Product Management Digest

Stakeholder Management In most companies, just about anyone and everyone feels like they have a say in the products.  Certainly they care about the product, and they often have many ideas, either derived from their own use, or from what they hear from customers.  But the vast majority of them we would not consider stakeholders.  They are just part of the community at large; another source of input on the product, alongside many others. How …

Value Creation vs. Value Capture People approach creating products from many different perspectives.  Some seek out customer pain and dedicate themselves to solving their problems.  Others follow the technology and strive to deliver solutions that are just now possible.  Some like to follow competitors and deliver better solutions in a fast-follower model.  Others are simply trying to find a way to make some money so that they can sustain their business. No matter your approach, …

Data science is at its core an exploration of information, its sources, and the creation of new value and products from the data therein. Product Managers typically have a knack for analysis and increasingly need to interact with larger and larger sets of data. Improving our skills in data analysis is becoming critical. Even if the majority of analysis in your organization is done elsewhere, a deeper understanding of data science can make those conversations …

The site is called “Digest” for a reason. This is the first post dedicated to articles I feel would be of value to the Product Management community. Extreme Customer Insight: A Marketing Secret Weapon (Slideshare Version) We know that understanding our prospects is the key to better marketing but we don’t always get in front of customers and prospects as much as we should. This week I gave a talk on how to make customer interaction …

Some days in product management feel like Sisyphus, all alone, pushing a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. The truth is that there are many facing similar challenges, most with advice to share. Many of them are quite vocal on Twitter. Below are a few high-signal Twitter users that post on product management topics. Cindy Alvarez (@cindyalvarez) Geoffrey Anderson (@gander2112) Steve Johnson (@sjohnson717) Jeff Lash (@jefflash) Rich Mironov (@richmironov) John Peltier …

Lead Bullets, an old post from Ben Horowitz, is a strong reminder about the hard decisions product managers face. His company was square in Microsoft’s targets, so he furiously sought out a silver bullet (or two) that would enable them to retain their competitiveness. In the end, Ben’s colleague had to set him straight. Ben, those silver bullets that you and Mike are looking for are fine and good, but our web server is five …

My own personal bias aside, a good product manager is one of the key individual stakeholders inside of any company. However, finding them can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Finding the right mix of business and technology expertise married to someone who possesses an achievable  long-term vision is almost impossible. Because of the unique blend of skills required, the interview process needs to be taken seriously. Listed below are some resources around hiring product …

I’ve been doing product management for over 10 years now. I was fresh out of college when I first took a PM position and really had no idea what it took to survive this discipline. One of the first lessons I learned was that my word was surprisingly not the gospel to the engineering teams supporting me. It took me a much longer time to actually stop preaching and start focusing on my customers, the …