Product Manager Evaluation
At my company, it’s annual review time, which means that I get to spend quality time writing about what I have accomplished over the past 12 months and how it relates to my role as Product Manager....
View ArticleProduct Councils
One of my goals for this year is to establish Product Councils for my products. Product Councils, or Product Advisory Boards, as they are sometimes called, are made up of people who are familiar with...
View ArticleBuilding a Working Roadmap
Many years ago, when I was going off to start grad school, BW (at the time, she wasn’t BW, just B) and I rented a big yellow truck to haul all of our prized personal belongings to our new home (at...
View ArticleKnow Thy Neighbor
As Product Managers, we spend a lot of time working with other groups—Prospects, Customers, Sales, Support, Engineering, Marketing, etc–to get our products up and running and out the door. Managing...
View ArticleForm and Function in NYC
I just got back from a trip to New York for a trade show. For those of you who have had the pleasure of staying in Manhattan on a restricted budget ($400+ for a room that in most places would qualify...
View ArticlePassion, part 1
Two weeks ago, a friend and I went to a bar to watch the Packers-Cowboys game (thanks, NFL network). Normally, our sporadic football-watching happens as his house, as I don’t have TV (yes, I have a TV,...
View ArticleI am NOT the CEO of my Product
I have read (examples here and here) and heard in numerous places that a Product Manager is like the CEO of the product. I’ve even used it to describe what I do to folks who are unfamiliar with the...
View ArticleWhat to Read and When
At the end of each calendar year, I spend a bit of time cleaning house (figuratively, and sometimes literally). I look at the things that I have accomplished (or not), the tools that I have used (or...
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Good Mouse
I recently decided that it was time to get a replacement to my dead USB mouse, which I used when I moved my laptop to conference rooms, prospect and customer sites and while traveling. I had put off...
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Book Review: The Art of Innovation
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman I spotted this book at my local library while perusing the business book section and was drawn to it by the fact that it was written by someone...
View ArticleCustomers: They’re Not Who You Think They Are
I went to visit a customer a few weeks ago as part of a commitment to myself (and my products) to get out into the field more often. My goal with them and with all of my planned visits to the field was...
View ArticleFirst Hire
I went to visit another customer recently and discovered something very interesting about them. Their first hire was not a Software Engineer or even a Product Manager, but a User Experience specialist....
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How to Talk to Customers
I had another visit with one of my customers the other day (I know, I’ve been writing a lot of posts about customer visits, but they are important and I learn a lot from them). I call them MY customer,...
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Passion, part 2
In a previous post, I wrote about passionate customers, but before you have passionate customers, you have to have people inside your organization that are passionate about your product. And that...
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Product Management Reader: 29Jan09
This is a very special edition of the Product Management Reader. Not only does it contain 8 (which is my favorite number, right after 2 and 4) great Product Management blog posts, but each comes from...
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Product Management Reader: 5Feb09
This episode of the Product Management Reader contains a nice cross-section of Product Management literature, including PMGT, PMKT, Agile, and some other stuff that’s somehow relevant. Even though...
View ArticleThe Productologist enters the “Terrible Twos”
Two years and zero days ago I brought forth, upon this Interwebs, a new blog, conceived in Liberty (or haste), and dedicated to the proposition that all Product Managers are NOT created equal and that...
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Product Management Reader: 26Mar09
On the road again…but that can’t stop the music. Just gotta keep on truckin’. What if… [Product Beautiful] When is a Feature Request a Customer Requirement? [Effectivus] Guest Post: The Cranky...
View ArticleProduct Management Question Corner: Donal Kane, Mediaplex
Tired of hearing the U.S.-centric view of the world? Me, too. So today, we’re talking to Donal Kane, a Product Manager from the United Kingdom, who works at Mediaplex, the technology division of...
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Product Management Reader: 1June09
If you are just joining us, here are the breaking news stories affecting your world. Tell me a story [Effectivus] Collecting End User Feedback [Papertree Design] Transitions: onward and upward...
View ArticleMRDs: Too Much of a Bad Thing
I have recently been embracing the change from traditional waterfall product development to an Agile framework. In the past, I have been wary of Agile, especially for enterprise products, but as I...
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Product Management Reader: 31Aug09
Image by mino_andrade via Flickr Alright, people, Summer is over (again, just for you Northern Hemisphere dwellers)! Time to kick it back into gear. I hope you all kept up with your Summer reading...
View ArticleAgile, Agile, Everywhere?
It’s not hard to find Agile projects and development teams, especially within the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but I am starting to see Agile methods (Scrum, specifically) used for a variety of...
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Good Product Communication
I posted a while ago about the importance of communicating with customers about both product strategy and product issues, and wanted to share this example I received from XMarks– I like this...
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Good Enough Isn’t
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes products successful (or not), and was following a discussion on an email list that I participate in (The Inbox Insiders, a collective of email marketing...
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