ProductMarketing.com

Maniac Attack Newsletter Q2 2010 by Leading Software Maniacs

Funny story... years ago a VP of Product Management wanted us all to go to Austin to set in one of their seminars to prove a point to me and my staff that "being first to market, means everything -- even if you ship software products with bugs. You show customer service by how fast you fix the defects." Well, his plan backfired -- and thanks to Pramatic Marketing's training, we all learned the importance of making the customer your #1 priority. This approach is the hallmark of "agile" thinking and it enables the right, QUALITY decisions to be always made.

via maniac attack newsletter (the q02 issue)

My pal Ken shares this funny story about being "first". First to what? While some advocate having potentially shippable products, we prefer to have potentially sellable products. Our seminar showed Ken's team that focusing on the market generally results in the right decisions. Read more in his quarterly newsletter...

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: certified/ certifiable

Francis writes, 

I had the pleasure to get the certification programme in Practical Product Management.  I'm still getting a lot of value from the best practices.  Thank you for that. In a presentation I mentioned that our entire PM group is "Certified" by Pragmatic Marketing.  Also, I use the Pragmatic Marketing "Certified" banner in my mail etc...

My colleague from London then pointed to me that "Certified" means to be Declared Legally Insane in UK...

Sure enough, according to Cambridge Dictionaries online, to certify is:

to state officially that someone is mentally ill. As in:
As a young man, he had been certified and sent to a hospital for the mentally ill.

However, the same dictionary defines certified as: having a document that proves that you have successfully finished a course of training.

So product managers who complete Practical Product Management can be certified or else we'll have to certify that you're insane.

RSS Updates

Want to know about everything new at Pragmatic? Go to RSS Updates and choose one or all from:

• new Seminars scheduled
• new Articles posted
• new rants on Product Marketing Blog by Steve Johnson
• new posts on Launch Clinic Blog by Dave Daniels

Wow! Everything. One place. Sweet.

The Strategic Role of Product Management

Join me today at 1:00 ET/10:00PT for a webinar on The Strategic Role of Product Management. I'll discuss the updated Pragmatic Marketing Framework and the challenges of product management in different departments. I may even have some new stories--or old jokes. Let's wait and see.

Update: Watch the webinar in our archive or from iTunes.

ChangeThis: Is your product launch doomed

David Daniels' Is Your Product Launch Doomed is great. It has been accepted as a ChangeThis Manifesto so let's all do David a favor and go vote for it here.

I know he'll appreciate it and probably call each of you at home to thank you personally. But, you know, don't wait by the phone 'cuz he might not call you. I probably should ask him before I post things like this. And maybe I shouldn't post when my flight is delayed and I might've had a couple of glasses of wine at the airport waiting for my flight. I mean, come on, the sky is clear so we're only delayed about an hour.

Changing the Pragmatic Marketing Framework

Periodically--and very carefully--we update the Pragmatic Marketing Framework to align with current best practice for technology product management and marketing. Jim Foxworthy, Pragmatic Marketing's Product Manager, explains the changes in this video.

Selling the framework

How do you sell the Pragmatic Marketing framework internally? Many people have found that my ebook on The Strategic Role of Product Management is a good beginning.

Jim Foxworthy has started a thread for Pragmatic Marketing customers on LinkedIn. How have you gotten traction? What approach did you use? What results did you achieve? Got some ideas? Join the discussion.

Travel budgets slashed?

Product managers tell me that their travel budgets have been slashed. How do you visit customers or attend training when there's no money for travel?

Smart product managers are looking for local customers to visit. How many client companies exist within a drive of your office? Most product managers have a few dozen local companies that would be glad to have some time with a product manager. Sure, everybody's busy but you'd be surprised how much time customers will give you once they realize that you're not trying to sell them anything. Watch them use your product; talk to them about new problems that they're encountering. Shadow a user for a day and you'll learn a dozen things that could be improved in the product.

Don't forget that sales people are still traveling and always need technical help. There's always travel money available for sales calls. Go on a few sales calls with a sales rep and then stay an extra half day to visit someone in the area (without the sales rep).

As for training, Pragmatic Marketing's travel budgets are still in place. Can't come to us? We'll come to you! Learn more about our onsite classes. 

Launch clinic relaunched

My pal David Daniels is moving his Launch Clinic blog. Join his discussions and learn techniques for better product launches. If you're already a subscriber (as I am), check your RSS feeds.

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.

Annual survey published

Some product management surveys have 49 responses; our 9th annual product management and marketing survey had over 1,100.

We learned about the activities product managers perform, good and bad. We learned the difference between product managers and product marketing managers. We learned where you report in the organization.

See how you compare with others in the industry in Pragmatic Marketing's 2008 Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey.

Here's the part you probably care most about:

• Product managers receive 50 e-mails a day and send about 25.

• Product managers spend roughly two days a week in internal meetings (15 meetings/week). But 55% are going to 15 meetings or more each week, and 35% attend 20 or more meetings!

• Average US product management compensation is $100,341 salary plus $12,467 annual bonus.

Read more details in the Pragmatic Marketing 2008 Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey. And watch for a webinar to discuss this and other aspects of product management early in 2009.

Pragmatic Marketing alums earn more

I'm working the numbers from our annual survey and found this:

Product managers who have attended our seminars make $101,717 while those who have not make only $96,558.

Sure, it's not a lot but it's the difference between a 5- and a 6-figure income. Of course, I don't know if it's correlation or causality (or even what those words mean specifically); I'm just reporting the facts.

Blatant sales pitch :-) Invest in your career. Come to Practical Product Management or another Pragmatic Marketing seminar. Your checkbook will thank you.

Welcome.. again

I've switched from an open source blogging tool to TypePad. Your RSS feeds should have automatically changed to this new source. (If you're not getting the new updates, raise your hand.) So www.productmarketing.com now goes here. Graham and my online marketing team have changed my RSS feed URL four times in as many years seemingly to ensure that my Technorati ratings are completely screwed up but I kid. Kidding aside, I'm delighted with the typepad software.

Did I tell you that I invented blogging? I started a blog in 1999 for Chantilly High in Virginia but I didn't know that it was called a blog (dang it, I should have written a book!). I started blogging at www.productmarketing.com in 2002. You can read more my article about the history of our web sites. Good news! The new blog contains all of my posts since October 2002. David Meerman Scott, the king of social media, only has posts back to January 2005. (Neener neener neener.) All 865 posts are online with working links to the Pragmatic Marketing web site; the external links are probably dead by now so you'll have to search for the relevant articles.

I'm now documenting the travails of Robin the product manager. Ah, poor Robin! I'll categorize the posts about Robin and her colleagues in Tales of Product Management.

Hope you enjoy the new blog format, the stories of Robin, and other posts of interest to product managers and product marketing managers.

on hiatus: one week

I'm taking the week of Thanksgiving to pause, reflect, expand, noodle, and be thankful-- so no new posts for a few days. While I connect with my inner muse, my team will be moving me from one blogging service to another and they won't let me post during the move. So I don't have a choice; I must pause, reflect, expand, noodle, and be thankful for a few days.

When we reconnect in December, everything should still work, like the RSS feed and the URL. And you can always reach me at www.productmarketing.com. See you in December.

Did you know

• 37% of product managers are female (up from 28% in 2007)
  
• 51% are implementing agile development methods.

We're gathering some interesting stats in our annual survey. Have you added your information? Take the survey and get instant access to some preliminary results.

2009 product management survey online

It's that time of year again. Each year, Pragmatic Marketing conducts a survey of product managers and marketing professionals in technology companies.

The results provide interesting insight into a typical "day-in-the-life" for those tasked with defining and launching technology products in today's competitive market.

Participate in the Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey. Tell us about yourself and get early access to the results.

Product Camp Toronto

Roughly 100 people gave up their Sunday to come to ProductCampToronto: A collaborative unconference about Product Marketing and Management.

The group here is finalizing the sessions and "volunteering" people to lead some of them.

Sessions were good; networking was great. Maybe it was because no one had to check in at work but I noted that most people talked to other people rather than to their phones.

Corey posted this tweet on Twitter:

It's kinda fun to have a stalker as long as he's in Canada and doesn't know where I live.

Pragmatic Marketing: new and notable

Our promotional webinars are "new and notable" on iTunes. Go to Podcasts, Video Podcasts, and choose Business and voila! there we are. You can't tell which ones are mine so you should just download them all and listen to them. (Hint, I like to talk about The Strategic Role of Product Management.)

Pragmatic Marketing webinars on iTunes

Look ma! I'm on iTunes. Our marketing folks have posted all the Pragmatic Marketing webinars on iTunes.

 

If you enjoy the webinars, please leave a nice customer review on iTunes. Also check out our Tuned In webinars. 
 

Tuned In podcasts on iTunes

Our Tuned In podcasts are now available on iTunes. Download sessions on Tuned In product teams, social media, cultures, buying experiences, and leadership. Since this is my blog, let me specifically point out my two sessions, Tuned In Product Teams and Aligning the Tuned In Process with the Pragmatic Marketing Framework. You can also download these podcasts from our Tuned In web page.