By Michael Shrivathsan on Sep 23, 2009 | In General, Product Management | 23 Comments
Last night I got an email from a company with the subject “Saas and the death of software product management“.
And… with the subtitle of “Or, While You Weren’t Looking, Your Product Manager’s Job Became a Zombie”.
The email said the following:
The growth of the SaaS business model spells the end of product management as it’s been defined in the software industry for the last thirty years… Current product management functions such as tick list herding, MRDs, PRDs, “Agile” product management and the concept of no responsibility, no accountability, and no authority will soon be as relevant to SaaS companies as DOS 3.0 and floppy disks…
Do you think what this email says is correct? Here are my thoughts on it…
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By Michael Shrivathsan on Sep 22, 2009 | In Requirements Management Basics, Use Cases | 5 Comments
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 captured or documented correctly…
In this post, I’d like to share with you 10 reasons why you should use Use Cases while documenting your requirements.
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By Michael Shrivathsan on Sep 19, 2009 | In Requirements Management Basics, Use Cases | 27 Comments
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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By Michael Shrivathsan on Sep 15, 2009 | In Product Management, User Experience | 1 Comment »
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 a few valuable lessons in it for all of us who are involved in building software or products in general.
Here is my story, followed by the lessons…
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By Michael Shrivathsan on Sep 9, 2009 | In Product Management, User Experience | 9 Comments
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 to the software-as-a-service model…
As our company makes a popular SaaS tool for product management teams, we have good first-hand experience in this - and I’d like to share my thoughts here.
My short answer to Mark’s question is… Read the rest »
By accompa on Sep 1, 2009 | In Product Management | 19 Comments
Here’s our definitive list of the top-10 blogs on Product Management. We’ve found that all of these blogs consistently produce posts that are useful to product management professionals.
P.S. In case you’re wondering, we arrived at this list using a proprietary, patent-pending, 100% scientific formula. Hence it is infallible and is THE definitive list. Okay? 
Without further ado, here is the definitive Top-10 List - drumroll please…
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By Michael Shrivathsan on Aug 25, 2009 | In Product Management, Product Marketing | 12 Comments
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 - and often RUINS innovation.
This belief is based on my experiences at successful companies in Silicon Valley over the past two decades, and discussions with friends/colleagues in the industry who manage Product Management and/or Product Marketing departments.
In this blog post, I describe the reasons for my belief and provide an alternative solution.
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By Michael Shrivathsan on Aug 21, 2009 | In Product Management, User Experience | 1 Comment »
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 saw the following error message from bit.ly - the URL shortening service used on sites like Twitter. On most websites, this is usually a cryptic “404 Error” message. See how bit.ly has made it so friendly and fun! 
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By Michael Shrivathsan on Aug 10, 2009 | In Competition, Product Management, Product Roadmap | 7 Comments
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 Win/Loss Reports to drive your product roadmap. Here was my tweet to Mike.
I’d like to expand on my tweet in this blog post.
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By accompa on Jul 30, 2009 | In Requirements Management Basics | 2 Comments
This article gives an overview of how you can benefit from a requirements management tool, and what to look for when considering requirements management tools.
Product Managers (PMs), Business Analysts (BAs) and Engineers at most companies are responsible for gathering and managing requirements. However, Read the rest »
