The Productologist

Exploring the Depths of Product Management

Posts Tagged “Book Review”

05 11 2009

Book Review: Product Manager’s Desk Reference

Product Manager’s Desk Reference by Steven Haines

There are books and there are Books, and with 700+ pages, the Product Manager’s Desk Reference (PMDR) definitely falls in the latter category of capital B books. It’s not a book you can throw in your laptop bag to read on the plane (or train). Actually, you could, but you might not have room for your laptop!

There are many books (and blogs) out there that purport to tell you how to be a Product Manager. I have discussed some of them here before and there are many reviews on sites like Amazon. The PMDR is unique among them in that it covers a very broad range of Product Management topics and it covers them in significant depth.

And fortunately, the PMDR is not just limited to the traditional Product Management functions. Haines covers all the topics that a Product Manager would even remotely have to think about or interact with–Leadership, Finance, Team Management, Research, and Career Development, just to highlight some.

In previous book reviews, I have gone through the book and summarized the main points and added some comments (observations, critiques, or questions). That’s a bit harder this time around since the PMDR is so big and I don’t think that it would add much value. What I am going to do with this one is pick out some of my favorite topics or points and provide some guidance on who it would be good for (New Product Manager (NEW), Experienced Product Manager (EPM), Big Company Product Manager (BIG), Start Up Product Manager (SUP) or everyone):

Topic	Starting Page	NEW	EPM	SUP	BIG
Stay Calm, Even When Your Hair’s on Fire	48	X	X	X	X
Documenting the Decision Process Chart	92	X	X	X	X
Basic Financial Statements	106	X			X
Competitive Positioning	150	X	X	X	X
Strategy as a Dynamic Continuum	216		X
SWOT	237	X		X
Product Strategy Review Template	345		X		X
Sorting Out Opportunities	270			X	X
So What?: The Value Proposition	277	X	X	X	X
Marketing Functional Support Plan	297	X			X
Product Performance and Monitoring	311	X	X	X	X
Eliciting Requirements	326	X
Functional Requirements	331	X
Make vs. Buy	337	X	X	X	X
Competitor Research	392		X		X
PM Role During Dev Phase	416	X
Decision Matrix for Development Changes	437	X	X	X	X
The 3 A’s of Product Launch	451	X	X	X	X
Win/Loss Audits	481				X
Recasting the Strategic Mix	502		X		X
Chapter 22 – Charting Your Career	559	X	X	X	X
Coaching Product Managers	583		X		X

There is much more to the PMDR than what I have covered above, but I think the areas I highlighted are important topics that many Product Managers struggle with. Like others who have reviewed this book (On Product Management, Cranky PM, and Product Management Zen), I think this book is a welcome edition to the library of Product Management books out there and serves to provide a broad foundation for Product Managers both within the field and beyond.

Recommendation: The PMDR is a fantastic resource for any Product Manager who wants to fill in gaps in their training/education or who wants a good reference tool for revisiting some of the areas and skills that they don’t use as much. Due to its size, it’s not portable and I wish the templates were available electronically AND free of charge for book owners, but it’s still a great book that should be in every Product Managers library.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Product Management Reader: 1June09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

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
[Ack/Nak]
Book Review: Made to Stick
[Product Management Zen]
Innovation’s moment of truth
[Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management and Marketing]
5 Not Obvious Reasons Product Marketers Should Twitter
[Rocket Watcher]
Stunningly awful remote demos in ten easy steps
[Red Canary]
What A Pastry Store Can Teach Product Managers
[Accidental Product Manager]
Do You & Your Product Meet Your Promises?
[OutsideIn View]
The Strategic Family Expands to Customer Visits
[Strategic Product Manager]
Two surveys nearly miss key buyer insight
[Buyer Persona Blog]

Disclaimer: Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Product Management Reader: 12Mar09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

Today is the day that has gone on forever. Up early. Up late. When you read this, the day that has gone on forever will be yesterday (or even the day before yesterday), but nonetheless, it went on forever. Kind of like the list of this week’s Product Management posts. It just keeps going. No end in sight. In this case, it’s not such a bad thing.

Invention, innovation, and product management
[Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management and Marketing]
Define the problem before solving it
[How to be a Good Product Manager]
The Seven Deadly Sins of Product Planning
[Silicon Valley Product Group]
Keeping your Strategy Simple
[Strategic Product Manager]
Dilbert for Product Managers
[Cranky Product Manager]
Why Business Analysis Matters More During A Recession
[Requirements Defined]
How to get a lost account to speak with you
[On Product Management]
Catching Up is Not Possible
[Managing Product Development]
Brutal Prioritization in Agile: cut costs by NOT building the fluff
[Agile Blog]
How To Use Web 2.0 To Be A Better Product Manager
[Accidental Product Manager]
Yours visually
[Confessions of a Digital Immigrant]
Made To Stick: Product Management Book Review
[Product Management Meets Pop Culture]

Disclaimer: Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Book Review: Predictably Irrational

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Book Review, Customers, Marketing

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This book was the last selection for a Product Managment book club that I belong to. I hadn’t heard of the book before seeing it in the book club, but when I read the description, it sounded interesting. Since I have a background in Psychology, I’m keen on discussions about human behavior, especially when that behavior is incongruent with expectations.

I have read many business books that use case studies to describe why we act the way we do and what I, as a business professional, can do to take advantage of that (or in some cases, what I can do about my own behavior to improve myself). Frequently, though, these books provide no insight into their methods and whether the analysis or recommendations are based on data that is statistically significant (in short that the result is more likely due to the aspects being measured than to pure chance).

In a very refreshing departure from the norm, the first chapter in Predictably Irrational has a note that ALL of the results presented in the book are statistically significant. Score 1 for research with integrity. If you ever author a book (or article or blog posting) where you use statistical measures to support your ideas, I strongly encourage you to follow Ariely’s lead and only report on findings that are statistically significant. It’s the right way to report on research results and it makes your case look stronger. OK, enough with the soap box…back to the review.

A central theme in the book is pricing and perceptions around pricing. The author presents several cases around price comparisons, the difference between perceived values of objects being sold and bought, and reward/incentive scenarios (perform an action–get paid). Many of the scenarios demonstrate how even given all of the tools we objectively know help us make better decisions, we still make choices that are irrational or even contrary to our best interests.

Ariely also draws similarities with how we behave in non-monetary situations, such as politics, sports, and even life choices. Repeatedly, the subjects of his case studies make choices, that when viewed objectively, are clearly poor. In one example regarding choices about safe sex, the irrational decisions could even be dangerous to our health.

In perhaps the singlemost important insight in the book, Ariely quotes Henry David Thoreau in reference to a challenge that Ford Motor Company was having with the dealer service organization. With the numerous vehicles that Ford built and serviced, dealers had difficulty getting their customers to come back for regular service, which was a significant driver of revenue. The problem was that each vehicle had different service intervals and requirements. This complexity confused customers and they either didn’t understand the service intervals or dismissed them entirely.

The solution to Ford’s problem (and one that the much smaller Honda–at least at that time–had already figured out) was to simplify the service schedule for ALL vehicles. Giving customers fewer details to manage meant that it was easier for them to remember when to bring in their vehicles and what needed to be serviced. More visits translated directly into more revenue.

From a Product Management perspective, this should serve as a reminder to all of us that our customers look to us to help reduce the complexity in their lives, not add to it. When evaluating a feature or bug fix, ask yourself if the path you are choosing makes it easier for you or for your customer.

I enjoyed reading the book from a psychological perspective, but even though I applaud the use of only statistically significant results, I have questions about the methodology and conclusions that the author draws from the results. To be sure, there is a great deal of anecdotal validity in much of Ariely’s analysis, but each time I read how the social experiments were carried out, I felt that important factors were being omitted.

In particular, many of the experiments involved students in his classes who knew that the task was experimental. Subjects behave differently when they know that they are being observed and doubly so if they knowlegeable about the techniques of psychological testing. I didn’t feel that the author addressed these concerns.

There also seemed to be some pretty big jumps in his conclusions about the behavior observed in a broader context. The author did a good job of mixing up the test cases so that outliers would not affect the outcomes in a predictable fashion, but the tests were still very limited and did not take into account broad social, geographic, or economic factors (at least not that were declared in the text).

Recommendation: I am mixed about how I feel about this book. It clearly raises some interesting issues around pricing, perceptions, and consumer behavior that Product Managers should look at to see if they might have any value for their products. As a seminal text declaring “This is how it works,” I am not sold. It’s definitely worth a read. The book is engaging and the author does a good job of turning what could have been very dry data into a text that is easily digestible and interesting. Just digest it with a grain of salt.

Popularity: 26% [?]

The Productologist enters the “Terrible Twos”

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Off-Topic, Other Blogs

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 we could ALL learn a thing or two to make ourselves and our products better.

My, what a difference a year makes. At this time last year, traffic was minimal (on good days) and amounted to about 950 unique visits per month. The posting schedule was erratic and usually unplanned. The total post count was 39!

Now, there are more than 2900 unique visits per month (for those of you who are mathematically-challenged, that’s a 3x increase). With 58 posts this past year, and a semi-regular posting schedule that IS planned, but still somewhat erratic, The Productologist is cranking out the content and stirring up discussion.

Favorite Posts

As with last year’s anniversary post, I am including my favorite post of the year and yours, too. A note about how this works: I use the Popularity plugin from Alex King which uses a scoring algorithm to determine the popularity of pages and posts. You can see the popularity of any post or page at the bottom of the page. The top two for 2008 were

While these are great posts to be sure, they are anomalies and not truly the most popular posts. The first one, I recently discovered, is linked back from an, ahem, adult entertainment page. The second one gets spikes at the beginning of each college semester as a new group of students searches online for information about the Cornell Note-Taking method (probably recommended by their professors). Neither are truly Product Management audiences (well, maybe the first one), so I am discounting them for that reason.

Which leads us to the real favorites for 2008:

Book Review: The Inmates are Running the Asylum (yours)
Customer-centric Design: Trek Lime (mine)

Additions Since Last Year

Some of the things that are new on The Productologist:

Revised UI (again)
Product Management Reader posts (usually weekly)
Product Management Question Corner interviews
Twitter
Facebook
Jobs page

Other Notable Happenings

Inclusion on the Alltop Product Management page
Guest posts on other Product Management blogs (thanks Jeff and Cranky)
And my personal fav: Honourable Mention in the Top 5 Product Management blogs

Thanks again to all of my subscribers, readers, commenters and lurkers for reading along, joining in the conversation, or just sticking with me in 2008 (and hopefully into 2009 and beyond).

Regards,

Ivan

Popularity: 20% [?]

Product Management Reader: 5Feb09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

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 these are not Productologist posts, they’re still worth a read.

Become a Product Manager Only If…
[Product Management Tips]
The Cranky Product Manager Responds to the Cranky Sales Engineer – Part 1
[Cranky Product Manager]
The World Turned Upside Down
[Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management & Marketing]
What causes Product Managers to become disorientated?
[All About Product Management]
User Stories and Use Cases
[Tyner Blain]
How To Kill Innovation
[Silicon Valley Product Group]
How Product Managers Price Products For Irrational Customers
[Accidental Product Manager]
Book Review: The Product Manager’s Desk Reference
[On Product Management]
Product Management Value
[John Hawkins]
Product Plagiarism: Answers are There if You Know How to Spin It
[Spatially Relevant]

Disclaimer: Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Book Review: The Art of Product Management

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Best Practices, Book Review, Professional Development, Publications

The Art of Product Management by Rich Mironov

I received an early copy of Rich Mironov’s The Art of Product Management, which is a collection of some of his earlier articles from his newsletter, Product Bytes.

I’ve met Rich a few times at SVPMA events and had some good conversations with him before going in to hear the featured speaker. I’m also a subscriber to his newsletter, but I hadn’t read any of the vignettes that were selected for the book.

The Art of Product Management is a lot like a book of poetry. The content is short and sweet and divided into bite-sized morsels. It’s not meant to be consumed in one session, but rather over many sittings and discussed as you go.

The chapters in The Art of Product Management are grouped together into sections along the lines of a parenting book (a metaphor that they author introduces in the preface), but truth-be-told, it’s a pretty loose organization. The original publication dates of the stories are not chronological and you can hear how Mironov was in different places professionally in the different posts. I liked this element of the book because it didn’t feel like he was this “all-knowing” Product Management expert who was casting his immense knowledge down to the masses.

The book is a how-to guide for Product Managers, but not in the traditional sense. Miranov doesn’t list the 7 things every Product Manager needs to have in their requirements documentation or provide sample schedules for executing a flawless Beta program. Most of the information presented is in form of “Hey, this happened to me and now I know better. I thought you would be interested.”

And it’s geared primarily toward folks who work at software start-ups, which is good, because most other Product Management books are squarely set on addressing the needs of formalized Product Managment teams at big companies. Anyone who has worked at a small startup company can tell you that while it’s a good foundation to have, you just don’t use most of the formal Product Management processes at small companies.

Another aspect that I liked about the book is that it is purely anecdotal. There are no longitudinal studies, surveys, or secondary analysis, just the author’s experiences. And the topics range from those specific to Product Mangement (“Null Service”, “Insider Thinking”, “What’s Your Pricing Metric”) to ones that are tangential, but still interesting (“Early Selling”, “Why Are There Serial Entrepeneurs”, “Girls Getting a Head Start(-up)”). With this type of setup, the reader gets to decide how valuable the information presented is to them.

RECOMMENDATION: I liked The Art of Product Management. It was easy to read and it was easy to recognize some of my own product and business challenges in the stories the author tells. I wouldn’t recommend this as the first book to pick up as a brand new Product Manager, but I would say that it is a good option for those who are 12-18 months into their first Product Manager role. It’s also a good option for more senior Product folks as both a refresher and an enjoyable trek down memory lane (“Oh yeah, I remember doing that, too!”).

Popularity: 30% [?]

The Productologist 2008…That’s a wrap!

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Best Practices, Off-Topic, Time Management, Work/Life Balance

The end of the year is a time for reflection (and so frequently, hasty efforts to catch up). In between all the hustle and bustle of the last few days of 2008, take some time to count your accomplishments, cherish your blessings in life, and examine your challenges. Life, like Product Management, requires understanding the market, identifying some requirements, and measuring how well you met those requirements. Then you start the cycle again for the next release. Make sure YOU are ready for YOUR next release.

No more posts from me, save a few twitters here and there, but there’s already some great stuff in the pipeline for 2009 including some more Product Management Question Corners and book reviews. I’ve also gotten a few questions via email, so I will put some posts together around answering those.

To all my readers, old and new, thanks for tagging along. May we all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.

Ivan Chalif
The Productologist

Popularity: 29% [?]

Book Review: What Customers Want

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Book Review, Customers

What Customers Want by Anthony W. Ulwick

I’ve been looking lately for Product Management books that are less about how to be a Product Manager and more about creating products and services (and products as services). If found what looked like a great book on just such a topic in “What Customers Want” by Anthony W. Ulwick. I reviewed the table of contents and found encouraging headings like Formulating the Innovation Strategy, Devising Breakthrough Concepts, and Targeting Opportunities. I was excited to read about these topics and their focus on addressing the needs of users, customers, and the market.

Ulwick starts by describing 8 steps to “outcome-driven” innovation. Outcome-driven is the authors method for creating successful product and services. Essentially, it involves identifying what jobs and tasks users need to complete and then measuring the success of those tasks. The metrics are the customers’ desired outcomes and you use them to establish products and services that satisfy unmet or under-served customer outcomes.

The 8 steps

Formulate Innovation Strategy
Capture Customer Inputs
Identify Opportunities
Segment the Market
Define Targeting Strategy
Position Current Offerings
Prioritize Development Pipeline
Define Breakthrough Concepts

The author goes on to illustrate how the outcome-driven process is an improvement over a customer-driven approach. Many of the notes of comparison are accurate, but there are definite values to including customer-specific requirements, as long as the Product Manager includes assessment of the broader appeal of those features. The customer-driven method is also significantly more important for young companies who do not have a broad customer base.

While the ideal would be to create products and services with many data points about the market and potential customers, young companies often have to be more responsive to individual customer requirements in order to build momentum and maintain viability in the short-term. In fact, almost all of the examples in the book center around established companies which either re-evaluate products they already have in the market or products that are in adjacent markets that can be modified to serve a different market.

Ulwick’s text does a good job of providing the underlying framework of the outcome-driven process and how to utilize it, but I have to admit that there was something that kept me from fully engaging with the concepts. I wanted to like this book, I really did, but it just didn’t click with me. It may be because I tend to prefer start ups to established products and companies. Or maybe it was the format (it seemed a bit too textbook-ish).

Recommendation: If you are a Product Manager in a big company, this book is a good tool to help you revitalize a mature product, but it’s not a good fit for Product Managers at early stage companies or where there is not a lot of product or market data for you to evaluate under-served outcomes.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Product Management Reader: 4Dec08

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

Image by ~ Joëlle via Flickr

The Productologist took last week off on account of the holiday week in the US, but to make up for it, I’ve got some leftovers that I am sending home with you (for those of you not familiar with Thanksgiving in the US, it’s all about the leftovers!). MMM-mmmm, good.

Five reasons why industry analyst groups must be running scared?
[Product Management Tips]
Sales 101: The 5 sales archetypes
[Java Think]
BoS digest: on product management
[Business of Software]
You know you’re a product when…
[Forrester Blog for Technology]
Defining an Industry Standard
[SF Girl]
Book Review: Expert Product Management
[On Product Management]
Gift Ideas for Product Managers
[Cranky Product Manager]
Product Management Is War
[John Hawkins]

Disclaimer: Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

Popularity: 28% [?]

The Productologist

Exploring the Depths of Product Management

Posts Tagged “Book Review”

Book Review: Product Manager’s Desk Reference

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Product Management Reader: 1June09

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Product Management Reader: 12Mar09

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Book Review: Predictably Irrational

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The Productologist enters the “Terrible Twos”

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Product Management Reader: 5Feb09

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Book Review: The Art of Product Management

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The Productologist 2008…That’s a wrap!

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Book Review: What Customers Want

The 8 steps

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Product Management Reader: 4Dec08

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