sometimes good positioning is just a question of changing your perspective. The new iPad2 has an HDMI adapter to show your screen on a TV. Jobs says, "You see exactly the same thing!" But actually, it's just mirroring. My reaction was, "Oh, that's bad. I wanted separate displays." But Jobs' excitement convinces us that this is a feature, not a weakness.

Whose perspectives do you need to change? Your sales team's? Your customers'? Yours?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

How To Respond to "It Costs Too Much" | BNET

SCENARIO: You’re selling to a new prospect. Early in the conversation, the prospect surfaces the objection: “It costs too much.”

via bnet.com

Which is the WRONG answer? Take the poll....

Hyping Research Methodologies

While researchers often bring significant skills to new product development, they are sometimes shy about applying those same skills to innovations within the industry itself.

As I think about the social reaction to adopting new technology, I wondered: Where do various research methodologies fit on a hype curve?

via blog.vovici.com

Research applies to every phase of developing and delivering products. Vovici's Jeff Henning explains which tools fit which stages. Nice post!

Thanks for the discount, I’m still not buying yet — On Product Management

"We can’t sell it at list!" said the sales force. Just look at Glen!

via onproductmanagement.net

Alan Armstrong tells a great story about the origins of discounting for many sales reps. He's gathering stories; do you have one to tell?

The iPad 2

 

 

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2011/03/how-to-deal-with-informati...

(Two hours until I can order it).

My son is almost famous!

Lift Off into space and navigate your rocket through dangerous obstacles along the way. Create a path of destruction as you shoot through dust, ice, space junk, and an unknown substance called deathonium.

via itunes.apple.com

The (free) Lift Off app features music written and produced at my son's recording studio at www.alpinered.com

(The album is also great!)

It's an interesting approach for promoting a new album, don't you think?

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management