The Productologist

Exploring the Depths of Product Management

Posts Tagged “software”

14 12 2009

Product Management Reader: 14Dec09

Image by jesuscm via Flickr

This is probably the last Product Management Reader of the year. Not for sure yet, but probably. To keep you busy through the end of the year, here is an extra wonderful list of stuff to fill your days with. Unless you’ve got something better to do, which I HIGHLY doubt!

The Price of Leadership
[Lead on Purpose]
The Famous ProductBeautiful Roadmapping Drinking Game
[Product Beautiful]
An Engineer Roasts “Marketecture”
[ProductMarketing.com]
How Product Management Must Change to Enable the Agile Enterprise
[InfoQ]
Stop Giving Your Customers Too Many Choices — They Don’t Want Them!
[Accidental Product Manager]
Against a Grand Theory of PM, part 1
[Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management and Marketing]
Organising Agile Teams With A Visual Calendar
[All About Agile]
Product Marketing is NOT Marketing Communications
[Outside InView]
Guest Post: Measuring Product Management (part 3)
[On Product Management]
Attainable Requirements
[Tyner Blain]

Disclaimer: Including a link to a particular posting in the Product Management Reader 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: 2% [?]

Product Management Reader: 30Nov09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

: Image by » Zitona « via Flickr

A shorter list than usual this time, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, but that should in no way diminish the importance of any of the articles listed below. Besides, the list includes a post from April Dunford at Rocket Watcher, and she’s the best Product Management blogger in the world (Note: she’s actually from Canada, but we’ll let that slide).

Capturing Ideas
[Lead on Purpose]
Beta Applies to Messaging Too: Rogers On Demand Online
[Rocket Watcher]
6 “Bootstrapping” Tools for Software Product Managers
[Software Product Management]
Why ROI Is The WRONG Way To Measure Your Product’s Marketing Program
[Accidental Product Manager]
Can You Write Website Requirements Without a Product Manager
[Tyner Blain]
Product Marketing & Management + Sales Ops = Necessary Ingredients to Win
[OutsideIn View]
A Quick, Easy Way to Gather Info for Buyer Personas
[Buyer Personas]
Translation of The Cranky Product Manager
[Cranky Product Manager]

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: 2% [?]

Time Keeps on Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Customers, Documentation, Processes, Recommended, Time, Time Management

Unless you live in some alternate reality (and maybe you do), every Product Manager I know always has a lot going on each day. We go to meetings, we take calls from Sales, we answer emails from Sales, we give presentations, we work on strategic analysis, we go to meetings. You know the drill. At the end of each day, you look back and wonder,

“What the Hell did I accomplish today?”
“Did I even make a dent in my task list?”
“Where did the time go?”
“I’m never gonna get to take a vacation.”

On the off-chance that you do actually get to sit at your desk (or at least with your laptop in the airport terminal waiting to board your delayed flight out of LGA), you might want to start logging how you use your time.

I work remotely, so to help my manager understand how I spend my time (and to highlight my accomplishments), I send him a weekly update on what I did during the week and what I’ve got on deck for next week. It’s not a minute-by-minute accounting, but it since we don’t see each other on a regular basis and we work in different timezones, we both find it beneficial have the summaries.

I used to just look at my calendar and the my completed items on my To-Do list to find the items for my summary, but I found that I was missing a lot of tasks that were spur-of-the-moment or -in-my-free-time. They weren’t items the typically made it on to my To-Do list and unless they were big blocks of time, I didn’t put them on the calendar, either.

What I found that helps me is a great little app called Task Blaze by Brad Isaac (who also blogs about Goals, Motivation, and Software @ Persistance Unlimited).

taskblaze_screen

It works like a task timer, but it updates your MS Outlook or Google calendar (and even Twitter) automatically. It creates a marker in the calendar so you can see exactly how long you worked on a task and you have a record for when you have to document your time for a client or manager.

It’s worked much better than other methods for me. If you are already used to using some other timer mechansim, then this should be a breeze for you. It took me a while to get into the habit, but now it works great for me.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Running on the Edge Case

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Best Practices, Usability

A funny thing happens at my house. BW and I have very different tastes in magazines. In my pile are issues of “Snowboarding”, “Harvard Business Review”, “Fast Company”, “Inc.”, and ” The Economist”. BW’s pile consists of much less business-oriented fare that includes, “Organic Gardening”, “Martha Stewart Living”, “Cooking Light”, “The Sun”, and “Vanity Fair” (I look at that one, too, but only for the articles <smirk/>). Inevitably, we end up reading something from each other’s pile, either because we see an article of interest, or there simply isn’t anything else to read.

Recently, BW has started getting another periodical. It’s called “Brain, Child“. It’s comprised primarily of essays from professional writers and reader-generated content around mothering issues. Some of the topics deal with non-gender-related parenting issues, but by-and-large, it’s for the ladies. It’s not the kind of magazine that I would subscribe to normally, but BW picked it up from a friend and really liked it, so I bought her a subscription for her birthday. I read the first issue that arrived and didn’t really care for it, but BW loves it.

In one of those situations where there wasn’t anything else to read, I picked up a recent copy and started thumbing through it to find one of the less painful-to-read articles. I stumbled upon an article about non-custodial parents and the issues that they run into when dealing with what most parents would consider mundane. Things like requesting your child’s medical records or being notified about issues at school.

The author of the article was a woman, who as it turns out, is the non-custodial parent of her children, a situation that is uncommon, but not unheard of (part of the article explains the backstory about this). She elaborates on the double-edged sword that comes along with being a woman and the non-custodial parent and how she is treated by MANY people even though she is LEGALLY entitled to perform the actions and request the information about her children that she does.

What I found interesting about the article (and admittedly, this is a pattern in the type of content in the magazine as a whole) is that what she describes is an EDGE CASE. As Product Managers, we run into these all of the time when dealing with feature requests, reported defects, prioritization, and overall product strategy planning.

Edge case is a fighting word. Everyone, including Product Managers, engineers, QA, training and documentation, and support use “edge case” to describe something they don’t want to address. It’s a dismissal. It means that the issue exists, but it’s not significant enough to do anything about it.

The problem with edge cases is that they ARE real, especially to the people experiencing the edge case issue. But we sweep them under the rug because the majority of users don’t experience the issue. I’m as guilty as the next Product Manager of using the “edge case” battle cry for trying to keep releases on schedule or keep developers focused on the core function of the software, but it’s important not to just dismiss edge cases out of hand and never revisit them.

Edge cases sometimes make good fodder for niche products. If one user is experiencing the problem (and sharing it), there are probably others, who are keeping it to themselves. You’ve heard the saying about cockroaches.

You can also use edge cases as a litmus test for what will grow into a more profound issue for your mainstream users. Think about that edge case user as the leading edge rather than the side edge. Evaluate whether you are likely to see more of the edge case rather than less. Being premptive about addressing it before it affects the main pool of your users could save you and your support team from many painful calls with unhappy customers.

Like the challenges of the non-custodial parent we started with, there are many small, but very real issues out there. Just because you don’t see it very often doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter. We Product Managers have to open our eyes wide and look around. Next time, look for what might not be so obvious.

And the next time you start to say, “That’s an edge case, because….” stop and ask yourself if it really is.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Tough on Tufte

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Best Practices, Communication, Design, Interface, Usability

A couple of months ago, I read a great book on displaying data (perhaps THE book) by Edward Tufte called “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition.” Like many other books I read, this one was recommended to me by a colleague.

Tufte’s book is, in a word, beautiful. He presents wonderful and profane examples of graphical information from hundreds of years ago, as well as recent examples, to illustrate his points about information density, graphical integrity (charts that lie), the relationship between ink and space, and informational noise (what he calls, “Chartjunk”). Tufte is nothing, if not thorough. I found myself turning the pages just to see the next example and read about how wonderful it was or the litany of flaws it contained.

What’s great about Tufte’s work is that his focus is on the receiver of the information. How much information can be absorbed? What’s the best way to display multi-factor data? What presentation shows the relationships between the elements accurately.

One of the most famous graphs in the book (and by Tufte’s own admission, “It may well be the best statiscal graphic ever drawn.”) is the one by Charles Joseph Minard, whose masterful depiction shows Napoleon’s campaign in Russia in 1812-1813. The chart displays numerous factors: size of the army, direction of travel, route, elevation, and time, all in a single graph. Tufte refers to the image repeatedly in the book.

I was so impressed by the book, that I read another by Tufte, Beautiful Evidence, which aims to characterize visual information as art. Indeed, many of the examples Tufte cites are beautiful and relay the information in a much more elegant fashion than the typical bar, line or grid. Tufte even dedicates a chapter to everyone’s favorite whipping boy application, Powerpoint, pointing out the many foibles of using stock layouts, graphics, and charts.

However, I found much of the material in the latter book to be a rehash of his original work. Not a direct copy, but certainly a work with significant overlap, with Minard’s chart getting an entire chapter all to itself, albeit using an updated and translated version.

After being a bit of a fanboy, I got an email from a friend of mine who had seen Tufte at a seminar. My friend summed it up this way:

“My 2 cents (and with inflation, that’s worth about 1/3 of that, before taxes) – He’s kind of a blowhard. He has some good points, but at least at the seminar I saw him at (about 5 years ago) he spent most of the time railing on Powerpoint – but he didn’t provide real solutions, just talked about how wonderful he was.

There was also a definite cult of personality going on, with a cadre of sycophants in the front 10 rows cheering when he sneezed.

I understand that Powerpoint sucks – but it’s the tool most of us have. I would have liked to have him provide solutions that fit within the toolset that most corporations are going to buy and provide the peon.

Don’t get me wrong – I think he’s right on the money in terms of the information density that you can achieve – but the fact is that most of us don’t have the time or the resources to make those fantastic images – so what the hell do we do? Give me a path forward, don’t just tell me what’s broken.”

A fair assessment, perhaps not of the man, but definitely of the material.

So, what’s the point? For Product Managers, espcially those in software, presentation plays a big part in your success and the success or failure of your product. Search your hard drive for Powerpoint files and see how many times you have to communicate complex ideas using the limited forum provided by Powerpoint. Try using a pad and paper to map out your presentation, instead of writing it directly in Powerpoint. You won’t rely on the tools it provides and instead, will think harder about how to best communicate the data.

Also, look with a critical eye at how your product presents information to the user. Identify ways that you can increase the information density without overwhelming or confusing the users or the audience. Does your product try to do too much? Try out some different options to see which one(s) work best. Solicit feedback from users and prospects.

And most of all, make sure that the data presented is accurate, both metrically and relationally. Once you lose the trust of your customers about the information you provide to them in the application, it’s very difficult to regain it.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Product Management Reader: 19Mar09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

With #PCAMP09 wrapped up this weekend (oh, and St. Patty’s day), I thought there would be more posts like mine (or at least more than 1) about the comings and goings of Product Managers talking about Product Management and Product Management issues with other Product Managers. I guess that all happened on Twitter. Anyway, this week we have a couple of double dippers and Gopal hit a triple.

Guest Post: The Cranky Sales Engineer Shares Sales Secrets
[Cranky Product Manager]
To the Agile Community – WTF is wrong with you?
[Cranky Product Manager]
Outstanding P-Camp this weekend
[Forrester Blog for Technology Product Management and Marketing]
Why Does It Have to Be That Way?
[The Experience is the Product]
Messenger of problems?
[Product Management Tips]
Futility of “feature wars”
[Product Management Tips]
Product Management in a Start-up
[Confessions of a Digital Immigrant]
How Product Managers Can Get Better At Creating Powerpoint Slides
[Accidental Product Manager]
Product Managers & The Secret Of The Color Wheel
[Accidental Product Manager]
Career transition from software developer to product manager
[GeekMBA360]
More “New Facebook” Disasters – Six Things I Really Hate
[Tales from the Digital Side]
Are Product Management Frameworks, User Experience The Secrets To Success?
[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: 17% [?]

Product Management Reader: 22Jan09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

For some, it was a short week…MLK day on Monday; Obama inauguration on Tuesday, but not for Product Managers. Check out some of the folks who are on The Productologist’s short list for Secretary of Product Management.

The Story Of The Mustang: A Fable For Product Managers
[The Accidental Product Manager]
Differentiate to avoid being a “me too”
[How to be a Good Product Manager]
Strategize your Product Roadmap for Success
[Strategic Product Manager]
What, No Use Cases in the Lean and Scalable Agile Requirements Model?
[Scaling Software Agility]
Beta Releases: Good Riddance
[Write That Down]

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: 21% [?]

Product Management Reader: 15Jan09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

Anyone else notice how much easier it is to write/type 2009 this week than it was last week? I thought so. In order to celebrate what can only be described as, “Just like last year, plus 1,” this week’s Product Management posts will all be from the “new, new thing”: 2009. Dig in.

2009 – Year of the Product Manager *
[The Product Management View]
Reflecting on the 2008 Product Management Survey
[Confessions of a Digital Immigrant]
A Call to Product Management Professionals Everywhere
[Product Management Insights]
5 Suggestions product managers can adopt during the New Year
[Product Management Tips]
Armchair Entrepeneuring
[Mark Trapp]
Have we Entered the Post-Product Management Economy?
[Product Beautiful]
New Rules?
[Musings on Software Product Management]
Lessons on leadership from Twitter
[Lead on Purpose]
10 Things That Piss Off the Cranky Product Manager
[The Cranky Product Manager]
What Makes A Good Product Manager?
[Product Management Meets Pop Culture]
Your Strategic Friend, Mrs. Win/Loss Analysis
[Strategic Product Manager]

* Technically, this one is from 2008, but no one saw it until 2009, so I call “fair ball!”

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: 25% [?]

Product Management Reader: 8Jan09

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Other Blogs

Well, it’s 2009 and you may be asking yourself, “Hey, Productologist…what have you done for me lately?”

To which I respond, “What about that post 3 days ago?”

And then you say, “I said, LATELY!”

“Wellllll, how about the biggest list of Product Management articles EVER!”

“Cool.”

“And by the way, they’re all from 2008…just thought you should know.”

:”Oh, well, OK, I guess that will do for now.”

Still More on Agile Product Owner vs. Agile Product Manager
[Scaling Software Agility]
Product Managers Need to Show Engineers “What Good Looks Like”
[Technopodge]
How Can A Product Manger Create A Job Map For Their Product?
[Accidental Product Manager]
The value of PM certification
[On Product Management]
Where is the Product Manager when we need him?
[Product Readiness]
Product Management Platform: Transition Continued
[Product Management Platform]
Understanding the Product Management landscape in a company
[Product Management Tips]
What Can The Toyota Scion Teach Product Managers?
[Accidental Product Manager]
Survey Results: Product Management Certification
[Cranky Product Manager]
The 12 days after GA
[On Product Management]
What questions should I ask on a Product Management job interview
[Good Product Manager]
New Year’s Resolutions For Product Managers
[Product Management Meets Pop Culture]
Marketing IS in the Middle: Steve Johnson
[Spatially Relevant]
Can Use Cases Possibly be Agile?
[Agile Product Owner]

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: 29% [?]

Product Management Question Corner: Gerardo Capiel, Gydget

Posted by Ivan Chalif in Best Practices, Interviews, Professional Development

The PMQC brings you a different slant this time. Today, we are hearing from Gerardo Capiel, CEO at Gydget, a social marketing platform for music groups, sports teams, non-profits and other organizations. Gerardo is not your typical Product Manager, as you’ll learn, but much of what he says rings true for Product Management professionals.

Q: How did you become involved in Product Management and was it planned?
A: I have not had a specific Product Management title, but I have been a key influencer in the Product Management process for much of my career.

Q: What are the biggest challenges that Product Managers face?
A: Determining priorities based on input from different customer groups.

Q: What is your greatest Product Management achievement?
A: Changing a company strategy and building a whole new product in under three months to support the strategy.

Q: What was your worst Product Management mistake and how did you recover?
A: There have been many, but the most significant was ignoring the conclusions from a consumer survey we ran. Common mistakes have been attempting to build too many features into subsequent releases or not enough into an initial release to make the product useful to even one customer segment.

Q: What Product Management tool(s) would you consider most effective and why?
A: Trac, Excel/Google Docs, Survey Monkey and Wikis. Trac is free and has most of the functionality needed. Using spreadsheets, particularly Google Docs, is great for providing company wide summaries of key priorities and sorting and weighting priorities. Survey Monkey is great for collecting customer input and priorities. Wikis are great for document product features and collecting input.

Q: Where is the best place for the Product Management function in an organization and why?
A: It depends on the organization, its industry, the skills of the managers and the stage of the company. When a company is pre-revenue, the company needs to be nimble and innovative, thus product management may better fall under engineering or the CTO. However, it depends on the skills of the leaders of that group. If the VP of Engineering or the CTO is not good at communicating with customers, then that may not be the best approach. In a more mature company, product management may better fall into marketing where product releases need to be better coordinated with Product Marketing, Sales and Customer Service, and also need to more heavily weight the feedback from those groups.

Q: How has your experience as a Product Manager influenced you as a CEO or founder?
A: It has has given me a better understanding of the challenges a Product Manager faces and how truly hard it is to build great products. I place a lot of importance of the role of Product Management, even in pre-revenue companies and have made sure than even in a small start-up, that role is clearly defined and staffed.

Q: If someone told you that they wanted to transition from a Product Manager role to CEO (or founder), what would you tell them?
A: A founder does not need to be CEO. I think the skills to be a good CEO are very different from those necessary to be a good Product Manager. I think Product Managers should aspire to be entrepreneurs and founders, but not necessarily CEOs. CEOs need to be good at fundraising, sales, hiring, start-up finance, managing outside vendors and setting high level vision. None of those skills are absolutely necessary to be a good Product Manager.

—————-
Gerardo’s question for The Productologist:

Q: What do you think makes a great Product Manager?
A: Ahh, greatness…what is the definition of a GREAT Product Manager? Greatness definitely depends on the shape and maturity of the organization and product. I have mentioned this previously, but being a successful Product Manager at a small company requires different skills than at a large one.

There are some skills/characteristics that overlap, such as the following:

good listening skills
analytical, both fiscal and situation
communication skills with a broad range of individuals
organization
results-oriented

Without these minimal skills, a Product Manager will not be successful, no matter what size the company or product. These are are the “you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride-this-ride” skills.

For small organizations, you have to add these:

comfort with ambiguity
comfort with constant change
generalized Marketing, Sales, and Project Management abilities
autonomy
bootstrapping
try-and-fail

Product Managers at large organizations typically don’t need those and in some cases, those skills/preferences may actually hinder success. For example, even though large organizations are perfectly setup for fostering try-and-fail (diverse products, broad revenue streams, etc), they frequently reinforce with managers the exact opposite–”don’t even think about it, unless you are sure.”

This modus operandii creates an environment of “analysis paralysis” where no decision can be made or idea tested without thorough evaluation and buy-in from executives (I’m not trying to malign executives here, just that’s were most of the roadblocking happens at large companies with regard to this issue). That situation is exactly why skunk works teams happen.

In large organizations, Product Management has a much more formal role and process is a greater factor in how things get done. For that reason, Product Managers at bigger companies need the following skills/preferences:

navigate/operate bureaucracy
engage formal process
focused function
manage large-scale initiatives

So, there is no single set of characteristics that make a Product Manager great, but great Product Managers know how to create, launch, and nurture products that solve a market problem, no matter what the mechanism they use to accomplish that is.

A little more about Gerardo:

Gerardo Capiel has been in the software industry for over 15 years. His prior experiences have been as a systems integration consultant, the CTO and co-founder of an email marketing technology company and the CEO of a social media marketing technology start-up.

Popularity: 39% [?]

The Productologist

Exploring the Depths of Product Management

Posts Tagged “software”

Product Management Reader: 14Dec09

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Product Management Reader: 30Nov09

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Time Keeps on Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’

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