There seems to be a strong bias in many large companies toward assessing a product manager’s ability to perform based as much (if not more) on their technical ability, background, and knowledge as their real-world, market, and user experience. To me, this is an entirely backward way of approaching the problem, as the entire purpose […]
What “Agile” Means to the Business
Agile development and its related methodologies and practices have long been viewed as something that “developers do” with no consideration given to the broader impacts of those processes on the organization as a whole. This, incidentally, is also the primary cause of failures on the part of organizations who attempt to implement Agile practices — […]
Break Down the Walls – Five Tips to Become a Product Manager
By far, one of the most common questions that I run across online and in discussions at events is how to transition into a Product Management role from outside. This can often be a challenge, since in most companies there are relatively fewer Product Management roles than there are roles of other kinds — even development […]
Being the Voice of the Customer is Something You EARN!
During a discussion with a UX designer and a development manager at a recent Product Management Consortium meeting here in Seattle, one of the topics that came up involved some of the things that Product Managers do or say that they find annoying, ridiculous, or just upsetting. And, interestingly enough, one of those was the […]
The Importance of Understanding the Whole Product
Product Management is often seen as a simple matter of inputs and outputs — we take information from the field, from the market, or from the users, and we create new products and features that meet their needs. If only it were that simple! Customers rarely know what they really want, although they can be […]
Incremental Improvement – Why You Need to Change the Wheels While the Bus is Moving
There have been numerous situations in my career as a Product Manager where I’ve come into a project or product that’s so established and critical to client success that there’s a strong hesitancy on the part of anyone to dig in and muck with what’s “working”, even if it’s not really “working” in the eyes […]
Five Ways to Be a PM That Developers Actually LIKE!
Product Managers sometimes have a bad reputation when it comes to Development teams — and we often unintentionally earn these reputations, by the way that we work with them. There are, however some things that Product Managers can do to build a strong relationship with their development teams — something that is, in fact, essential […]
Five Things a Clever PM Can Learn From Strategy Games
In an earlier post, I talked about five things that a PM can learn from role-playing games. Since I’m a pretty avid gamer, I realized that there are lots of things that PMs can learn from all genres of games, so I’m considering making this a recurring theme. Today’s discussion focuses on real-time strategy (RTS) […]
Five Things a Product Manager Should be Thankful For
In a time of recognition for the good things in life, and for the opportunities that life has presented us with, I thought it would be a good time to take a few moments and reflect on some of the things that all Product Managers should be thankful for. So, on this Thanksgiving week, enjoy […]
Five Things a Clever PM Can Learn from Role-Playing Games
I’ve been a gamer for far longer than I’ve been anything else in my life. From the early days of playing Combat on my Atari 2600, to Fastball! on my Commodore 64, all the way through to Skyrim on my PC or Destiny on my XBox One, I’ve always been interested in the cutting edge […]
What Exactly *IS* Product Management, Anyway?
Trying to come up with a single, global definition of what “Product Management” is and what it incorporates, often seems like a massive exercise in folly. Wikipedia describes Product Management as “an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the […]
First, Kill All The Product Managers!
There’s a very famous quote that’s used quite often when people are expressing their dislike of lawyers: “First, kill all the lawyers.” This, they posit, is something that good old Bill Shakespeare himself advocated for, after all – and what better way to stabilize our society than to dispose of the bottom-feeding trolls and sharks […]