Product Management Insights

I read a nice blog post on the Harvard Business Review website by Rob Johnson who worked with Steve Jobs to create the wildly successful Apple Stores. The following quote caught my eye:

So the challenge for retailers isn’t “how do we mimic the Apple Store” or any other store that seems like a good model. It’s a very different problem, one that’s conceptually similar to what Steve Jobs faced with the iPhone. He didn’t ask, “How do we build a phone that can achieve a two percent market share?” He asked, “How do we reinvent the telephone?” In the same way, retailers shouldn’t be asking, “How do we create a store that’s going to do $15 million a year?” They should be asking, “How do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers’ lives?” (emphasis mine)

This is a great point, and is especially important for product managers building high-tech products to embrace.

Here’s why… Read the rest

I recently came across a blog post by The Cranky Product Manager about product-line complexity. It’s an entertaining post. More importantly, it makes good points regarding the pitfalls of complexity. In this post, I will share my thoughts on this.

Product and product line complexity happens when we add too many features or when we add overly complex features. Often this happens over time as a product “matures”. It can also happen because of lack of rigor when writing requirements. When it happens, both your customers and your company suffer.

Here is a short list of… Read the rest

Recently I saw a question on LinkedIn:

Product Management or Product Marketing, who is responsible for messaging in the product to convert trial users to paying customers?

This is a great question, and is especially important for companies building SaaS applications.

Here is my opinion… Read the rest

Just saw a nice blog post by Marty Cagan. If you are a:

• Director of Product Management
• VP of Product Management
• Or aspire to be one of the above (I think that should cover just about everybody in product management, don’t you think?!)

, then check out Marty’s post.

Having said that, there is one point about which I don’t fully agree with Marty. That point is… Read the rest

Mark Suster (who has founded and built two successful software startups)  recently blogged about hiring at a startup. It’s an excellent post and got me thinking about hiring product managers at a startup.

From my experience of having built Product Management teams at two different successful startups, and having been an early member of the PM team at a third successful startup - I believe all of Mark’s points apply well to hiring product managers at a startup too.

Read on for my comments on how some of Mark’s points apply to hiring product managers at startups… Read the rest

The best companies (B2B) I’ve worked for during my career were highly innovative, and they continuously innovated. But the source of their innovation was not:

• Whiz-bang Technology
• Genius Personnel, or
• Competitive Research

What was the source, you ask? Well, the type of innovation those companies practiced was… Read the rest

One of my friends is a newly minted Director of Product Management at a mid-stage startup in silicon valley. I met him for coffee yesterday and we were chatting about how his new job was going.

He has managed Engineering as well as Professional Services teams in the past, but this is his first time managing a Product Management team.

He told me he thought product manager interviews are easy to fake, and even unqualified candidates can easily fake a good performance during the interview. This got me thinking… Read the rest

When I was a kid, I used to love Aesop’s fables - short stories with a moral. I even learned some valuable lessons from them, lessons that have helped me as I’ve grown older.

For this holiday season, here’s my little parable for those of us in product management and product marketing (it’s not a fable, it’s a parable!)

Drum roll please… Read the rest

At most companies - old or new, Fortune-500 or startup - most of the departments are looking out for the company. They’re doing things in the best interests of the company. Even optimizing everything to maximize the self-interests of their company.

Often, even the CEO and executive staff may constantly seek to maximize self-interests of the company.This is rational behavior, often encouraged by compensation models.

I believe PM teams should act differently. Here’s why… Read the rest

Ben Horowitz is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He was the CEO of Opsware before he became a VC - so he has real-world operating experience as well, and I follow his blog regularly.

I was reading one of his recent posts, which linked to a document titled “Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager”. Ben wrote it when he was the Director of Product Management at Netscape. The purpose of the document was to share his expectations with product managers in his team.

Even though it was written during a simpler, happier time (1996!) - it is still very relevant today. Read on for the link to Ben’s PDF and my favorite part of the document… Read the rest