The Productologist

Many years ago, when I was going off to start grad school, BW (at the time, she wasn’t BW, just B) and I rented a big yellow truck to haul all of our prized personal belongings to our new home (at least for the next two years). It was a long trip (2 days worth of driving), so we did the prudent traveler thing and went to AAA and got a bunch of maps to plan our route. The maps were not only for us, but others, too. Since this was the age before cell phone ubiquity, for safety reasons, we gave a copy to BW’s parents so that they would know what route we were following in case we didn’t show up at our destination or check in periodically.

One of my goals for this year is to establish Product Councils for my products. Product Councils, or Product Advisory Boards, as they are sometimes called, are made up of people who are familiar with your product and/or the market. In most cases, they are external, meaning that the members are customers or industry experts who can provide strategic guidance or provide feedback on tactical implementations, but they can also be made up of, wholly or in part, internal members.

I plan to have two; one made up of internal team members and one made up of customers. Both are necessary to help me grow the product to meet the needs of the market.

At my company, it’s annual review time, which means that I get to spend quality time writing about what I have accomplished over the past 12 months and how it relates to my role as Product Manager. Now, as an individual contributor, I like the annual review process (I’ve been on the management side, too, and that’s not as much fun). It gives me an opportunity to reflect on how far my product has come from a year ago, identify areas for growth and lets me campaign for a salary increase. But in a role like Product Manager, what are the best ways to evaluate success?

Today, my own advice worked…for me. I went to visit a customer with some other team members to hear feedback from the customer about their experience with my product and hear some of their enhancement requests. I tend to over-prepare for these types of visits where I end up bringing a lot more than I need (everyone else on my team just brought a notebook and pen), but today it turned out that my over-preparedness paid off.

I wrote earlier that it’s a good idea to bring along a thumb drive in case you need to transfer files. I also carry around an extra (my company gives them as tchochkies) that I can give out if needed.

I usually only travel once or twice a quarter (which my BW really appreciates while not-so-secretly wishing that it was less), but whether its a short hop to LA or a cross-country jaunt to somewhere in the Eastern timezone, it used to be an ordeal to figure out what I needed to bring. Not clothes or sundry items, but what technology to lug along. Some things are easy; laptop, power supply, mouse, phone/pda, but there’s a whole host of supporting items that can make or break a business trip (trust me, I’ve experienced first hand what happens when you don’t have something you need).