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2004 Archive

Marrying Up: Partnering with Big Companies

In today's economy, with its dramatic technology shifts, there are a lot of startup companies out there. They're small and nimble, not to mention hungry for money and business. These sometimes tiny companies are out looking for partners with an established customer base and a solid income, companies that they can join with to break into the market and establish themselves. When a small company partners with a large one, there are many things it needs to understand and do in order for the partnership to succeed. Product Managers play a pivotal role in the success of such a joint effort. Read Marrying Up: Partnering with Big Companies
posted by Steve Johnson on 12/20/2004

The Best Way to Listen to Customers

A customer advisory council is a representative group of customers who agree to share their buying and usage experiences as well as evaluate new sources of value. Unlike traditional focus group research, a company gathers ongoing feedback from this larger group of customers. And since these participants are ready to contribute, the company spends less time and money capturing customer input and valuable insight. Read more Running Customer Advisory Boards.
posted by Steve Johnson on 12/18/2004

ChangeThis :: The Long Tail

We often think about pervasive markets as the biggest ones. Yet in The Long Tail, Editor-in-Chief of Wired, CHRIS ANDERSON says that the future belongs to those that serve the millions of untapped niche markets as well as they serve the masses. Read his manifesto to find out how unlimited shelf space and personalization can revolutionize your business.
posted by Steve Johnson on 12/18/2004

Pricing for Software Product Managers

Daniel Shefer writes, "Pricing has far reaching effects beyond the cost of the product. Pricing is just as much a positioning statement as a definition of the cost to buy. Pricing defines the entry threshold: who your buyers are and their sensitivities, which competitors you will encounter, who you will be negotiating when selling the product and what the customers' expectations will be. " Read Daniel's comprehensive article on Pricing for Software Product Managers.
posted by Steve Johnson on 12/10/2004

Marketing Motto: Be Useful

from Internet Marketing Motto: Be Useful: "Recently, I had a talk with an IT manager from a large organization. I was impressed at how clued in this person was--not about IT, but about Web marketing. He talked about appropriate targeting, about creating content that moved the customer to a point of action. He knew his stuff. And like many other people in his situation, he complained about the 'marketing people' who still didn't get it. "
posted by Steve Johnson on 12/8/2004

A Good Marriage: Working With Partners

Compared to manufactured goods or hardware, software products are easy to integrate so that they work together seamlessly. Therefore, collaborating with other software companies to complement and extend the scope of your own product has the potential to transform it and greatly increase your customer base, revenues, and profits. Joining up with partners can result in offspring where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The ability to form successful partnerships plays a vital role in your company's success. It's not enough to get engaged, you want to get married and you want that marriage to last a long, long time. Read A Good Marriage: Working With Partners for some ideas on how to develop a good marriage with the right partner company for your product, and how Product Managers can play a key role in forming a long lasting and fruitful relationship.
posted by Steve Johnson on 12/3/2004

The Role of Sales Engineer in Technical Sales

Sales engineers play a critical role in the technical sales team. Our recent survey shows their are usually 2 sales engineers for every 5 sales people (1 to 2.5). If the company doesn't staff adequate SE resources, product management usually fills the gap. Read The Role of Sales Engineer in Technical Sales for more on this critical role.

Selling Air by Dan Herchenroether is a novel of sales engineers in technology, Selling Air follows two competitive sales teams and their travails of selling enterprise software. The "good team" under-commits and over-delivers; the "bad" sales guy makes promises that can't possibly be kept. And the customer assumes both vendors are made of the same cloth. Sales engineers and those who work with them will find this a terribly accurate portrayal of the state of vendors, sales people, and the sales engineers who make it all work. Highly recommended.

by Steve Johnson on 12/2/2004

Sharks, Pilot Fish and the Product Food Chain

When you're launching a new venture, one of your earliest considerations is how your innovation might fit into the existing technical environment: should it replace some dominant species or improve the overall market climate? In ecological terms, is your new company going to produce fish food or fight the largest carnivores for survival? And how should that decision shape the company you create? Read more in the Nov04 issue of Product Bytes.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/28/2004

Stalled: Getting Development into Gear

At technology companies, Engineering and Development is the motor that keeps the product moving forward. Unlike real motors made out of metal, this one depends upon a lot of moving parts that are all-too-human, so it stalls a lot. A Development effort that sputters and stalls too often can lead to a product that falls behind the market. It is vital for a Product Manager to get involved and hands-on with the product motor if it starts to stall. Product Managers can bring a different perspective to the Engineering team that can make all the difference in getting stalled development efforts started. Read Stalled: Getting Development into Gear for some useful ideas that you can use with the team to make your product develop and improve faster, and therefore gain ground on the competition.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/24/2004

The Best and the Rest

Time and again technology companies cut their marketing staff and budgets because they don't seem to connect marketing with results. Yet the evidence proves otherwise. Companies that value product management enjoy half the time to market than companies that do not (Source: Softwareminds).

Accenture comments on this mistake in the article "The Best and the Rest": "For many companies, the inertia that can be induced by strong brands and the inherent pricing power they create has lulled management into believing they can repeatedly cut marketing outlays without serious consequences. "Most marketers have some experience with this issue, as entire marketing departments have been starved of investment. No single cut does much damage, but over 10 or 20 years, many companies end up decimating the marketing capabilities that brought them their initial success. "This underinvestment in marketing capabilities creates a vicious circle. Cost cutting eliminates headcount, which forces marketers to do more with less. Time-consuming analysis, as well as planning, research and the investigation of cutting-edge techniques, get the ax. Over time, firms lose their marketing discipline and leading-edge knowledge, which often renders the marketing organization unattractive to top prospective talent. "There seems to be no shortage of companies with average marketing capabilities, but few of them are high performers in their industries."

Marketing professionals have done a poor job of marketing their value internally. As the new year approaches, identify specific areas where you can improve the visibility of product management and marketing for your senior executives--and start gathering evidence that will communicate the strategic value of product management.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/19/2004

Super Advertising Slogans & Super Costs

Naseem Javed comments, "Advertising slogans or taglines pushing sales of new products are great for getting a customer's attention as they often tangle and hold them hostage for a second or two. Some taglines catch the user's attention, but most are simply confusing, causing them to escape the trap and run away. The combined yearly budgets of all the strangely composed slogans promoting various branding worldwide would easily add up to billions of dollars. Corporations make extraordinary efforts to capture these few words on a string and liberally fund the most lavish extravaganzas when it comes to pushing these cutesy and strange sentences." Read the full article in In Super Advertising Slogans & Super Costs.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/15/2004

This world is a place of business

Evelyn Rodriguez quotes in her Crossroads Dispatches, "This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work."

Our annual survey proves it: Product managers receive 65 emails a day and send 30. We attend about 15 meetings a week. (Have you noticed how many emails you send that say "here is the link" or "fyi" and how few meetings are about your target market?) We're working at least 50 hours a week. But are we productive or are we merely busy? And are we doing product management or other's people work? It seems to me that companies have cut back on many of their support personnel but customers and sales people still need the support--and so, they call on product management because there's no one else. Most of us are in 4th quarter, meaning that we're in serious sales support mode. I suggest that all product managers keep track of their time and where it is being used. And then in January, we can reflect on how our time was used and where it should have been used. Meanwhile, carve out some time to get some work done. And make sure you don't work on the weekend. (Did anyone see the irony of posting this on the weekend?)
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/12/2004

Pragmatic Marketing®
Product Management Roles & Compensation Benchmark

In our seminars people often ask about typical roles for product managers and marketing professionals, particularly job responsibilities as well as compensation. Contribute your situation and thoughts at Pragmatic Marketing's Product Management Roles & Compensation Benchmark. We start analyzing this weekend and will start publishing results at the end of the month.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/12/2004

Inbound vs Outbound Product Management at Microsoft

The terms "inbound product management" and "outbound product management" are tossed around freely in many companies without much clarity on what the job actually entails. Heather Hamilton, a prolific blogger, has posted two items with job descriptions for product managers at Microsoft in the inbound and outbound roles. What we see at Pragmatic Marketing is that "inbound" listens to the market to determine what products we should have, while "outbound" tells the market about the products that we already have. In any case, a clear definition for the role, regardless of title, is sorely needed in many companies. The article Titles and Responsibilities is a good start. Also check out detailed view of titles and responsibilities.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/10/2004

Easy Does It--Editorial--CMO Magazine

To find a way to turn things around, Staples turned to research. Lots of it. It asked customers to list their 10 most important criteria; to management's surprise, price was nowhere to be found. It wasn't that price was insignificant to customers. But thanks to Staples' influence throughout the segment, shoppers had come to assume they were going to get a good price. What they wanted was for stores to stock all the basics.They also wanted courteous and helpful sales associates. And they wanted a faster, less-troublesome experience. In other words, customers wanted stores that didn't just have what they wanted, but had it where it could be found quickly and easily. Every customer interaction includes a "moment of truth" where you can prove your brand promise--or disprove it.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/10/2004

Spy on your competitors: 4 steps

In just a few hours, you could probably gather enough intelligence on your business competitors--intelligence that would have taken months to unearth just a few years ago--to get a good sense of where they are versus where you are in the marketplace. Best of all, there are no phone calls to make or personas to assume. Just open your Web browser and it's free for the taking. Remember: Knowledge is power. Here's a rundown of where you should concentrate your sleuthing efforts. 1. Know their products and pricing. 2. Look at any job openings. 3. Get the gossip. 4. Read up on competitors' plans and finances. from Spy on your competitors: 4 steps at Microsoft's Small Business site.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/10/2004

Search Innovation Looking for the Average Joe

In the high tech business, we tend to be surrounded with others like ourselves. We are the classic early adopters, looking for the latest technological gizmo. We tweak our computers and other various electronic gadgets, spend hours tracking down problems with drivers and happily put up with bug after bug to gain an edge over the less technically savvy. In our biz, we all tend to be members of this relatively small segment of the real world. Unfortunately, we sometimes make decisions that seem valid because everyone we talk to agrees with us. It's not until the public flatly rejects our innovations that we realize it was never capable of going beyond the research lab.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/10/2004

Effective Product Managers Know Their Market

Product managers need to intimately understand their markets in order to be effective. They must know the customer better than they know themselves. Yet meetings and administrivia fill their schedules. What's needed is a challenge for product managers to visit customers with specific tasks and tips to get started. Read Barb and Steve's full article on ChangeThis.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/8/2004

Customers: Love Them As You Would Yourself

Most companies pay lip service to truisms like 'The customer is king.' But it's easy for software companies to immerse themselves in the magic of their technologies and not actually focus all that much attention on the customer base. Far more companies talk about treating their customers well than do a good job at it. Yet connecting with your customers is ultimately the way to build customer loyalty, and consequently increased revenue and strong profitability through lower cost of sales. Read Customers: Love Them As You Would Yourself for some ideas on how the Product Management function can help build an enduring connection with your customer base.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/8/2004

Issue 5: Remote Demos, Positioning, Focus Groups

The current issue of productmarketing.com is posted online. Read Issue 5: Remote Demos, Positioning, Focus Groups.
posted by Steve Johnson on 11/1/2004

Another bad advertising idea

Evelyn Rodriguez argues in favor of blogs over advertising: "At the risk of coming across anti-advertising (on second thought: so what?), I guess I'm feeling compelled to chime in with the recent discussions around the Mozilla Firefox campaign to raise money for a six-figure full-page ad in New York Times. I'm feeling pretty emotional about this right now, as I'm choked up thinking what one could do with a $100,000 marketing (not advertising) budget. I'll offer specific suggestions when I've calmed down."

Firefox is winning the pioneers through word-of-mouth, the most powerful marketing method. Next they must target the thought leaders to get credibility with the settlers. Their message ("better than IE without all the security problems") certainly resonates with people who want a safer internet experience, those frustrated with viruses and pop-ups and other internet junk. I thought experts were agreed that advertising works only to keep the number one position, not to attain it. (But then, maybe the Mozilla crowd is a bunch of engineers playing at marketing.) Advertising teaches the sheep who the number one vendor is. Advertising makes sense for Dell and Microsoft and IBM, companies with lots and lots of money to tell sheep what vendor to buy.

Many now argue that we are living in a world of new media, where the traditional avenues don't work because the influential neither write them nor read them. We read books when they are mentioned in our favorite online venue, rarely when they are mentioned in the local newspaper. We consider products when they are profiled online; I can't think of a time when I've spotted an interesting product blurb in a magazine or newspaper. The internet bust happened because companies were obsessed with technology, the old idea that if it's possible it must be useful. The new internet boom is about content, giving voice to those with the knowledge rather than those with the presses.
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/31/2004

the Customer-Centric Worldview

From Introducing the Customer-Centric Worldview on GoodExperience: "It was all a difference in perspective. The clerks were explaining to me how the product return affected them (they would have to call the catalog and manage the return) and not how it affected me (I could only get store credit). Had they simply communicated in my language, the interaction would have gone much better all around: 'We'll be happy to take that back, sir, though we can only issue store credit for it.' Whether online or offline, customers now have unparalleled power to research and transact with companies exactly when, where, and how they choose. There is a new worldview at work that companies must either embrace, or ignore at their peril." As it has and will for years and years, the business world revolves around the customer, not your business.
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/26/2004

You DO Talk to Customers, Don't You?

In going through some old stuff in my Outlook, I found this from Good Experience--You DO Talk to Customers, Don't You? :

"By definition, any customer experience project must involve real, live, actual customers. It's not adequate to operate solely from pre-defined rules, reams of quantitative data, or hypothetical (and fictional) stories of users. Customers themselves must be the focus of the research, and their experience on the site must be the basis of the resulting strategy."

by Steve Johnson on 10/23/2004

BOSE: the value of design in marketing

I walked by the BOSE booth in Denver's airport on Friday and watched in fascination as one customer after another put down $299 for a set of BOSE noise-canceling headphones--and then I did too. The clerk didn't have to cajole or persuade; she only had to ring up the order. The clerk quickly explained the set of wires and adapters (including which airlines used which adapter!) and demonstrated how to install the battery (included). A savvy sales person, she also explained that this pocket holds your CDs or DVDs and your iPod will fit here. She knew her product and she knew how it was used. What better place to buy noise-canceling headphones than at the airport before a flight? The sales person appeared to have sold more than a dozen sets as of 10am. Behind her stand was a PILE of discarded packaging left by customers who bought for their upcoming flights. BOSE advertises in travel magazines but the best marketing is the implicit customer endorsement by all the frequent flyers on my flights. While waiting for my credit card to be processed, I gawked at the BOSE SoundDock for the iPod. Just place your iPod in the cradle and voila! superior sound. The system has a remote control and also recharges the iPod. And with BOSE's reputation for great sound, this will surely be my Christmas gift to myself this year. Audiophiles--the technology elite--are rather annoyed at BOSE's success because BOSE products are neither the best nor the cheapest. Instead BOSE products are elegantly designed, well placed, and never discounted. BOSE customers care about brilliant design, and are willing to pay extra for it. great design + great placement = great marketing
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/23/2004

Can Customers Doom Your Software?

Is it possible to do such a good job catering to customer requirements that your product fails? Sometimes your company can listen to users so well that you wind up taking your product down a path that leaves it far behind the competition, and only a superlative effort would let you catch up, if you even can. Read Can Customers Doom Your Software? for some ideas on how the act of gathering and implementing the wrong requirements can cause your product to lose its competitive edge, and what a product manager can do to prevent it.
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/22/2004

Using Personas to Create User Documentation

Steve Calde writes "Personas and other user-modeling techniques are often solely discussed as tools for product definition and design, but they are useful tools in other arenas, as well. Technical writers responsible for creating user documentation can benefit greatly from a well-defined persona set, too" Read Using Personas to Create User Documentation on cooper.com.
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/20/2004

When Search Engines Collide

Naseem Javed writes, "Billions of pages going to trillions. Most of the information available online is replicated again and again, then twisted, corrupted and re-entered. When one search question retrieves one million answers, the system fails--results have little or no value." Read more in Clash of the Titans.
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/17/2004

Are You Measuring What's Done or What's Left?

Johanna at Managing Product Development asks, Are You Measuring What's Done or What's Left? I'm at PNSQC this week. I gave my metrics talk yesterday, and something occurred to me: in traditional projects, we're used to measuring what's been done. In agile projects, we measure what's left to do. I just realized yesterday that the difference in how we measure makes a difference in how people feel about the project. The more you measure what's left, the more you can see the end of the iteration or the end of the project. It's also a lot clearer to see how many more iterations it will take if management decides to add more features. I'll be modifying my measurements--even for not-specifically-agile projects--to reflect what's left to do, not what's done.
posted by Steve Johnson on 10/13/2004

Pride, Denial, and Product Positioning

Jacques Murphy explains, "For Product Managers who are have not been through the product positioning exercise a few times, the greatest difficulty about it may not be the effort itself but what you need to do in order to be ready for it. That's because in order to position your product well against the competition, you need to get past the all-too- natural pride and denial about your own product to a point where you can be accurate and objective about it and its rivals.

Crafting the positioning of a product is an art unto itself. But what holds so many people back is that they can't even get to a mental clean slate from which to start their positioning effort. It's human nature to develop a very subjective loyalty to your own product, and you tend to become blind to your product's faults and fiercely defensive against competitors."

by Steve Johnson on 10/8/2004

Why the one page resume doesn't work anymore

Updating the resume was one of my primary tools in employee appraisals as well as for planning my own career. I was taught to be brief. Yet Heather Leigh writes:

"I don't remember who ever said a resume should be one page. This was adopted as conventional wisdom by the masses. Aside from the fact that the statement is just wrong in my opinion (I'm not that into cookie cutter advice...most advice may work for most people but one size does not fit all), it won't work today."

Updating your resume is always a good idea. It's a technique to measure your growth and refocus on your career objectives. For your current job, explain (to yourself, if no one else) what you're really accomplishing. Use as much space as you need. For recent jobs, a short description and three key accomplishments. For older jobs, say more than 8-10 years ago, just a company name, job title, and employment dates will do.

by Steve Johnson on 10/7/2004

Book Review: Software Product Management

Daniel Shefer writes, "Software Product Management by Dan Condone offers a hi-level overview of the relationships between the stake owners in product management--engineering, sales and marketing. The book's insights are good but don't expect practical guidelines such as "how to" and templates. This is an insightful book on product management that avoids delving into practical issues." Read more in Book Review: Software Product Management.

Also updated: A Product Manager's Reading Anthology.

by Steve Johnson on 10/4/2004

What is a Weblog?

A weblog, or simply a blog, is a web application which contains periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts on a common webpage. Such a web site would typically be accessible to any Internet user. Part of the reason 'blog' was coined and commonly accepted into use is the fact that in saying 'blog,' confusion with server log is avoided.

Blogs run from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations, and from one occasional author to having large communities of writers. The totality of weblogs or blog-related webs is usually called the blogosphere.

The format of weblogs varies, from simple bullet lists of hyperlinks, to article summaries with user-provided comments and ratings. Individual weblog entries are almost always date and time-stamped, with the newest post at the top of the page. Because links are so important to weblogs, most blogs have a way of archiving older entries and generating a static address for individual entries; this static link is referred to as a permalink. The latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are offered in weblogs in the RSS XML-format, to be read with a RSS feedreader.

--from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

by Steve Johnson on 10/4/2004

The Wal-Martization of E-Commerce

Now all you need is a good idea to make some good money. You can start right away by getting a dot-com domain name registration for a year for much less than US$1 a month, and get a sparkling Web site for under $5 per month. For an additional $3 a month, get an encryption capability on the same site so you can offer secure online credit card transactions. Cha-ching. Plus e-mail and many other things thrown in for free. In principal you will have almost the same basic e-commerce tools as any other large-size corporation. All that power and those business tools for under $10 per month.
posted by Steve Johnson on 9/29/2004

High-tech job market lost 400,000 jobs

The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according to a new report on CNN.com.
posted by Steve Johnson on 9/24/2004

Are you living in a Dilbert cartoon?

I subscribe to the Daily Dilbert cartoons. Sometimes they are hilarious because they are so true. In the interest of cutting down the number of emails I get, I decided it was time to cancel. I clicked on the Unsubscribe link and was taken to a page asking for my email address and a password. I enter the password I normally use for this type of stuff and it doesn't work. So, I click on "Forget your password?". It says it will send me a password to the email address. For days I patiently wait. Nothing. The comics keep coming. I go to Yahoo and read my Bulk Mail folder with all the spam in it. (Believe me, it is ALL spam. Thanks, Yahoo, for normally shielding me from all of this junk.) It's not there. Back I go to the website (comics.com) and finally dig to find a page resembling "Contact Us." But when I click on the link for unsubscribing, nothing happens. So, I scroll through the gazillion items (it was an FAQ page), and I find what I'm looking for. Finally, I got an email saying they will delete me from the list. (At least they responded and took care of the situation, but the whole thing felt Dilbertesque.)

LESSON: test your links and processes with real people!

While I'm ranting, have you ever sent an email to the address on the Contact Us page of a website? Never to hear from them? A friend told me she sent several emails with no response and finally got a real live person on the phone. The lady's response to the fact that the emails were ignored? A terse response of "We're understaffed. There are only a few of us here!"

LESSON: Don't put a "Contact Us" link if you have no intention or resources to answer the email. And rudeness and hearing about your problems are never acceptable responses. Steve wrote earlier this month about customer satisfaction. You wonder how many companies lose business and never know why. "Moments of truth." It shouldn't be this hard...

posted by Barbara Nelson on 9/23/2004

Hiring Technical People

Johanna Rothman has published Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People, available at Amazon.

She writes, "Hiring knowledge workers, such as technical people, is different from hiring purely skill-based staff. Knowledge workers are not just the sum of their technical knowledge; they are the sum of their technical knowledge and the way in which they apply that knowledge to the product. The method with which they apply their knowledge is determined by how they use their technical skills for the product, how they manage their work, and how they manage their relationships with other people. Skill-based staff members have a set of skills they can apply the same way in almost all situations. Knowledge workers must adapt their knowledge to the situation."
posted by Steve Johnson on 9/21/2004

Stats on customer dissatisfaction

Dozens of studies conducted by government, universities, and industries have proven that customer satisfaction is critical. A customer whose complaint has been resolved will actually create much more revenue than the resolution cost. A satisfied customer will return to buy more, and he or she will refer more new customers. Three key findings regarding customer complaints

The average customer with an unresolved complaint will tell nine to ten people; 13% tell more than 20 people.
Up to 70% of complainers will return to your business if their complaint is resolved. Up to 95% return if the problem is resolved quickly.
For every one complaint received, the average company has 26 unhappy customers it never hears from; six of these customers have problems that are considered "serious" problems.

[Source: Technical Assistance Research Programs Institute]

by Steve Johnson on 9/15/2004

"Moments of Truth"

Every interaction between a customer and a vendor is a "moment of truth." Did the sales person listen? Did the product work as documented? Was customer support friendly--and did they resolve the problem? Every interaction gives your company a chance to keep your promises... or break them.

Seth Godin writes, "I just spent the last few days on the phone with HP, Creative and Maytag. Infuriating. Difficult. Time-consuming. In two cases, I 'won' the discussion, but of course, both of us lost. In the other, they won; I gave up and don't expect to return any time soon."

Last week I returned my iPod for repair and Apple fixed and returned it this week. They sent an email explaining how to return it, sent me an email indicating they received it, and sent a final email reporting it was on its way. They solved the problem quickly, and kept me informed all along the way.

Do you consider customer support a cost to be cut? It's truly an investment in customer loyalty.

by Steve Johnson on 9/15/2004

Source Control HOW TO

Every successful product team needs automation, for product managers, developers, QA, and others. Developers probably have the most advanced set of tools; certainly source code control is critical. While product managers may not be using these tools, it's helpful to understand them and how source code control can prevent product delivery disasters. Eric Sink is writing a series on source code control. He writes:

"Our universities don't teach people how to do source control. Our employers don't teach people how to do source control. SCM tool vendors don't teach people how to do source control. We need some materials that explain how source control is done. My goal for this series of articles is to create a comprehensive guide to help meet this need."

by Steve Johnson on 9/13/2004

if you choose innovation, you can't outsource

Johanna Rothman reminds us that development doesn't follow a formula. Creating great products is still an art, not a science. Throwing coders at it won't do the job.

She writes, "You can choose to turn your products into commodities or you can innovate. If you choose commodity, then select the cheapest labor market--because it doesn't matter. But if you choose innovation, you can't outsource. You can't define all the requirements and hand them off to anyone in a highly innovative product--requirements definition and product development have to be a joint exploration--and you can't do that when the definers and the developers (and testers) don't sit near each other. You can't wait for a product to be done--you need to see the product unfold and adjust the product (or the project) to accommodate the things you forgot."

Innovative products require collaboration between the members of the product team: architect, developers, product manager, QA, doc, and others. Everyone on the product team has to understand your discipline and the industries that you serve. If you just want a "me too" product, then outsourcing may be for you.
posted by Steve Johnson on 9/10/2004

Is Your Product A Missionary Or A Savior?

Jacques Murphy writes, "Taking a step back and using a Product Management perspective to look at the constant stream of new software products, it becomes apparent that while every company wants their product to be brand spanking new, there are two very distinct strains of newness: the Missionary and the Savior. And one of those two types is a much harder sell." Read more in Is Your Product A Missionary Or A Savior?

by Steve Johnson on 9/10/2004

Customers want control

Once again, a media company misses the point: customers want control over their entertainment. Matt Haughey reported on PVRblog about a recent decision by XM radio to prevent people from storing XM programming. TimeTrax is a third-party program that rips XM signals into your PC so you can play them back later. Rather than allow this convenience to their users, XM discontinued the radio model with USB interface that enables TimeTrax.

Remember The Innovator's Dilemma? New technologies, initially scorned by the established vendors, ultimately destroy them. Why can't the movie and music people see the hard-drive based media center is an opportunity rather than a threat? John Mayer is a great example of a "company" embracing new technology. His web site contains snippets of songs from all of his albums plus lyrics, buddy icons, wallpaper, a screen saver--all designed to keep his name in front of his fans--and of course, a link to buy merchandise. Most important, Mayer is publishing his live concerts as albums on Apple's iTunes, a new one every week, just days after the actual concert. While fans of the Grateful Dead shared bad bootleg recordings of concerts (with the support of the band), Mayer's fans can enjoy great recordings from his concerts, pulled straight from the mixer board. I would imagine that many, many fans immediately download the album of the concert they attended but perhaps the really rabid fans are downloading them all. Sold by album only, they give John and company another $8 per fan with minimal costs. I mean, how much does it cost to post songs online without any packaging?

I'm sure I ranted on this in the past but there are literally hundreds of albums from my college days that I would like to buy again--really obscure albums that will never be released on CD. And I agree with the decision not to publish on CD. Surely only a few listeners would buy "Apprentice in a musical workshop" by Dave Loggins--the album that brought us "Please come to Boston." But posting that album online would cost virtually nothing and deliver revenues to the music companies that they will never receive otherwise. In a similar vein, Joel Spolsky explains why usability wasn't important for Napster. Joel writes, "an application that does something really great that people really want to do can be pathetically unusable, and it will still be a hit." And Napster did something great: it gave us access to music and movies in a format that the media companies would not allow.

The new revolution in music and media is this: today's technology lets vendors create affordable devices that allow truly personalized user experience. Cheap, small hard drives and inexpensive operating systems make TiVo and the iPod possible. Customers of TiVo and iPod, as well as XM radio, become maniacal! Now we're screaming for an iPod for TiVo to let us take our movies on the road and an XM recorder that lets us hear scheduled programs on our schedules. What new product or service could your company offer using a new delivery method even if it's not the way you've always done it? One that is both convenient to your customer and profitable for you.

by Steve Johnson on 9/8/2004

Poor design--do you recognize your company?

Some companies embrace the idea that their products are only successful when they meet the needs of those intended to use them; and these companies' processes, metrics, and rewards work together to encourage good software and web design. However, many companies unwittingly reward their staff for products that don't meet the needs of end users. In the article Seven Deadly Excuses for Poor Design, Dr. Kevin Scoresby discusses the common excuses and underlying problems they represent.

by Barbara Nelson on 9/3/2004

Rivers of Revenue

In Rivers of Revenue, Kristin Zhivago writes, "Marketing doesn't have to be confusing and stressful. When you look at the selling process from the seller's perspective--as everyone does--there is no clear answer. One theory sounds as plausible as the other. Why? Because the answer can't be found on the seller's side of the equation. What makes sense to sellers doesn't make sense to buyers. Since the buyer is the one with the money--and the decision-making power--it makes a lot more sense to look at the selling process from the perspective of the buyer."

by Steve Johnson on 9/3/2004

Issue 4: Navigating Pathways to the Future

The Jul/Aug 2004 issue of productmarketing.com, featuring Navigating Pathways to the Future is now online.

by Steve Johnson on 9/1/2004

How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate

In How Breakthroughs Happen, Andrew Hargadon explains why so few companies actually innovate. Innovative companies have smart people, like everyone else, but they also have broad experience beyond one industry. So they can apply techiques already employed in one industry to solve a problem in another industry. Their minds are open to the possibility that a squirt gun reduced in size and filled with saline can become a medical device for clearing a wound; an inflatable pillow becomes the bladder for an inflatable shoe. The author says "The future is here already but it's unevenly distributed." Companies with a track record of innovation have broad experience in many disciplines rather than deep experience in one discipline.

by Steve Johnson on 8/31/2004

Marketing and Sales Materials: Business First

Jacques Murphy writes, "Technology companies, since they are largely peopled by technically oriented individuals, often fall into the trap of creating marketing and sales materials that are overly focused on the technical side of the product. Product Managers usually play an indispensable role in pulling the development of marketing collateral and sales tools over towards the business perspective." Read Marketing and Sales Materials: Business First.

by Steve Johnson on 8/27/2004

Starting a Business

I recently wrote an article for Techcoire, an organization for technology executives and entrepreneurs near Sacramento, CA. After reading Inside Intuit by Suzanne Taylor and Kathy Schroeder, I was reminded how we sometimes forget that even multi-billion dollar companies were once start-ups.

by Barbara Nelson on 8/19/2004

Joel on Software: the book

I've been reading Joel Spolsky's articles on development and technology for years. Love his directness and his humor. I highly recommend his blog at www.joelonsoftware.com. His recently released book is called: Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity Here's a link to the book. Here's a link to the website.

by Steve Johnson on 8/19/2004

Another Innovator's Dilemma

"Innovation often originates outside existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it."--Nathan Rosenberg

by Steve Johnson on 8/17/2004

ChangeThis :: How To Be a Boor

ChangeThis :: How To Be a Boor: "Have you ever received an email in ALL CAPS? End the madness here, with Elly's brief but powerful guide to email etiquette. Markson's manifesto is something you'll surely want to send along to friends who struggle with everyday email writing. As this issue's special 'plus one' release, Elly's piece is brief enough for even the smallest attention span. "
by Steve Johnson on 8/16/2004

How much is Just Enough Documentation?

Johanna Rothman writes "Sure, we can start defining requirements. And we should spend as little time as possible, and make that definition as low fidelity as possible as long as the fidelity is appropriate for your project's context. So if you're developing a product that doesn't have human life implication, timeboxing requirements, paper prototypes, storyboards, informal use cases and other fast and low fidelity techniques are suitable." Granted, some product managers try to get by with a requirement on a cocktail napkin. Yet many product managers spend too much time trying to get the requirements acceptable to development--as if developers were assembly line workers without the ability to reason. Too much time spent writing the Market Requirements Document leaves too little time to interview clients--to understand the needs for the next product or release. The MRD can only give guidelines for developing products but never truly defines the final result. Starting from the requirements, our developers add some code, some experience, and some creativity--little of which is specified in the MRD. Are you writing Just Enough Documentation? "Just enough" is adequate communication but not so much that nobody reads it.
by Steve Johnson on 8/15/2004

Issue 4: Navigating Pathways to the Future

The new productmarketing.com is in the mail. Look for Issue 4: Navigating Pathways to the Future soon.
by Steve Johnson on 8/12/2004

On access to company information

In My Daily Thoughts, Alain Jourdier comments: "I don't know why I am always amazed at the number of clients who tell me they don't have access to company information that could be useful in making the entire enterprise work. How can that be? Any company that has firewalls between people and market data and company strategies is only fooling itself." This is not the first time--or likely the last--that I've heard this. We must indeed live in a Dilbert world when our companies guarantee failure by hoarding information.
by Steve Johnson on 8/11/2004

Product Managers Lead the Way

Matthew Poepsel writes, For product managers in particular, the subject of leadership is critical for several reasons. Most product managers have significant customer contact. They are expected to appropriately represent their company and to translate customer feedback and market information into effective product and service planning efforts. Additionally, the nature of a product manager's work is highly cross-functional, putting them in direct contact with a large percentage of the organization on any given day. Finally, product managers are focused on the future, with all of its inherent risks and opportunities.

For product managers looking to answer the leadership challenge, it is important to consider three distinct perspectives: leading yourself, leading your team, and leading others. Read Product Managers Lead the Way.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/11/2004

Colin Powell on The Craft of Diplomacy

Don Jarrell writes, "I recently read Sec of State Colin Powell's essay "The Craft of Diplomacy" (Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2004) and think he nailed the point: "diplomacy is a craft more than it is either a science or an art. In science, both material and method are beyond the free choice of the scientist. In art, neither the material nor method are beyond the free choice of the artist. A craft lies in between: The material is given in the world as we find it, but the methods by which the statesman can shape that material offer wide, if not unbounded choice."

Aside from the fact that there is a lot of diplomacy in Product Management, his definition of a craft, as seen in diplomacy, is very applicable to Product Management, where our "material" is the available technologies and competencies.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/10/2004

Guerrilla Training: Learning the Product

It's an unfortunate characteristic of our economy today that inadequate time is spent on training employees on a product. Usually, companies look to Product Managers to be the gurus on the product, understanding the ins and outs of all the features. So how do you get to the point where you know the product inside and out, especially when you are assigned a new product or change companies? The hard fact is that if you want to really learn the product, you're going to have to figure out how to do most of the learning yourself. Read Jacques Murphy's Guerrilla Training: Learning the Product for some tips on how to go about learning the product in all its depth.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/10/2004

Valley of the Geeks on Marketing Spin

"Once you've got a technology company up and running it generally consists of two groups. Those who build the product and those who sell the product. So what role does marketing play? They're the ones who talk about building and selling the product." (Yikes!) Read Marketing Spin on Valley of the Geeks.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/7/2004

PayPal Ready to Challenge Visa, Mastercard

Here's an example where a company is not "copying" the competition (Visa and Mastercard credit cards), but where they are applying their technology to address a market need innovatively. Pay Pal, after having re-written some of its back-end systems so as to be able to talk to major merchant systems, is set to make a foray into the payments market of major retailers, challenging companies like Visa and Mastercard. The company says it is in talks with more than 60 major merchants for its upcoming release.
posted by Barbara Nelson on 8/6/2004

Naming That Thing: A Critical Step

Naming that new thing is the most critical and extremely controversial part of the innovation cycle. Read Naming That Thing: A Critical Step before you hold a naming contest for your latest product.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/5/2004

New Features: Moving Ahead On All Fronts

When it comes to developing new features for a software product, every Product Manager is faced with the following dilemma: more new features are needed than there are resources to add them to the product. You can't possibly get all the features in that you want to put in. We are told to prioritize, which most people take to mean determining which features we think are most and least important. Then you're supposed to only do those features that are most important. But there's a problem with choosing to develop only the highest priority features. New developments in the marketplace are rarely limited to only one, two, or three key features. There are usually several important features being developed in the market at any given time. Competitive advantage goes to the product which manages to move forward with all those features, not the ones which only succeed at a couple of them. Which is why I try to push for moving forward on all major fronts at once. Read New Features: Moving Ahead On All Fronts.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/3/2004

News: Linux potentially infringes 283 patents

Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.
posted by Steve Johnson on 8/2/2004

From Idea to Launch at Internet Speed

Five years ago, "first to market takes all" was all the rage. A common approach of the companies that survived the crash was a more balanced view where time to market is important but what is more important is that new products addressed a real need and are backed by business plans grounded in reality. Companies learned that innovative ideas are not enough. They need to screen them so that the limited resources available to develop them will be used effectively. To do this, companies have to set up processes for screening and processing ideas. This is where From Idea to Launch at Internet Speed by Catherine Kitcho comes in. Read Daniel Shefer's review of From Idea to Launch at Internet Speed.
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/31/2004

Death by PowerPoint

When the day comes that a board of directors fires a CEO because of a PowerPoint, it will send a very clear signal about what is at stake these days when anyone gives a presentation. From the Financial Times newspaper, "Board Fires CEO Over PowerPoint."
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/29/2004

Product Bytes: Growing Back into Management

Rich Mironov comments on the growing pains as startups become successful. He writes, "There's a funny paradox about joining a tiny company and helping it grow. If part of its attractiveness is an intimacy and lack of management overhead, success creates its own challenges." Read more in the July newsletter of Product Bytes.
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/26/2004

Where do product managers fit?

Jonathan Korman of cooper.com explores the role of product manager with development, marketing, and the often missing role of interaction designer. He writes, "People often ask how interaction designers should fit into their companies. This is an important question: no matter how brilliant your designers are, their work won't have great impact unless the company knows how to truly integrate it into its product development process. How, then, does a company go about this integration? To talk about putting interaction designers into your organization, it helps to start by talking about some other people--product managers." Read more in Where do product managers fit?
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/21/2004

800 Quotations

"I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement." (Oscar Wilde) is the 800th quotation added to Pragmatic Quotes, a compendium of quotations relating to technology, marketing, and the humorous.
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/18/2004

The Challenge of Customization

Sales wants to tailor every deal so they can meet quota. Marketing and the senior executives want to address as many market needs as possible to reach the broadest possible market. But what impact does customization or too many options have on operations and ultimately on product profit? A newsletter article from Wharton talks about the impact our sales & marketing choices have on operations and manufacturing. When we give our customers too many choices, they are often overwhelmed and end up postponing the decision because they are confused.
posted by Barbara Nelson on 7/17/2004

Innovative or Stupid?

Sometimes, creating a product that is clever turns out to be a good idea. In Practical Product Management®, we teach product managers that innovation is measured by success in the market. A colleague sent me an article about a refrigerator with a TV built into the door. Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald seems to agree with us that this is probably a stupid idea (not innovative).
posted by Barbara Nelson on 7/17/2004

OEM'ing Software

In OEM'ing Software, Daniel Shefer describes the "ins and outs" of identifying OEM'ing opportunities, successfully negotiating OEM agreements and bringing the deals to fruition.
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/17/2004

By the Dashboard Light

from By the Dashboard Light: "Your test group has an abundance of data but what does it mean to developers, project managers, or senior managers? Johanna Rothman calls this the data-but-not-information problem. In this week's column, Johanna offers a solution for delivering information to all of your customers in one place, that will be as handy as your car's dashboard."
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/12/2004

::: NaDa :::

Just when you thought every product was buggy, along comes NaDa: NaDa is a new concept. A thought, really. It is very light : 1 byte. It doesn't take long to fetch. It doesn't take long to understand. It doesn't disturb your habits nor does it makes you feel insecure. It is a reassuring piece of software that does nothing, and does it very well. That's a lot !
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/12/2004

Hardware without software

My wife has a Lexmark x125 printer/scanner/fax/copier that she bought when we were refinancing the house. (Banks still use fax machines! Can you believe it) The printer works great--for faxing. Oh we've had some funny fax experiences. At first I was aghast that the bank needed a fax of our documents. I implored, "Don't you want me to email it to you instead?" So we faxed some paper documents, and printed some electronic ones so that we could fax them. It was like going back in time.

Then there was the realtor who couldn't figure out how to email us pictures of an apartment for our son. So he faxed them to us. Have you ever seen a FAX of a color photo? It's a big black square. Used a whole inkjet cartridge. (sigh). But I can't blame the hardware for ID 10T errors. Where her fax machine falls down is in its interface to Windows. It can be a scanner and a printer-- if you don't leave it on overnight. Every day, my wife has to restart her computer to restart the software that drives the printer. Is it just me? Shouldn't a printer be able to run more than a day without requiring a restart? (For those of you who want to offer tech support, I have disabled the option to "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." Other suggestions welcome.)

It seems to me that hardware people think about the software last, rather than seeing the software is their key differentiator. TiVo is better than a generic cable PVR because of the software. Macintosh people will certainly bend your ear about the elegance of Mac OS X over Windows. HP printers combine rock-solid hardware with rock-solid software drivers. Sony hardware gets better acceptance because its software is easier to use. Hardware doesn't sell by itself. Hardware needs software to make a device into a product. (The same is frequently true for software. Do you need to deliver your software embedded in hardware to create a problem-solving product?) Are you selling drill bits? or holes in the wall?
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/9/2004

Building an ROI Calculator

Jacques Murphy writes, "One important contribution that Product Managers make is to play a key role in developing tools for the sales force that qualify prospects and reduce the sales cycle. When a business buys software, the critical question it must answer is: 'Will this make more money for us than we are going to spend on it?' If the answer is yes, and especially if that money is made up within a year of purchase, then you have a good chance of winning a customer. An ROI (Return on Investment) Calculator helps." Read how to Build an ROI Calculator.
posted by Steve Johnson on 7/7/2004

Favoring Unpolished

Have you ever shown a prototype of a potential product to customers (or your own executives) and had them say, "It looks almost finished. When can I have it?" Here's the problem: The state of a prototype implies the state of the product. Cliff Atkinson writes, "When the stakes for your presentation are so high that your business depends on it, wouldn't you want your presentation to be as polished as possible? We would all naturally think so, but sometimes what we see isn't what we get." He continues, "All of their material was correct and 'first-class', but the problem was that the presentation was over-polished."

Recommendation: a prototype should appear as finished as the final product. If there is no code underneath the user interface, the icons should be white squares with the word "icon" on it. Otherwise you imply that the product is more finished than it is.

posted by Steve Johnson on 7/1/2004

Today's Word: obstreperous

obstreperous \ub-STREP-uh-russ\ adjective 1 : uncontrollably noisy 2 : stubbornly resistant to control : unruly Sound like anyone you know? Courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/29/2004

What's a feature?

When Daniel Shefer asks, "What's a feature?" the answer depends...

Marketing--A feature is what we need to increase market share.
Sales--A feature is what we promised the customer to close the sale.
Business Development--No idea what a feature is but we're sure we can partner with someone to find out.
QA--If we can't auto test it, it's a bug.
Development--That's not a bug, that's an undocumented feature.
Support--A feature is a rope given to customers to hang themselves with.
Services--A feature is one more thing to customize.
The CFO--A reason to increase the price of the product.
The VC--A feature is a barrier to entry that you set up to prevent competition from entering the market.
Customer--The feature is what I asked for but not what I really needed.

by Steve Johnson on 6/26/2004

Thinking about thought leadership

Thought leaders are the people that your customers look to for guidance. Yet when product managers discuss thought leaders, they often limit their considerations to the industry analysts. The thought leaders in your space may be instead your company visionaries or independent reviewers. If expertise is your company's distinctive competence, thought leadership should be one of your primary marketing vehicles. Your company experts should be speaking, writing, and participating in standards bodies in addition to (or instead of) working the analyst community. Otherwise, being endorsed by thought leaders is a great marketing technique. Thought leaders validate your vision or help cut through the noise of a crowded market with too many offerings. For example, my son's band is achieving exposure via industry thought leaders--the band, The Alternate Routes, is featured this weekend on CD Baby, the best web store for independent music. Your marketing tactics should leverage your company's distinctive competence. What are you doing to accomplish this?
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/25/2004

cancellation of COMDEX 2004

What does the cancellation of COMDEX 2004 mean? Is it that COMDEX is just too big, trying to appeal to everyone, while smaller shows offer more focus? Or is it because COMDEX itself is too expensive? Or have all trade shows become irrelevant for companies attempting to optimize their marketing spending?

Trade shows have always been a popular program in the marketing list. COMDEX was once a great show for computer manufacturers. It was started in 1979 as the Computer Dealers Exposition designed for hardware and software manufacturers to show their wares to dealers for the purpose of signing distribution contracts. But then IT people started coming, then consumers, and then anyone with a free pass could get it. In 20 years, COMDEX went from being a valuable manufacturers' business show to a consumer show-and-tell to an irrelevant expenditure.

In the 2004 study on Marketing Practices by softwareminds, trade shows are the most utilized marketing communications tactic--used by over 75% of us. We use shows primarily to generate leads (69%) and build awareness (29%). While shows were rated as one of the top three most effective tactics by half of the vendors responding, almost one-third plan to reduce their expenditures in the future. We're realizing that trade shows can rarely be justified by the leads generated. And too often, we burden the show with secondary objectives such as meeting press and analysts, trying to close big deals, gathering competitive intelligence, and so on. But in retrospect vendors wonder if the money was spent wisely once show costs including shipping, travel, printing, and tchotchkes are added up--not to mention the opportunity costs of using the time and money for other purposes. Appearing at a show has the appearance of "doing marketing." Sales and Development see our participation at a major show and say, "Finally, Marketing is doing something valuable."

But savvy marketers today are worrying less about appearances and employing tactics in support of a marketing strategy. Checklist marketing has never been particularly effective. Instead effective marketing programs result from an integrated strategy to achieve a specific corporate goal by leveraging our company assets.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/24/2004

Product Management as a Counterbalance

Jacques Murphy writes, "The ideal company grows in such a way that it contains a balance of all the various strengths it needs: marketing, sales, technical knowledge, customer service, and management. Each function, such as Marketing, has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. One function's weaknesses are balanced out by strengths from other functions. Well, that's the ideal, anyway. But we have all seen companies that are out of balance, due to a lack of manpower or ability in one of the necessary functions. This leaves them exposed to major failings. Product Managers are in a unique position to act as a counterbalance when they find themselves in a company in such a situation." Read Product Management as a Counterbalance.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/22/2004

Make advertisements pull better

My article in the recent newsletter generated lots of comments about advertising tactics. One email recommended the book Which Ad Pulled Best? Grounded in research, the book offers this advice: 1. Name the benefit. Be specific about it. 2. The product is the big benefit. Tell what it will do. 3. Make it easy for consumers to visualize the benefit. Keep your advertisements simple. 4. Emphasize the benefit as much as possible. 5. Don't obscure the benefit. The cute, the catchy, or the tricky won't work. 6. Get personal about the benefit, but don't get personal without a purpose. 7. The benefit is not always rational. These recommendations are directly applicable to positioning which, of course, drives advertising. Use this list to evaluate your positioning documents. Techno-jargon may make sense for reaching a technical buyer but even then the jargon must be articulated in a form that delivers benefit to the buyer.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/18/2004

Desktop vs. Enterprise Applications--The impact on Product Management

Daniel Shefer writes, "A couple of months ago I discussed product management with a VP at a company that is moving from the 'tool space' to the 'enterprise application space'. As a result of that conversation, I asked myself, how is product management different for enterprise software vs. for desktop applications? This article is an answer to that question." Read Desktop vs. Enterprise Applications--The impact on Product Management.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/18/2004

On Marketing Strategy: Alternate Routes

For me, it seems as if everything is a marketing challenge. That is, I find myself thinking "positioning and persona, strategy and tactics" all the time. My son's band just finished their new CD, Over Your Shoulder. Interestingly, marketing this "product" is a little different. The CD isn't the product; the band is. The idea is for CDs to build a fan base to create awareness to get playing gigs, ultimately to spread their music virally until the "right" person hears the music. Rather than selling CDs as the revenue model, they're selling CDs as leadgen. They've put some tracks on their web site, their disc is available on CD Baby, they're leaving sampler discs at the local music stores, and they're distributing something akin to a "lit kit" to the major clubs. Am I missing something? It seems like they're doing this ... right. Maybe the kids really were paying attention all those years to my marketing lectures at the dinner table.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/16/2004

beyond bullets: A Branding Misunderstanding

I haven't thought about PowerPoint templates and branding in years. Cliff Atkinson writes, "When you put your corporate logo on every PowerPoint slide, have you done your job of 'branding' your presentation?" (Probably not, but everybody does it.) A quick fix here is to move your logo off the slide and onto your handouts. If your logo is sitting on your Slide master, move it to your Notes master. Now it's out of the way of your in-person experience, but it still resides on paper handouts when you're no longer present.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/16/2004

Respect Your Project--or Leave It

Johanna Rothman writes about an all-too-frequent occurrence : "I'm in conversation with a client about a possible project. The Big Guy wanted to meet with me immediately, but had constrained time, so I shifted my schedule and met with him. It was clear from our conversation that he didn't quite know what he wanted, but he did want a proposal from me. I sent in a proposal and waited ... and waited ... and waited. As I'm following up on this proposal, something is crystal clear to me: The Big Guy doesn't respect the project." Sound familiar?
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/14/2004

Lonely at the Middle

Valley of the Geeks posts, "A lot of people wonder exactly what a product manager actually does. I have product managers who work for me and I'm still wondering. People question: What's it like to hobnob with marketing gurus and industry execs at high falutin' conferences? Frankly, I've puzzled over this myself." Read a somewhat disturbing view of product management at Valley of the Geeks.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/14/2004

The Content-Free Buzzword-Compliant Vocabulary List

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.--George Orwell in 1984

We are an industry that uses ambiguous language, thinking it is meaningful to others. Or perhaps it is as George said--that we are using obscurity as a subterfuge. Words like "scalable" and "user friendly" are never used in requirements because they are ambiguous. And they shouldn't be used in marketing either for the same reason. Peter Cohan explores the industry use of jargon in The Content-Free Buzzword-Compliant Vocabulary List.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/13/2004

Managing Product Development

Delayed releases are typically the result of "just one more thing" requests. Every time we add another requirement to a release, we delay the date. Some vendors find themselves in the position of distributing patches that are really undocumented and untested features, because a big customer or a sales person squawked. And some companies do this for months and months until someone finally shouts, "Enough!" Long release cycles are extremely de-motivating. Developers and product managers lose heart that the project will ever end. Sales and marketing want to talk about the exciting features in the next release. Customers are continually told to wait for a fix or a feature that should be shipping "any day now." One technique is to break a big release into smaller ones. Johanna Rothman writes, "One of my clients complained about ranking, 'We'll have hundreds of requirements. It's overwhelming.' If you're still doing big releases, ranking requirements helps you create smaller releases. (Take the first 10 requirements and make that a smaller release. You don't have to release to the external world, you can release to the test group.)"

We advocate this approach in Requirements That Work--build small releases focused on a specific persona or market segment, which may or may not actually ship to existing customers. But if a new or existing customer needs a key feature, we can deliver the latest release, assured that it's been tested and is ready to go. If your company has a "big" project, break it down into a series of small release candidates. These release candidates allow you to balance project time and feature set. And this approach allows the team to feel a sense of accomplishment, take a deep breath, and then start it up again renewed.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/11/2004

The Sport of Support

Jacques Murphy writes, "Of the many activities at a software company, customer support or customer care is one of the toughest to provide. Sometimes I think that to avoid burnout, you need to approach the whole business the way an athlete deals with a sport. Realize that it's a team effort, and that you will win some and lose some. In fact, you may lose by falling flat on your face some days. But a losing game is just one part of a longer season, and the support of teammates helps you pull through." Read The Sport of Support...
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/9/2004

A Product Manager's Reading List

If you've been wondering what to read next, Daniel Shefer recently updated his Product Manager's Reading List.
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/7/2004

On Marketing and CEOs

Johnnie Moore writes, "It strikes me that the relationship between CEOs and Marketing is frequently abusive. The CEO plays persecutor/bad parent and the Marketing Director plays victim/hurt child."
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/2/2004

Are you playing tug-of-war ?

Here's an incredible analogy from Incipient(thoughts): "Picture a team--say, six people--arranged in a circle around a round manhole. Each person on the team is holding on to one end of a rope, the other end being attached to a four- or five-foot pole which dangles into the manhole. The team's objective is that the lower end of the pole should NOT, under any circumstance, touch the walls of the manhole, while keeping the upper end as high as possible. This is constructed as an exercise in balance. The team's collective responsibility is to keep the pole centered. If someone pulls too hard on their end of the rope, they will cause the team to fail just as surely as if they failed to pull hard enough. 'Work' in this metaphor is achieved by pulling hard. 'Value' is achieved by keeping the pole dead center and high. "
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/1/2004

On writing

Laurent Bossavit comments in Hiring programmers: "I've met way too many people who were billed as 'programmers' but whose writing skills were so impaired as to cast serious doubt on their ability to perform their main job." My children seem to have lost the skill of using the [shift] key. Nor do they use much punctuation. It's Instant Messenger! For them, AIM is the killer app, the one program that they use constantly. Kids write their thoughts as they have them, instantly, without filtering or organization. Likewise, I've heard it said that salespeople think by talking--which perhaps is why they prefer to use the phone over email. The "instant" nature of phone and messaging makes everything seem urgent. So we forget all about the niceties of spelling, punctuation and logic. And coherence. Writing is indeed a key element of every technology job. Technology employees (in development, marketing, product management, sales) should be able to write a coherent sentence, essay, article. In particular, writings by marketers and product managers are constantly on display. They're in press releases, business plans, presentation notes, MRDs, and so on. Writing leaves a permanent record (for good or ill). Documents get forwarded, and forwarded again-- to Tech Support, Development, sales people, customers, prospects-- who knows? Your writing may be the only thing that people know about you. What impression does your writing make?
posted by Steve Johnson on 6/1/2004

Common Sense and Computer Analysis

"A prestigious advisory panel has just recommended that the Defense Department get permission from a federal court any time it wants to use computer analysis on its own intelligence files. It would be acceptable, according to the panel, for a human agent to pore over millions of intelligence records looking for al Qaeda suspects who share phone numbers, say, and have traveled to terror haunts in South America. But program a computer to make that same search, declares the advisory committee, and judicial approval is needed, because computer analysis of intelligence databanks allegedly violates 'privacy.'" from Common Sense and Computer Analysis (washingtonpost.com).
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/31/2004

Collective Intelligence

"Success, most corporations assume, depends on the efforts of a few superlative individuals. As a result, they treat their CEOs as superheroes, look on most of their employees as interchangeable drones, and remain fond of command-and-control strategies that wouldn't have been out of place in the Politburo. In doing so, firms are neglecting their most valuable resource: the collective intelligence of the organization as a whole." From Smarter Than the CEO in Wired.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/31/2004

Dan Lewis of Product Acuity, a technology product management consulting firm in Texas, recently posted this note on product management organizations: "Product management is not just a title or position; it is a critical business function. Think about how a start-up gets going. A few people with a product concept (and thus, defined requirements) start a business. Already having the product concept, their immediate needs are not product management but three critical functions: 1) someone to oversee funding, spending, and the legal aspects of structure, 2) someone to build the product, and 3) someone to sell the product. Everything else is luxury, and the founders serve as the product managers. Therefore, the product management function does indeed exist; that they simply do not need a specialized position dedicated to that role. "For product management to be successful, they need to be part of the overall team. When such collaborative environments and attitudes are truly achieved, issues with organizational structures vaporize."

Dan makes some good points here: the product management function exists in every company, and, if a dedicated product management role exists, it must be an integral part of the team. There is a belief in many managers that there must be one "right" way to organize. But, as Peter Drucker said, each company is a unique organism that needs to find an organization that generates the right results. Organization structure is not particularly relevant. Product management is effective (or not) regardless of the organizational structure. The product management function in small companies is provided by the president and the senior executive team. As a company gets larger, the senior executive team becomes embroiled in company-level issues and typically creates a formal product management role to watch the products at the product level. Medium to large companies achieve scalability by creating more staff roles. We expand Development to include project managers, QA, customer support reps, and others, so that developers can focus on product creation. We surround Sales with support as well. It doesn't make sense for all sales people to create their own leads and sales tools; one focused group of marketing specialists can do it right for the entire sales channel so that Sales can focus on getting products to the customer. And typically we charter product managers to look at the product horizontally across the organization, acting as the senior executive team's product-level champion.

Product Management and Marketing departments are about scalability--few supporting many. Instead of everyone "doing their own thing, " we use specialists in different areas to create tools for many to use.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/30/2004

New Page: Links from Pragmatic Marketing seminars

I've added a page of the links to the web sites that we reference in Practical Product Management and Requirements That Work. Go to Links from Pragmatic Marketing® seminars.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/29/2004

Truth in Advertising

A Shell gas station owner put up this sign again in Menlo Park, Calif., Monday, May 17, 2004 as gas prices raise in the area. The owner put up the sign last year when prices climbed.
(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)(source: Yahoo! News)
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/29/2004

Ten indicators that you may have been in Product Management for too long

Daniel Shefer reports these ten indicators that you may have been in Product Management for too long...

1. When your creative writing is limited to making up SKUs. 2. When your kids asks for a bicycle for their birthday and you have them write a business case and specs. 3. When you just know that Sales and Development are out to get you. 4. You request an MRD from your family before you can choose a restaurant. 5. Every social event becomes a marketing discussion. For example, "these cocktail napkins don't continue the theme set by the dinner table and neither incorporates a common logo." 6. You request more information from your place of worship so you can understand their positioning. 7. You have automatic replies to every question a sales person might ask. 8. When looking at a new text formatting feature, you think "hey, this is really hot!" 9. You know when to use "product management" and when to use "Product Management." 10. You start writing about Product Management. (Thanks to Ron Mironov and Rick Chapman for contributions.)
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/27/2004

Where Should Product Management Report?

Where is the best place to locate Product Management in an organization? Bring it up at your company if you want to spark a lively debate. In the Pragmatic Marketing® product management benchmark study: 27% report directly to the CEO 23% are in the Marketing department 15% are in Development or Engineering 10% are in the Product Management department It's a sign of the immaturity of the profession of Software Product Management that there doesn't seem to be a standard job function where Product Managers report. Companies are all over the map when it comes to which part of the organization is in charge of Product Management. So often Product Management is not viewed as a vital function at a company, since its purpose and focus is poorly understood. If you read about the management team of a startup, or even a larger software company, you would be shocked if it didn't include a Finance or CFO function. You'd be pretty surprised if there were no Marketing function. But I'm willing to bet that a large number of experienced venture capitalists and entrepreneurs wouldn't notice if Product Management weren't mentioned in the job descriptions of the management team. And because Product Management for software is as young as it is, you would find very little consensus in the industry about where the Product Management function belongs in the org structure. Yet if you take a systematic, consistent approach to Product Management, the answer to where the function belongs becomes clear. Read below for a discussion of the various areas where Product Management reports today, with the associated strengths and weaknesses, and where the function belongs in a well run organization. Read Jacques Murphy's analysis in Where Should Product Management Report?.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/25/2004

Competitive Analysis for M & A

Another important use of competitive analysis is to gather valuable information for Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), to find companies that would make good potential acquisitions for or purchasers of your company. This same activity can have a different outcome from an actual merger or acquisition. It could be 'M&A lite,' such as a strategic alliance or partnership that strengthens your product in a new sales channel or adds competitive functionality. And looking for new functionality, then figuring out how to put it in the product, whether by developing it internally, embedding another company's technology, or partnering, falls right smack into the area of responsibility of a Product Manager. Read Jacques Murphy's Competitive Analysis for M&A.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/21/2004

Decker Marketing: Warning Signs

Sam Decker writes, "In marketing, it's as important to decide what not to say as it is what to say. As a professional speaker, my father always suggested to me that the audience does not know what you didn't tell them. And, they will remember more if you tell them less."
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/21/2004

The Prisoner Of Routines

John Porcaro writes in The Prisoner Of Routines: "Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge for Business Leaders published a great article called 'The Trap of Overwhelming Demands.' In it, they warn that being habitually too busy leads to preventing managers from taking the time to notice opportunities. 'Feeling under the gun,' these managers never find time to ask themselves, 'Am I busy with the right things?''" Remember, no one gets promoted for doing good email or good meetings or good voice mail. These are the urgent interruptions that prevent us from doing important work. Are you doing your job, or are you just jumping through hoops?
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/21/2004

What is RSS?

Have you been wondering about the orange link on some web sites? It's a link to an RSS feed. RSS is a way to publish and distribute content on the Web without using email. Subscribers receive new content whenever they want it, without worrying whether your e-newsletter will make it through their corporate spam & virus filters. RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. It is what it claims to be: a quick and easy way to create and use "syndicated content" such as news headlines and announcements. Some websites (like this one) use RSS to deliver blog updates and article previews to readers who are simply too busy to browse to our site and dig up the content they are interested in. Other sites use RSS to alert customers of new products, updates, or upcoming events. Want to start subscribing? I use NewsGator to pull RSS feeds into Outlook and Blogger to manage this blog. Learn more about RSS here.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/20/2004

Everyone needs to know what we do here

Technology marketing and product management requires domain expertise. People who tell you otherwise probably aren't very effective in working with developers and engineers. Domain expertise helps product managers connect with buyers and users to truly understand what they need and not just what they want. Domain knowledge steers marketing communications to effective programs with a clear message for the buyer. Likewise developers and engineers. When a judgment call is necessary--and this is often--a developer who understands the customer profile is more likely to make the correct choice. Gone are the days when we could have "coders" who programmed to someone else's design. At least, those days are gone when businesses investigate outsourcing. In Cooper's May newsletter, Dave Cronin writes, "Everyone's talking about outsourcing and offshore development these days. It's been on the cover of major newsweeklies, featured prominently on the West Wing television show, and a topic of conversation around boardrooms and discussion groups. Regardless of your personal position on trade policy, globalization looks like it's going to be a fact of life in the software industry." Read his article Designing products for offshore development.

In particular, Cronin emphasizes the increased importance of complete product design in the context of outsourcing. And firms sending good, complete designs offshore will achieve good results. Good design = good result. Jobs not requiring knowledge of the market and products are ideal candidates for outsourcing. There are outsourcing firms in all aspects of technology including development, marketing programs, and for that matter, sales can be outsourced too, can't it? If a job at an ERP (or tools or whatever) vendor can be done by anyone without knowledge of that space, why do it internally? Our developers, engineers, and product managers embody a terrific collective of domain knowledge... or should. We can allow more freedom and creativity in the design and implementation if the team members understand the customer problem. We can communicate in shorthand when both sides know the domain. Employees cannot be ignorant of their business. Product managers are learning to be more business-oriented. Marketers and developers need this too. Read your company's annual report. Make sure you understand your company's business strategy and challenges. Be able to participate in a strategy conversation. Otherwise, if you say "just tell me exactly what you want, " you're competing with outsourcing firms saying the same thing... at a fraction of your cost. Don't get so caught up in technology that you lose sight of the business.

posted by Steve Johnson on 5/18/2004

Cooper May Newsletter

From Cooper.com: "As businesspeople continue to use industrial age practices to manage product development in the information age, they continue to set up programmers for failure by not giving programmers sufficient time, clear enough direction, and adequate designs. In this excerpt from the new foreword in the 2nd edition of The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, Alan Cooper describes how well-meaning decision-makers are being foiled by their outdated tools." Read more...
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/18/2004

Where is the good advertising?

I was perusing print advertisements the other day, looking for good examples to illustrate key marketing principles in our Practical Product Management class. I skimmed a year's worth of PC and industry magazines. And found... not one good ad. Surely, someone in high-tech has a clue! Good ads? I found none. Read my rant on advertising.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/15/2004.

Product Manager tips from "Coder to Developer"

I just finished Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy. It's really a book for developers but offers some great insights for product management. If you work closely with a development team, this book shows you some of the internal processes and best practices that they should be following. Interestingly, one of Gunderloy's first points is to nail down the product positioning--called "The Elevator Pitch" in his book--before writing the first line of code. The Elevator Pitch keeps you focused on what you're building lest you lose sight of the big picture.

This advice will be familiar to people who have attended Pragmatic Marketing's Practical Product Management class. Product managers will want to skim most of the book such as the specific programming practices in .NET and the sections of code for the sample application. The sections of most interest to product managers are: * Handling Requirements * Starting a New Project (discussing of Breadth-First Coding and Depth-First * Coding) * Scheduling Deliveries * The Testing Landscape * Risk Management (an excellent method for assessing and prioritizing the project's risks) Gunderloy is generous with references to other works. He points readers to Joel Spolsky's excellent article on Painless Software Schedules and to Karl Wieger's book on Software Requirements.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/13/2004

Your opinion...

Seth Godin writes, "The first rule of great feedback is this: No one cares about your opinion. I don't want to know how you feel, nor do I care if you would buy it, recommend it, or use it. You are not my market. You are not my focus group." Does this sound familiar? Product managers should use facts, not opinions, to drive consensus in the company. Developers love data--so product managers must use market facts to illustrate why one idea is better than another. "I think this feature would be neat" is not nearly as strong as "Last quarter, 62% of our losses occurred because we didn't solve this problem." Which sounds better to you? (From 'How to Give Feedback' at Fast Company.)
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/12/2004

Using Caffeine The Wrong Way?

Researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School say they discovered low doses of caffeine throughout the day is more effective than the traditional method of having a large dose in the morning.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/11/2004

Commoditization as competitive strategy

Nicholas G. Carr writes: The way big IT companies are acting in the marketplace is actually accelerating the commoditization of their products and services. Commoditization lies at the very heart of their competitive strategies. Look at Intel. According to The Wall Street Journal, Intel is selling its Centrino Wi-Fi chips for its cost to fabricate them. Why? For one thing, turning Wi-Fi technology into a cheap commodity is a good way to crush would-be competitors. More important, making Wi-Fi chips broadly affordable encourages people to buy laptops, and selling laptop chipsets is far more lucrative for Intel than selling desktop chipsets. It's in Intel's interest to commoditize Wi-Fi as quickly as possible. Other companies are finding that commoditization is a great weapon to use against an archenemy. Sun Microsystems, for instance, is heavily promoting StarOffice, its inexpensive open source alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. Sun knows that if it can commoditize basic business apps, it can begin to break Redmond's stranglehold on the PC desktop. On a larger scale, IBM is also attacking Microsoft by spending billions to promote the adoption of Linux, rather than Windows, for PCs and servers. from Wired 12.05: VIEW.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/11/2004

The Mysteries and Future of Websites

Websites have just completed a full circle of a hard struggle, and somehow survived where other traditional marketing tools and old principals failed big time. Now the same sites and domain names must face harsher realities once again, all to ensure high visibility and exposure they so provide. Today without visibility, e-commerce, websites are simply doomed. While billions of web pages poised for the right match, only clashing into billions of surfing customers are simply flooding each other. Millions of splashy logos with billions of expensive web pages are all deeply submerged in this ocean of e-commerce. Customers all over the world are only amused as they watch the websites struggle to gain attention at a zillion choices per second. Their mysterious behavior on search engines and the role of alpha-structures of each and every domain name is now a very big question.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/11/2004

Why Americans pay more for software

Here's an interesting comment on product pricing. Rafe Needleman writes, "Microsoft, as it turns out, is not alone in having a tiered pricing structure for its software. Other software companies do the same thing. In fact, Digital River sells software on behalf of its customers (including Symantec and Autodesk) at prices that vary depending on not just who's buying the product but where they live and how much software piracy exists in their country."
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/7/2004

from Joel on Software

Joel writes, "What drives me crazy is that most software developers don't realize just how little they know about software development." I'd extend that comment to include product managers, sales people, and executives at many sofware companies. This is your chosen profession; you really should know something about it. Read Joel's full article.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/6/2004

What is "Snam"?

Kenneth Norton, director of product management at Yahoo, has coined a new word--"Snam"--for the unwanted e-mail generated by "social networking" Web sites like Friendster, LinkedIn, and Tribe.
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/6/2004

Worry: A Product Manager's Best Friend

Jacques Murphy writes, "I am a person who worries. That has been the case for as long as I can remember. I'm quite sure I'm not the only one. As a Product Manager, you can use the worries described below as an incentive to make your product succeed under the worst of conditions. The key is not to stop at: 'What if something bad happens?' The key is to move past that and figure out what you'll do to protect yourself if your fears come true." Read Worry: A Product Manager's Best Friend by Jacques Murphy. (SPECIAL NOTE: Jacques is currently between jobs, so if you know of a company that could use a top quality product management professional in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA) area to help its product succeed, please contact him via email at jacquesm@epix.net)
posted by Steve Johnson on 5/4/2004

Worthwhile: Going against the Flow

'Every time I tried to initiate change in my company, the organizational antibodies came storming in to attack me.' These words spoken to me yesterday by a former executive of a media company stuck in my brain all day. 'Organizational antibodies'--what a profound way to describe the resistance to change many of us feel when we try to alter a business process or simply re-think our marketing campaign."--from Worthwhile: Going against the Flow by David Batstone on Business
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/28/2004

Competitive Analysis: Digging for Info

Product Managers are often called upon to analyze the competition, perhaps with an eye to positioning the product to sell better, or as a way of determining which features to add in order to better compete in the market. In two previous topics, we covered competitive analysis as a general topic in Competitive Analysis: Ready When They Are and specifically for sales in Competitive Analysis for Sales. Jacques Murphy continues the discussion with some miscellaneous tactics and techniques to point you in the right direction when you are called upon to analyze the competition. Read Competitive Analysis: Digging for Info.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/27/2004

interview with Gordon Graham

From a SoftwareMarketSolution interview with Gordon Graham, Author of Writing Marketing Materials for High-Tech Firms: "The most fundamental marketing mistake of all, which is committed by companies large and small in every sector, is talking about US, US, US instead of YOU, YOU, YOU. It's talking about great OUR company is, how WE'VE sold more software that anyone else in history, about how fantastic OUR products are, how cutting-edge OUR technology is, how many programmers WE have on staff and how WE believe in total quality and blah blah blah. Some people call this 'we-ism.' Some call it 'chest-beating.' You can find this approach all over the Web and all over most marketing pieces. Instead, companies should be talking about YOU and how much better YOUR life will be when YOU use this product, and how YOU will love it because it will do this and that and the other for YOU." Read more from the interview at www.softwaremarketsolution.com.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/25/2004

"Success means never letting the competition define you. Instead, you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about."--Tom Chappell

This plus another 771 great technology marketing quotes are available in PragmaticQuotes.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/23/2004

Six Apart knows how to focus

In "Mena's Corner: Where's the Beef?", Mena Trott writes, "Movable Type 3.0 will not be the solution for everyone, and that's okay. For some users, TypePad makes more sense. For others, non-Six Apart tools make more sense."

Amazing! The founder is saying that her solution isn't designed for everyone. The company has a clear idea of who their customers are and what those customers need. And more importantly, they recognize that some customers are not the right fit for their product. It's been said that you don't know who you are as a company until you refuse a client. Who are your customers? And who aren't your customers?
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/23/2004

Competitive Analysis for Sales

Jacques Murphy writes, "Competitive intelligence and analysis is a big part of any company's job, and is a duty that often falls to Product Managers. In 'Competitive Analysis: Ready When They Are,' we looked at the topic of how to get a read on your competitors' plans and next moves. This discussion focuses on getting information so that your sales reps can sell better against the competition." Read more in Competitive Analysis for Sales.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/21/2004

Fast Company | Escape from the Red Zone

Fast Company offers a powerful article on the state of management and managing in Escape from the Red Zone:

"'Every day I feel like a miserable failure. I work 60-hour weeks. I get no praise. When I told my boss how I felt, he said, 'What are you talking about? You exceed my expectations. I couldn't be happier. You'll be making more money than you ever dreamed of.' When I told my husband about it, he said, 'He doesn't realize how big you dream.' I don't get it. It just doesn't add up. My husband says, 'Your life is so good. Why do you feel so bad?''"

posted by Steve Johnson on 4/20/2004

Visionary: "Our plan is to invent some sort of doohickey that everyone wants to buy."
from Dilbert on comics.com
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/17/2004

One picture tells a zillion stories

I stumbled across this series of "slides" from Customer Evangelism University--Sept. 2003: Tenet 1: Customer Plus-Delta. It's amazing how much information each slide summarizes. What a great tool this type of slide is to a presenter: the slide offers visual cues for about a dozen concepts. I assume this was a flip-chart created beforehand--although it would be incredibly powerful if one could draw it all from a blank sheet! I've heard that many keynote presenters use this format--a single graphic that is a roadmap of the presentation with cues for each major topic. I attempt to use clip art for this purpose in my PowerPoint slides: the picture by itself isn't valuable but the picture reminds me to tell a story. And later, when you see the picture, you remember the story that goes with it. I wouldn't want to send a graphic like this to the sales force in lieu of a PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint is a great tool for communicating in a controlled, consistent way. But this format is an interesting consideration for a speech. I've always thought that the good presentations I've attended were memorable because they contained a "big idea" supported by a series of good stories.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/17/2004

A Product Manager's Reading List

Daniel Shefer offers a guided tour through of some of the literary resources available for Product Managers to assist in the day-to-day aspects of their jobs. Read A Product Manager's Reading List.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/16/2004

Competitive Analysis: Ready When They Are

Jacques Murphy writes, "Competitive analysis is a vital function at a company, especially in the fast changing software industry. Yet it is an activity that is often neglected or haphazard. Usually, gathering competitive intelligence doesn't fall squarely in the camp of one department. In fact, like product management itself, ultimate responsibility for competitive analysis may be found in different departments at different companies." Read Competitive Analysis: Ready When They Are.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/15/2004

Upcoming Event: Pragmatic Marketing online in SoftwareCEO webinar--Thu, Apr 22

Product management spans an incredible range of activities, from strategic to tactical. Company leaders are increasingly turning to product managers for business justification. Successful product managers leverage market information in their company communications, from business case to market requirements documents to positioning documents. But these strategic business activities are often overshadowed by the urgent needs of the sales force. In a sales-driven company, product managers sometimes become the best technical talent, a skill that others in the company are supposed to provide. On Thursday, Apr 22, SoftwareCEO is hosting a webinar to explore the role of product management in technology firms. The session defines product management and product marketing, and contrasts the role with Sales Engineering. This webinar is a good overview for executives and others who need to understand the strategic role of product management. Sign up at SoftwareCEO.
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/14/2004

Firms will pay when workers make escape

The economy is recovering. The signs are everywhere. But with the increase in hiring comes an increase in job-hopping! I hadn't thought about it this way but USA Today reports from a Spherion study that 75% of workers expect to change jobs in the next year!

From the article: This beneath-the-surface issue isn't jobs. It's work. Specifically, it's the growing recognition by workers that corporate leaders have so abused them during the recent recession that, when a job-producing recovery really kicks in, as appears to be happening, companies will suffer a tsunami-like wave of employee defection. The disruption will be enormous; the costs, astronomical. And the signs are already there that foreshadow just how serious the problem could become. According to a recent study by Spherion, a Florida-based recruiting and outsourcing firm, workers are already gathering at the doors of many companies. The study found that 51% of the 3,000 workers interviewed wanted to leave their jobs, and 75% said they were likely to leave within one year. Both percentages are substantially higher than the numbers from Spherion's 1997 study.

And in a related story, Worthwhile writes, "These days, people are starting to realize that the game isn't about money, it's about happiness. Increasingly, they are looking for jobs that feed their souls, that fuel their passions. Jobs that make you want to get out of bed in the morning. Sure, money is an angle--we all need some of it--but it's not the driving force it once was."
posted by Steve Johnson on 4/13/2004

Managing Product Development

Johanna Rothman laments, "Management has fixed the number of people available to work on the project, the time for the project, and the number of features it wants. The project has only one clear degree of freedom: the number of defects the project will deliver along with its features." Mandating both the features and the dates puts the product team in an impossible situation: the team can deliver fewer features than requested or deliver later than hoped. You just cannot fix both variables. And adults know this. Bad managers may think the technique of mandating dates and features gets the most the soonest. But unfortunately, sometimes it works. The problem with doing the impossible is that no one else appreciates how hard it was. By organizing the work by personas and their goals, you can deliver logical feature sets in multiple release candidates, thus balancing a potential set of features with a potential set of dates. This gives the product team a little wiggle room for surprises and still let us hit our dates. We offer strategies for dealin

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2004 Archive

Marrying Up: Partnering with Big Companies

The Best Way to Listen to Customers

ChangeThis :: The Long Tail

Pricing for Software Product Managers

Marketing Motto: Be Useful

Top Ten Problems--STC Usability SIG

A Good Marriage: Working With Partners

The Role of Sales Engineer in Technical Sales

Sharks, Pilot Fish and the Product Food Chain

Stalled: Getting Development into Gear

The Best and the Rest

Super Advertising Slogans & Super Costs

This world is a place of business

Pragmatic Marketing® Product Management Roles & Compensation Benchmark

Inbound vs Outbound Product Management at Microsoft

Easy Does It--Editorial--CMO Magazine

Spy on your competitors: 4 steps

Search Innovation Looking for the Average Joe

Effective Product Managers Know Their Market

Customers: Love Them As You Would Yourself

Issue 5: Remote Demos, Positioning, Focus Groups

Another bad advertising idea

the Customer-Centric Worldview

You DO Talk to Customers, Don't You?

BOSE: the value of design in marketing

Can Customers Doom Your Software?

Using Personas to Create User Documentation

When Search Engines Collide

Are You Measuring What's Done or What's Left?

Pride, Denial, and Product Positioning

Why the one page resume doesn't work anymore

Book Review: Software Product Management

What is a Weblog?

The Wal-Martization of E-Commerce

High-tech job market lost 400,000 jobs

Are you living in a Dilbert cartoon?

Hiring Technical People

Stats on customer dissatisfaction

"Moments of Truth"

Source Control HOW TO

if you choose innovation, you can't outsource

Is Your Product A Missionary Or A Savior?

Customers want control

Poor design--do you recognize your company?

Rivers of Revenue

Issue 4: Navigating Pathways to the Future

How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate

Marketing and Sales Materials: Business First

Starting a Business

Joel on Software: the book

Another Innovator's Dilemma

ChangeThis :: How To Be a Boor

How much is Just Enough Documentation?

Issue 4: Navigating Pathways to the Future

On access to company information

Product Managers Lead the Way

Colin Powell on The Craft of Diplomacy

Guerrilla Training: Learning the Product

Valley of the Geeks on Marketing Spin

PayPal Ready to Challenge Visa, Mastercard

Naming That Thing: A Critical Step

New Features: Moving Ahead On All Fronts

News: Linux potentially infringes 283 patents

From Idea to Launch at Internet Speed

Death by PowerPoint

Product Bytes: Growing Back into Management

Where do product managers fit?

800 Quotations

The Challenge of Customization

Innovative or Stupid?

OEM'ing Software

By the Dashboard Light

::: NaDa :::

Hardware without software

Pragmatic Marketing®
Product Management Roles & Compensation Benchmark