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Blog Articles
Viewing entries tagged with 'product management'
Regaining Your Product Mojo
In my last article, I talked about the problem where your product organization has been relegated to the role of a service organization, largely documenting the decisions and desires of others. I must have struck a chord because I received a record number of comments, mostly from people that felt trapped in this very situation and were anxious to see if there’s hope for change.
Product Roadmaps
I can¹t tell you how many times product managers have shown me their sophisticated spreadsheets and algorithms for prioritizing their long laundry list of feature requests (weighting various factors like cost, complexity, risk, customer impact, projected sales impact, documentation, dependencies, etc.) eventually leading to a single aggregated prioritized roadmap.
Product Management in Economic Downturns
One consequence of having been around this industry for a while is that I¹ve seen several cycles. Sometimes the downsides are fairly minor and barely touch tech companies, and at other times nearly everyone has lay-offs, cost-cutting, consolidations, or worse. While it¹s never fun to see the industry enter a downturn, I have learned that this can actually be a very productive period for the smart companies that know how to weather the storm.
Product Manager vs. Business Analyst
In certain companies, mostly those that have an IT heritage (see http://www.svpg.com/blog/files/moving-from-it-to-product-organization.html), there may be an additional role somewhere in the product organization either in product management or in the product development organization that may be called 'Business Analyst.'
Laid Off; Now What?
Many of you probably saw that eBay recently had a lay-off, and given the condition of the economy they are not likely to be the only one doing so. What I wanted to talk about in this article was what to do if you find yourself in the same boat.
Product Managers vs. Business Owners
In some companies, mostly larger companies with multiple business units, there is an additional role in the product mix.
Product Management and Risk
In a very real sense, every product manager is in the risk management business. Every investment decision we make represents a risk.
Product Management Certification?
Occasionally product managers will ask me if they should get “certified” as a product manager. There are half a dozen or so organizations that have created their own “product management certification” programs. Now, I do not blame any of these organizations in the least for doing their very best to persuade product managers that they really need to get their company’s certification, or to persuade managers that they really should only hire staff that has passed their company’s certification. This is simply smart marketing.
Global Product Management
One of the amazing things about doing web-based products and services is watching how quickly the service gets adopted internationally. With global access, and with good site analytics tools, we can see the service start to spread around the globe. But these of course are the early adopters, and for most products and services, we have considerable work to do to get the product working appropriately and successfully in countries around the world.
Avoiding Design By Committee
One of the big advantages that startups have is that there aren’t many people.