ProductMarketing.com

ack/nak: acting: being

most product managers I've known have spent their careers acting.

via acknak.blogspot.com

Most product managers are acting managers--those who act like they have authority do, and those who act like they don't, don't. Read what Bob has to say about being an "acting director."

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

Rich Mironov on team assessment

PM leaders, such as VPs or Director of Product Management, worry about the health of their teams and processes, not just the health of their products.  (See my recent post on metrics.)  There’s a shortage of tools to help us evaluate how well we’re doing as PM organizations.

via mironov.com

Need help evaluating your product management team? Rich Mironov has created this simple but effective assessment tool with a nice RADAR display to show the results. Try it out!

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

on conjoint analysis

I don't know much about conjoint analysis but I'm told by professional researchers that conjoint is the only way to estimate revenue potential to a feature. In the latest issue of The Pragmatic Marketer, Brett Jarvis writes,

Conjoint analysis is a set of market research techniques that measures the value the market places on each feature of your product and predicts the value of any combination of features. Conjoint analysis is, at its essence, all about features and trade-offs.

Read more in http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/8/2/conjoint-analysis-101

Q&A for product management

Red Canary's Shop Talk offers several perspectives on product management from some top minds in the Toronto area. Read the post at http://www.redcanary.ca/?p=648

The questions:
1. Tell us about the best product you’ve ever encountered? Why do you like it?
2. How do you know a great product manager when you meet one?
3. What’s your favorite interview question?
4. When is the best time for a start-up to hire a product manager?
5. What has been the defining moment in your career?
6. Mistakes. What was your biggest?

My answers:
1. Best product: I like all of Apple's products and I love my Kindle but the best? Right now I'd have to say my Kensington presenter's remote. It has five features—next slide, last slide, turn off the slides, laser pointer plus a memory stick to hold your presentations. It must've been a nightmare getting the developers to NOT add additional features.
2. Great product manager: A great product manager sees patterns. We're not looking for one request, one story, one mistake, one data point; great product managers see the patterns in the aggregate. Like watching the game film on Monday morning, you can see what really happened from an overall perspective.
3. Interview question: What's your favorite Microsoft Office program? Your answer tells me how you organize your thoughts and where you fit in the product management triad. (And no one has yet said Microsoft Project). Learn more about the product management triad.
4. When to hire?: Just before your first failure. A founder has a great idea for a product. He quits his day job and starts a company. Success! (Of course, we don't often think about the 99 others who didn't have success). But then, what's the next product? And the one after that? That's when you need a product manager, to bring market facts and patterns from the world as it is now, not how the founder saw it a decade ago, not how the developers imagine it to be, and not what the sales people can sell once to a deal they're working.
5. Defining moment: I had the joy of working at a really well-run company as my first vendor job. It took me years to realize that they were the anomaly. The book I'll write some day is titled "Everything I thought everybody already knew about running a software company."
6. Mistake: Letting my people teach me to micro-manage them. I promised myself I wouldn't yet they were so used to being second-guessed, they tried to get me to continue my predecessor's bad behavior. It took me a few weeks to figure out that they took my opinion as a mandate. Once I understood, I assured them that I wouldn’t question their decisions if they were grounded in company strategy and market facts.

How would you answer?

ICON and distribution strategy

In the past, discussions about distribution strategy always focused on channel. That is, how to get the product from the factory through the channel to the customer. But nowadays distribution means that we need to explore also the best way to deliver, maintain, and use the product.

Should we sell direct, through multi-tier, via the web, over the phone? And how should we deliver? Hosted, SaaS, on-premise? How will we deliver patches and upgrades? Nowadays the choices seem limitless.

Virginia recently passed a law forbidding use of handheld devices while driving.  (That's called an Opportunity in SWOT analysis) I do have a bluetooth capability in my Toyota but the hands-free lacks noise canceling and it just doesn't satisfy. I find myself shouting into the phone and am exhausted after a short phone call. So, as a result, I was in the market for a new bluetooth headset. 

What next?  I could go to Amazon and do some comparisons. I could also go to the vendors' web sites and see what they have to say. I could go to the phone store and see what they have. Three different ways to buy. After looking at a few different sites and blogs, I decided on the Jawbone ICON from Aliph. 

http://us.jawbone.com/productsPageIcon.aspx

Now I have to think about delivery. If I buy from the phone store, I can see the product and take it home immediately--but alas, my store only carries The Thinker (black on black, a safe choice) With Amazon, I can choose from two different models but I'll have to wait a couple of days. With the vendor site, I can choose from all six models but have to wait a week or more. In my case (and maybe yours), I'll do anything to stay away from a retail store and Amazon didn't have the model I wanted so I was stuck with the vendor site. Sigh, hard to wait a week (a week!) when you're used to next-day service from Amazon. 

Here's where it gets really interesting. You can change the usage over the web. Plug the headset into a USB port, go to the web site, and the website shows you how you can configure the headset. You can choose among six voices ("You have two hours of talk time remaining") and three or four applications including voice dial and memo capabilities. Logically, they could someday download a firmware update, add A2DP capability (please!) or offer other features. 

So the distribution questions you ask yourself on a new product introduction is not just what channel any more but what is the best way to deliver, maintain, and use the product. I find it annoying lately when products don't automatically update themselves with bug fixes and new features. Operating systems have done it for years; virus programs do it too. 

The more you understand your buyer and user personas, the more you'll know how to answer distribution questions. 

Have you thought about distribution in these terms? 

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

For Apple suppliers, loose lips can sink contracts

Many of Apple's finished gadgets, from iPods to iPads, are assembled at industrial compounds like the one in Longhua. And when it comes to guarding Apple's secrets, Foxconn, a unit of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, and other suppliers throughout the region leave little to chance.

via reuters.com

An interesting look into Apple, Hon Hai and secrecy. Maybe more people (both employees and customers) should be on a need-to-know basis about product ideas and plans.

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

2009-2010 Survey results published

The new magazine is out and the latest survey results are in. We ran loads of analyses on the data and I think you're gonna find some neat stuff inside.

Are you technical? It seems that our customers are!

And it matters. People who are more technical make more money!

Thanks to all of you who shared your information and your candor with us. The results are fascinating. 

Converting Theory into Action

Product management leadership is all about action. It’s converting the theory of product management into sustainable methods. It’s organizing, guiding and enabling a team and teaching them a common language that builds momentum as a team, creates consistency in your activities and ensures product management maintains a level of credibility across organization and with executive management.

via pmtribe.wordpress.com

My friend Jim Holland hits the nail on the head: product management isn't about meetings and emails and artifacts; it's about learning from the market and turning those observations in action.

What are you doing this week?

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

Outsourcing Product Management

Len Lipkin of techprodo.com comments on the idea of outsourcing product management:

 What great new ideas can an outsider bring in that you shouldn’t be able to do internally.  There are only two circumstances that I can think of where I can see outsourcing PM as a good long-term idea.

I agree with Lipkin on this: outsourcing product management is outsourcing a distinctive competence. Surely no one outside your organization can understand your business and market domain better than one inside. But of course, some companies feel that product management is more janitorial work than leadership work. And sure, janitorial work can be outsourced. But shouldn't product management be more?

I've written about the strategic role of product management. In your organization, is product management about markets and problems or is it only prioritizing the feature list? If the latter, then sure, you can outsource it. But if product management is about understanding markets and problems, and arming the company with these market facts--in requirements, positioning, and sales tools--then you must keep product management inside.

The 2010 product management survey shows that product managers and product marketing managers are becoming more strategic and working more closely with senior management. Are yours?

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

The Strategic Role of Product Management

Have you and your team read The Strategic Role of Product Management?

It's almost 2010. Let's get product management done right in the new year. Print off a copy and pass it around the office. (Word cloud created by Wordle).

How Product Management Must Change to Enable the Agile Enterprise

Nice article by Catherine Connor in How Product Management Must Change to Enable the Agile Enterprise. She writes:

When development teams adopt agile practices, product management is often caught off guard by the amount of work added to their already overflowing plate. Agile calls for new product management skills and traditional staffing models do not typically accommodate the new product owner role. Given that most product managers are already overworked, how can they manage these new activities to derive more value from software projects and products?

The product owner role is a full-time job. Catherine notes that the folks at Enthiosys have estimated the product management workload to rise by about 50% when software teams adopt agile. In fact most companies are assigning a full-time product owner to each project. Do you have responsibility for 3 or more products? No wonder you're so exhausted.

The solution for many has been to implement the product management triad: one product manager for strategy; one product owner for technology; one product marketing manager for go-to-market. Learn more about implementing the triad in my (free) ebook The Strategic Role of Product Management.

survey ends on Tuesday

What's your title?

Are you here? Take Pragmatic Marketing's Product Management and Marketing Benchmark Survey for 2009-2010 to add your title and compensation. (image courtesy of Wordle)

Survey: has your job changed?

"Have you seen your job change in the last two years? If so, how"

Want to add your comments? Take Pragmatic Marketing's Product Management and Marketing Benchmark Survey for 2009-2010. (image courtesy of Wordle)

Join me for today's webinar

Join me today for my webinar on Highlights from 2008-2009 Product Management Survey at 1pm ET/10am PT. I'll review last year's results and give some insights from this year's survey. Have you taken it yet?

product management survey: comments for the president

"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)

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!

Microsoft "Courier" secret tablet

Bob Corrigan pointed this one out to me. Say what you will about Microsoft, this is a fine scenario-based demo.

If you can't see the embedded video, try here.

Whenever I encounter a new company or product, I immediately want to hear a story about how the product will be used. Not vague explanations of how someone might want to do something and not how it will create synergy. Give me an example of its use!

Bob writes in nice persona-driven demo:

Sometimes product managers leave the "marketing stuff" up to the "marketing people". When it comes to how your products are demonstrated, don't let this happen. Make sure you connect capabilities to value by grounding them in problems people have, and how you help them solve those problems.

Amen, brother.

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.

A big fish...

...in a small pond.

One of the better competitive strategies is to "be where they ain't." Instead of being the small fish in a big pond, be a big fish in a small pond.

This week, the Kindle version of my ebook, The Strategic Role of Product Management, reached #3 on Amazon's bestseller list for high-tech products. (Yay me!!)

I talked with a company this week that is focused on beating the big guys at their own game. But their product doesn't have all the features necessary to compete and their only option seems to be to offer fewer features for a lot less money. In the big boy game, only the #1 or #2 vendor makes any money.

What's your competitive strategy? Is it "out-spend the leader in development and marketing"? (good luck with that!) Or are you focusing on a market segment that values your unique selling proposition?

Are you taking on the big guys? Or are you a big fish in a small pond? 

join me at Agile 2009

Look for me next week at the Agile 2009 conference in Chicago. I'll be leading a panel on the role of product management in an agile environment with Simon Orrell, Dan Rawsthorne, Rich Mironov, Marty Cagan, and Laureen Knudsen. I expect some great discussions! c u there.