 For the past few months (nearly 8 since I made the western move) I have been making the rounds and meeting lots of new people. With that comes the inevitable question “What do you do?” Depending on who they are and what I think their background is, I will vary my answer. Sometimes it is “I am Senior Product Manager for software company based downtown” or “I work for a software company” or “I am in product management” and the list could go on using various descriptions to articulate the same thing. Generally, this spawns a series of “and what does that mean?” questions for which I have another series of canned answers.
One particular occurrence, when asked by the resident 12-year old “What do you do?”, I responded with “a professional thinker” and it got a curious look and a bit of chuckle. The reality is, this is pretty accurate. What we do, as product managers, is think. In my post “10 Secrets to GREAT Product Management“, the fourth item is “think”. We are paid to think. We take input and think about it. We create output and collect more input and think about it some more. (Ideally you write down your thoughts using various best-practice techniques.) Some times there is short-term thinking (today, this week, this sprint) and some times there is long-term thinking (next sprint, next year, 3 years from now). Business thinking. Technical thinking. Financial thinking. Creative thinking. The challenges are blocking out time for thinking in your schedule and not over-thinking things. I like to tell people that product management is a knowledge worker role, a linchpin role if you will. For those of you who have not yet read Linchpin by Seth Godin, a linchpin is defined as: “… people who invent, lead (regardless of title), connect others, make things happen, and create order out of chaos. They figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.” Sound familiar? Thinking is only one of the many things that you do through the day/week/year, but it is one of the more important things. So for the time being, I am running with this “Professional Thinker” title. Combining that with “I am thinking of my equivalent to the iPhone 5″, it seems to resonate with people. They may not know how I do it, but they know what I do. |
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Entries Tagged 'Product Management' ↓
Professional Thinker
July 16th, 2010 — Product Management, Strategy
Product By Committee
June 30th, 2010 — Leadership, Product Management
I skimmed this article (Thanks Rose for sharing!) and happened across this quote from Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch.
Product should be a dictatorship, not consensus-driven.
Reminds me of this quote:
“Consensus is the absence of leadership.” Margaret Thatcher
Product teams are looking for leaders and for product management to lead them.
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Top Posts (to date) for First Half 2010
June 29th, 2010 — Product Management
You might think this is a lame attempt at a post, but I think it is worthwhile for those who are may new to have some insight into what people are reading. So here are the top 5 from 2010.
- What is Strategy? Not Operational Effectiveness — #1 all time
- Roadmap: Product Vision Statement
- Your Strategic Friend, Mrs. Win/Loss Analysis
- Authority vs. Influence — one of my favourites
- Win Loss Analysis Resources
Worth noting, these three are always in the top 10 but are not really posts.
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Release to Market Cycles
May 13th, 2010 — Product Management
With so much discussion about lean startups, I am wondering what your release cycles look like. Feel free to add comments as to why you you voted one way or another. I am interested in your commentary with respect to the competitive advantage you feel you gain with your release cycle.
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Innovation as a Management Challenge
April 2nd, 2010 — Book Review, Innovation, Product Management
I have maintained all along that innovation is easy. Successful innovation is hard. Anyone can invent something new and by definition is that innovation. The challenge is building something new that people want and will pay for. (Poses a related question of whether free products are innovative?)
This is why I love quotes like this:
The test of an innovation is that it creates value.
Is this not the same test for great product management?
Quote Reference: Management Challenges for the 21st Century by Peter F. Drucker (p.86)
More on this book later.
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Shared Links 09-Feb-2010
February 9th, 2010 — Product Management
I have read some interesting posts recently and I thought I would share a few with you here.
22 JAN 10 – Agile Product Manager Chapter “Scaling Software Agility”
… I’ve decided to push this early draft Chapter out for review and comments…
22 JAN 10 – A CEO’s Perspective of Personas “Where the Product Management Tribe Gathers”
…I have been engaged with several companies recently who are pursuing personas as an avenue into buyer and user knowledge, and an intimate look at the behaviors, goals and motivating factors of each…
25 JAN 10 – Product Management Interview: Jim Holland “Product Management Meets Pop Culture”
…kicking off a series of one-on-one interviews with product management professionals…
27 JAN 10 – The Basics of Software as a Service Pricing “The Software Maven”
…It is pretty unanimous that software pricing is one of the hardest parts of a product manager’s job…
27 JAN 10 – Pragmatic Personas “StickyMinds.com”
…Knowing who will use your software is important to the software development process. Having the end user in mind helps you develop features that fit the user’s needs…
28 JAN 10 – My Rules “outside-in view”
…This is a tab on my site here where I will list the rules I believe are worth following for product managers and product marketers…
01 FEB 10 – Lunch is an event. Product launch is a process. “Launch Clinic”
…Too often we think about product launch as an event. The magic product launch checklist is consulted…
03 FEB 10 – Using Metrics to Manage the Growth Stage “Pivotal Product Management blog”
…Measuring product success throughout the product life cycle is a fundamental skill for product managers in any size or type of organization…
05 FEB 10 – “10 Books To Make You A Better Product Manager” “The Experience is the Product”
…These are not books that tell you how to do product management. Rather, these books are full of ideas that will challenge you to work smarter, communicate better, and get in the heads of your users…
08 FEB 10 – Removing Features “ignore the code”
…Applications have a natural tendency to grow…
09 FEB 10 – Setting prioritites grounded in the market “ProductMarketing.com”
…If you’ve ever had to review a long list of requirements, you’ll appreciate this…
You can always track what I am reading here (delicious.com) and here (Google Shared).
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Budget and your Strategy
February 9th, 2010 — Product Management, Roadmaps, Strategy
I suspect that one of the major impacts to your roadmap is a budget change. And by change, I mean a reduction in available funds for product development. I suspect a lot of you dealt with this last year as you suffered through many rounds in workforce reduction. I am curious how you handled that.
Picture this scenario, late last fall you reviewed all your feature requests, dusted off the roadmap, the business case is shiny again and it is all aligned with your vision and the corporate vision. With your budget approved, you are ready for 2010. Enter January 2010 and due to slightly missing the Q4 numbers you are now forced to chop $75,000 from your budget. Basically the equivalent of one developer. What do you do?
- Band together with the other product lines and pray for Management to realize that chopping 75k is guaranteed to affect more than 75k in revenue this year?
- Offer to combine forces with another product to share revenue (knowing that you will likely never be able to undo this) in hopes that your new increased revenue will offset your requirement to reduce cost?
- Suck it up, chop the developer and leave the roadmap unchanged and modify the business case (i.e. budget) to reflect the reduced cost but leaving the revenue numbers unchanged? The more with less scenario or in this case same with less.
- Suck it up, chop the developer and scale back the roadmap and business case (i.e. budget) to reflect the reduced cost and revenue numbers?
I am less inclined to do anything that will affect revenue for future years. Depending on how many rounds of workforce reduction you have survived, I am less comfortable selling the same with less scenario. If you are in your first or second round, go with that. Teams generally perform better after the first and second cuts. I am not hopeful they will “see the light” and let you keep a full team in hopes of achieving your revenue targets. Although, this is probably the scenario I start with. Sell the vision, sell the facts and get buy-in on the business case. Failing that, cut, reduce and move forward.
I am hopeful someone will share a situation where a budget cut has affected their roadmap and how they responded.
I meant no offense to any development types by suggesting we cut you, it was a just a random example. We really hate cutting our roadmap in any scenario.
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Agile 2010 Submission Request
February 8th, 2010 — Events, Product Management
We are searching Agile Product Management submissions for the Agile 2010 conference in Nashville. The Agile 2010 submission process will be somewhat different than in past years. In the past submissions would be submitted to individual stages for consideration. This year you will be submitting to one of the broad conference themes, Business, Technical, and Leadership & Organization. Once submitted the program committee will identify and forward to the most appropriate stage. The length of the sessions will either be 60 or 90 minutes and will be presented Tuesday – Thursday ONLY.
Please contact me if you have any questions, I am on the review committee.
The submission system will be open on January 11, 2010 and will remain open until February 26, 2010. Please see this link for more information – Agile 2010 Be a Speaker (http://agile2010.agilealliance.org/speaker.html).
** New link: http://agile2010.agilealliance.org/product
Business Theme Stages
Agile Product Management: As with many disciplines, agile techniques leverage our best practices, adapting them with short, empirical feedback loops. This track presents and explores: What best practices in product management are leveraged by agile teams? How have product management practices been adapted for agile? What new product management techniques have emerged from agile teams?
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