Real-World Tips and Advice for Software Product Managers
It seems that one of the quintessential traits of most Product Manager positions is that you are required to manage by influence. You're trying to make things happen through people who don't report to you and don't have to do what you want. Product Managers end up using a combination of charm, psychology and prodding to ...
On www.productmarketing.com, there's a survey of product managers which covers salary and job duties. One interesting section of this survey is called Comments for the VP of Sales. And the very first comment is this: "Product management is not sales support" This is a telling sentence. Specifically, what it's telling us is that Product Managers frequently suspect ...
Product Managers often bridge the gap between technical understanding of the product and the ability to present its benefits to non-technical individuals. Therefore the sales force calls upon their assistance to present the product during visits to prospects. If you find yourself a member of a team that is calling on a prospect, you can provide ...
Product Manager. It's the job where you get involved with everything, managing by influence across departments rather than direct authority via direct reports. This is a job where you really, really need to figure out how to achieve goals. There are too many tasks coming at you from too many directions and priorities pulling you every ...
A recent issue of the newsletter was called TLC for the RFP. It was all about creating materials along with a system and roles that would allow a company to generate high quality RFPs with less effort. A subscriber writes in with an interesting question about the best length for answers to RFP questions. Many questions ...
This article is a reprint of an oldie but goodie about Requirements. It will help you measure the expected return from Requirements so that you can reconcile competing needs and prioritize new capabilities for your product.
Before the testing and bug fixing, before the technical design and product plan, before the business and technical requirements, comes the Product Roadmap. And as we speak, Product Managers are asking themselves the question: "Just what is a Product Roadmap?" It's a good question, one for which I'm not sure there is any single answer to ...
As your company gears up to start the next software release, a Product Manager reaches the point where carefully crafted requirements are ready to submit to the Engineering team. The Product Manager holds a long meeting with Engineering to review each and every requirement. Holding this meeting feels a lot like watching the beloved little lambs ...
Articles from Product Management Challenges have been published on a couple of websites recently. These sites focus on product management and marketing, and have useful information and links for Product Managers. One has a salary survey for Product Manager positions, and the other looks like a good place for exchanging information with others in your field. Click ...
When that lucky time comes where your company is drawing up a contract with a soon-to-be customer, the whole team is in a state of heightened anxiety. People are worried, tempers flare. What if we botch this sale? Are we being too picky? Are we betting the farm? If you're lucky, as Product Manager you have ...