The Productologist

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 not) and formulate a plan for the coming year.

This year, I realized that I was not spending enough time reading. Not reading for pleasure, but for professional and career growth. As a Product Manager, the majority of my time is spent on 3 things:

1. Meetings
2. Customer/Prospect Calls
3. Product Documentation (MRDs, PRDs, Sales training, product evangelization, status reports, etc)

In my experience, a Product Manager’s workload is cyclical, primarily revolving around product releases, but there are other factors, too. For example, I recently had maintenance releases for two products, a Beta program for our next-generation release and managing a special project all going on a the same time. For some of you, that may be a lot happening at once; for others, it may seem like a lull, but for me it’s more toward the former than the latter.

In several posts, I have referred to my BW, or Beautiful Wife, so I wanted to provide some details about her (without getting too personal).

Popularity: 18% [?]

You may have noticed that my posts have appeared a bit less frequent lately. It’s not an illusion.

When I started this site, my plan was to post 4-7 times per month and for the first few months, that went on according to plan (ah, the best laid plans of mice and men). Unfortunately in life, as with any product plan, there are variances such as staffing changes, market adjustments, resource allocation changes, and the like.

My life has had some variances recently, which have prevented me from spending as much time as I would like writing here and on the other blogs that I visit regularly. I will be returning to my regularly scheduled program soon.