Product Management Insights

In my previous post, I provided a definition of Use Case along with an example. I also took a strong stance against considering UML diagrams as use cases.
Matt Klein made a good observation on Twitter today on how use cases are often not used well when documenting requirements:
Use Cases are important and very often not […]

A question that frequently comes up in my conversations nowadays is:
What exactly is a Use Case?
Let me try and explain it in this short blog post.

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An hour ago, I did something without much conscious thought at all. I uninstalled the Twitter client I used to like (Tweetdeck), and installed a new one (Seesmic). And there I went, merrily tweeting.
Then, I caught myself and started thinking why I did that. The more I thought, the more I realized that there are […]

Mark Kromer at TechProdo blog recently wrote a nice blog post titled SaaS Product Management: Is there a difference?
In his post Mark poses the interesting question (applicable to a lot of product managers):
I was wondering what differences I would find in my role as a product manager if the products that I was managing moved […]

Today, at the vast majority of software companies that have 500 or more employees, there are two separate but closely related departments: “Product Management” and “Product Marketing“.
I believe this is a fundamentally flawed setup for today’s fast-changing markets - a setup that leads to confusion over roles, lack of ownership, unnecessary politics & poor morale […]

One of my pet peeves with most software is the cryptic, unfriendly error messages thrown up by so many of them.
At Accompa, we try to make error messages in our own software as friendly and useful as possible. I think we still have a long way to go, but we work hard at it.
I just […]

Mike Boudreaux, a fellow Twitterer on Product Management topics, said the following recently - tongue planted firmly in cheek (I think)!
Typical win/loss analysis from sales force: majority of losses due to product and price. Majority of wins due to relationship.
Once I stopped chuckling, this got me thinking of the many pitfalls of overly relying on […]

One of the questions that seems to frequently come up in my discussions these days is:
What’s the difference between a Requirement and a Feature?
Let me try and explain this difference in this short blog post.

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I recently read a nice post by Cindy Alvarez in her blog -  Saying “No” to… Feature Requests
One sentence in her post caught my eye:
…many requests for solutions are obscured insights into problems.
This is an excellent point by Cindy.

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