On Product Management

Creating a product management playbook

Back before we were all online all the time, I kept a notebook of all the living documents for my product. Nowadays I keep these documents in a shared folder but sometimes I miss the old notebook. It held my positioning, pricing, and personas; it had my business plan and the requirements for the next [...] Related posts:

Diagnosing Org Health – Take the ONPM poll

Sometimes pictures can say more than words. Here’s a simple flow chart to help diagnose organizational health and a quick poll. The top part of this chart is where culture and leadership matters most. The bottom is where capability matters most. The two need to work in sync for a healthy firm. If your firm’s [...] Related posts:

Product Management vs. Systems Analysis

By Rivi Aspler It still surprises me that people confuse system analysis with product management. Surprise is one thing, totally harmless. The risky thing is hiring a systems analyst when you actually need a product manager and then being surprised with a failure product. This post offers 2 main questions that can assist you in [...] Related posts:

The Whole Product Manager

By Prabhakar Gopalan Walk into an established software company and you see these product management and product marketing silos. [note: startups or well run product organizations don't have this problem at all - see last paragraph in this skeptical PMM view] To begin with, product managers and marketing managers are saddled with two divisive documents [...] No related posts.

Strategic Product Management – Job Responsibilities or End Results?

By John Mansour Is your reference to “strategic product management” more about job responsibilities considered to be strategic or product initiatives that produce results with strategic impact? I ask the question because product managers almost always refer to strategic product management as job responsibilities considered to be more strategic than tactical. But when I listen [...] Related posts:

Does your content have a clear purpose?

By Saeed Khan Content marketing is all the rage. Well written, targeted content can propel your website traffic, can deliver more leads, can increase your perception as a thought leader etc. And so companies have joined the content marketing fray and started corporate blogs, posted videos on YouTube, and created targeted micro-sites. Companies also create [...] Related posts:

Last chance: Help influence our 2011 content

Market research is easy. Visit customers

By Steve Johnson Market research is easy. Visit customers, with or without sales people. Go on sales calls. Go to user group meetings. Go to conferences. Call a few customers on the phone and ask how they are using your product, where they find deficiencies, and what direction they are taking their own businesses. Listen. [...] Related posts:

Positioning, messaging, and ownership

Who defines product positioning? Product Management or Marketing Communications? Product managers are responsible for the features of the product and its positioning in the marketplace. The Marketing Communications (marcom or marcomms) organization is chartered with delivering the product message to the market. Product Management defines the positioning and Marcom delivers the positioning. Here’s a crazy [...] Related posts:

What Type of Product Manager Do You Really Need?

By Rivi Aspler Saeed recently spoke at Product Camp (Silicon Valley), where he presented a presentation, named, How to truly manage your product like a CEO. This post is related to Saeed’s presentation, especially slides 21-22 of it, offering a way to choose the right product manager for the Product Life Cycle stage that your [...] Related posts:

Avoiding the “best of both worlds” mindset

By Joshua Duncan Take a close look at the picture to the right. It’s the 1899 Horsey Horseless, considered one of the worst cars of all time (source Time.com). Note the fake horse’s head on the front to give it a “familiar” look to those used to riding in carriages pulled by horses. Transitional products, [...] Related posts: