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Articles on Product Management

Title	Description
6 Secrets of a Winning Product Launch	A product launch is a critical time for an early stage company. The success of the next Product Launch could determine if your company survives. What are the k...
A Fact-Based Approach to Outsourcing for Product Managers	The word outsourcing invokes fears of the unknown, of losing jobs, of losing competitive advantage, and of losing intellectual property. By Barbara Nelson.
A Look at Clarity in Positioning	Positioning is a process that focuses on conveying product value to buyers, resulting in a family of documents which drive all outbound communications. the best...
A Market Intelligence Primer	True power comes from the integration of all four cornerstones of Market Intelligence. By Ed Crowley.
A Model for Metrics-Driven Feature Prioritization	Learn the technique that relies on statistically-valid samples of broad-based customer data to understand customer needs and prioritize product enhancements. By...
Add “Quick Hits” and (Finally) Address Those Priority 3 Enhancements	Woe to the minor enhancement request that gets tagged as a dreaded Priority 3 or nice-to-have feature during the prioritization phase of a project. All too ofte...
Agile Market Requirements	Product managers write horrid requirements that are littered with buzzwords, ambivalent language, and non-specific performance parameters. They read like somewh...
Are You Decent? The Naked Truth About Product Management Performance	Product management is typically thankless. Remind me again, why we do it? By Alyssa Dver.
Ask the Expert: Are There Best Practices for Business Cases?	Are there best practices for business cases? Is there a standard way to develop a business case for my products?
Ask The Expert: Is There a "Gateway" Job or Path to Product Management?	I’m looking to “break into” product management, but I have no direct “product manager” experience. I’d love to know if there is a “gateway” job ...
Avoiding The “Netscape Moment”	What do you do when your company is facing its “Netscape Moment?” That is, the day Microsoft announces it will enter your market. By Nilofer Merchant
Brand Extensions	We have a product which is well recognized in the industry. However, it is narrowly associated with a certain type of functionality. We are about to release som...
Building a Better Beta	Delivering a successful beta program can be one of the hardest things to do as a product manager. By Saeed Khan.
Building an ROI Calculator	Tips on building an ROI Calculator that leads to better sales at a lower cost. By Jacques Murphy
Building Effective Product Roadmaps	Webinar with Rich Nutinsky
Building Product Management Credibility	How does one build strong credibility around the Product Management team in an environment where there is subtle tension between Product Management and Engineer...
Building Tomorrow's Products Requires Listening to the Market	Becoming a market expert can be the most valuable of all activities you can do as a product manager. By Barbara Nelson.
Built To Order: Making Product Management Fit	Each new company, product, or team may require customizing the way you conduct Product Management in order for it to take hold and succeed. By Jacques Murphy
Buy/Build/Partner Evaluation	Have you ever created a visualization that shows the true development cost and lost opportunities compared to (vs) partnering for quick time to market? Put anot...
Buyer and User Personas	How to develop clarity about the ideal buyer and user. By Steve Johnson.
Can Customers Doom Your Software?	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 preve...
Career Management Lessons from Product Management	Applying product management processes to your career. by Melissa Paulik
Case Studies: Top Eight Ways to Get them Done	Most enterprises realize the value of effective case studies, yet many product managers struggle with the task of actually developing them. This article describ...
Change Now, Change Later	If your naming challenge is simply based on a hit-or-miss process, then you are definitely not going forward. By Naseem Javed.
Clash of the Titans	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 s...
Collecting Contacts for Win/Loss	What are some best practices for managing the collection of the sales contacts (for either prospects or existing clients) that will be interviewed for win/loss?...
Competitive Analysis for Sales	Getting information so that your sales reps can sell better against the competition. By Jacques Murphy
Competitive Analysis: Digging for Info	Pointing you in the right direction when you are called upon to analyze the competition. By Jacques Murphy
Competitive Analysis: Ready When They Are	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 hapha...
Competitive Information and Sales Guides: What Sales Forces Need to Win	Six field-tested salespeople-approved best practices to help you put competitive intelligence to work for your sales force.
Content-Free Buzzword-Compliant Vocabulary List	How many times have you read marketing materials for software that did not contain any real information? Here is a list of meaningless buzzwords and ways to avo...
Contract Product Management	What are your thoughts on the prospects for contracting out product management? I have engaged with companies that I have worked with in the past to provide pro...
Creating A Great Trade Show Playbook	Advice on what to include when you create a Playbook for your trade show team in order to maximize your company’s return on a trade show. By Jacques Murphy
Creating Product Management at a Startup	the pitfalls involved in creating a Product Management function at a company, along with guidance that will help you be successful in such a vital component. By...
Creating the Right Product Roadmap	In most companies, Product Management is responsible for building, maintaining, and presenting the product roadmap inside and outside of the company. However, o...
Customer Loyalty: Mind & Body, Heart & Soul	A whole lot has also been written about how to build customer loyalty. These stories cover companies that advocate vastly different ways of creating loyal custo...
Customers: Love Them As You Would Yourself	How the Product Management function can help build an enduring connection with your customer base. By Jacques Murphy
Degrees of Ability: Hiring Into Product Management	What do you look for when you want to hire an ace product manager to champion your product and move forward relative to the competition? By Jacques Murphy.
Desktop vs. Enterprise Applications: The impact on Product Management	There are many differences between managing a desktop tool or application and managing an enterprise-ready software package. By Daniel Shefer
Distinctive Competence or nothing	Developers, executives, managers, sales people and others are all in high demand in our industry. Our time is precious. (And money is not.) By Steve Johnson
Does Agile Have to Be Acrimonious?	Avoiding Engineering vs. Product Management disagreements in an Agile world. By Stacey Weber.
Due Diligence for New Product Ideas	Any company can use due diligence principles to evaluate new product ideas. This article presents a hypothetical example of how to use due diligence for new pro...
Effective Product Managers Know Their Market	Webinar with Barbara Nelson
End of Life: Retiring a Product	Outdated software can turn into a monster. How do you discontinue a product that is no longer profitable? And how do you know that it's time? By Steve Johnson.
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 technical pr...
Exploiting the Full Potential of After-Sales Market	Technology product managers often think only in terms of tangible product, missing the incredible opportunity to double or triple revenue with services. By Dr. ...
Faster! Gaining Product Momentum	One of the top tasks of a product manager is to make the product gain momentum. Read on for tips about how to build momentum to catch up with competitors and ev...
Finding Potentials	I've been spending much more time with customers of late and have been gathering lots of valuable information. I'm now interested in expanding my market focus t...
Five Slices of Segmentation	Segmentation has always been a key part of marketing. Sorting customers into appropriate segments allows business and marketing types to filter ideas, glean int...
Fresh Or From The Can? Why The Better Product Still Struggles In The Marketplace	Learn how to incorporate the fundamental tenet of human nature into your product planning and marketing to increase adoption and sales. By Kevin Mireles.
Get Results? or Get Approved?	Marketing is about listening to our customers; we cannot assume that we represent them, that our personal experience is the same as theirs. By Steve Johnson
Getting Management to Buy-In on Positioning	Are your product people muttering that management doesn't listen to them? Adapt a positioning process that includes executive management approval of your messag...
Getting People to Answer Win/Loss Questions	In my win/loss calls, a lot of people just say "I don't know" to an open ended question... how do you get people to really answer the question that will benefit...
great tips for doing great demos	I know Demo is a great PR opportunity, but if you don't do a demo, only you'll know you have mediocrity. If you do the demo, the whole world will. By Guy Kawas...
Guerrilla Training: Learning the Product	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? By Jacques Murphy
High Impact Product Management: Creating and Measuring Product Management Success	A discussion about how to measure the impact of product management, the need to be proactive, and key elements and considerations for successful product managem...
Holding A Successful Customer Conference	Ideas about holding a successful customer conference that enhances the reputation and success of your product. By Jacques Murphy
Holding Development to Dates	How can product management most effectively hold development groups to dates that are promised?
How Can Product Managers Help Marketing?	See how you as Product Manager can contribute to Marketing in order to make your product's marketing stand out in the busy, crowded, and uncertain software mark...
How Many Products per Product Manager?	Are there any guidelines on how many products a product manager should be responsible for?
How Product Managers Help Development?	Product Managers are in the unique position of having dual citizenship, with passports for both Marketing land and Development land. By Jacques Murphy
How to Conduct a Successful Webinar: A Presenter's View	A webinar is the perfect venue for most formal presentations. Yet, something's missing. For all its high-tech convenience, a webinar lacks a human touch. By Har...
How to Fit Your Product Strategy to Small & Medium-Sized Businesses	Opportunities abound for the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) market to adopt technologies that will advance their operations and expand their sales cap...
How to interview your Customers	Your personal success depends on talking to your customers. Here are ten points to help you do just that. By Kristin Zhivago.
How to Make Less of a Mess in Software Product Management	Understanding the role of product management in your business can be very confusing. It can also make or break your company. By Bruce Hadley.
How to Make Selling Complex Solutions Simple	Explore why product training fails and what can be done to succeed in this area. By Andy McGinn.
I Am Customer, Hear Me Roar	A Product Manager's Irreverent Look At How Technology Companies Listen To Their Customers--or Fail To. By Les Jickling.
Idea Generation for Product Managers	Are you creative? Learn some techniques for generating your next big ideas. By Robert Siegel
Inability to Get a Product Launch Date in Scrum Environment	In our SCRUM environment, It is impossible to have an official Product Launch date that the project team can drive towards and deliver. Does SCRUM prevent us fr...
Integrating Users into Product Development	This two-part series explores the impact and process of incorporating users into the product design/development process. In the first article of this series, ...
Investment in Customer Advisory Programs Helps Build Business	Read how three customer-focused companies have been listening and collaborating with their customers to keep up with evolving needs and staying one step ahead o...
Is Your Product A Missionary Or A Savior?	Is your product a Missionary or a Savior, and what does that mean for your business model? Is one easier than the other? How does this change the role of the Pr...
Keeping Close to Customers	How we listen to the market to become experts in what they need. By Barbara Nelson.
Knowledge Transfer: Starting It Out Right	Knowledge transfer is the one important thing that companies forget to build into their plan time and time again. Read on for tips about putting together an eff...
Lead on Purpose: How Product Managers Lead Teams to Success	How do the principles apply to product management? The role a product manager often plays in an organization resembles (at a macro level) the role a person’s ...
Leading Teams to do Great Things: How to Succeed When You Have All the Responsibility and No Authority!	Webinar with Anne Pauker Kreitzberg
Make Your Product Succeed: What Will It Take?	As a Product Manager, your scope of responsibilities calls upon you to get involved across the board in all aspects of the product. By Jacques Murphy
Managers as experts	Nowadays, people who manage people are now called Directors and people who manage ‘things’ are now called Managers. In effect, the term manager can now be e...
Managing Complex Competitive Environments	Foremost in the minds of product managers is determining the best way in which to position their products against competitors. The decisions made have huge impl...
Market-Driven Goal Setting: Using Market-Driven Techniques to Align Your Own Quarterly and Annual Goals with the Market	Webinar with Stacey Weber
Marrying Up: Partnering with Big Companies	Learn the basics on what a small company needs to know in order to make its alliance or partnership with a big company work out for the best. By Jacques Murphy
Measuring Success of a Software Product	How do companies measure the success of a software product after it has been installed on the customer's site? I usually use customer surveys and questionna...
Metric for New Headcount	I am trying to identify a metric as to the typical revenue or # products that is used to justify a new headcount. I have heard $40M to $50M per product manager....
Migrating From a Product Manager to an Entrepreneur	There are key factors you should consider as you dream of building the next Yahoo! or eBay on your own. If you decide to take the plunge, here's a top-ten check...
Missed Delivery Dates - The Trust Factor	First, take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone – this happens to many product managers. Second, understand there are ways to avoid it. By Stacey ...
Monitoring Metrics Puts You in the Drivers Seat	Learn to focus on key performance indicators to find what is on track and what needs to be changed before it is too late. By Barbara Nelson.
More Performance Anxiety: More About Performance	Improving product performance so that your software remains competitive. By Jacques Murphy
Multiple Products, Multiple Product Managers	When a company expands to multiple products and product families, firms must integrate a broad set of skills among multiple product management professionals. Re...
Navigating Pathways to the Future: Product Roadmaps Lead Their Readers in Multiple Directions	At a recent Product Strategy Network roundtable, a group of product strategists shared their benefits as well as frustrations with the technique of roadmapping....
New Features: Moving Ahead On All Fronts	Tips on how to keep making progress on several new features with each software release. By Jacques Murphy
No Job Too Big: Cutting Your Job Down To Size	How can anybody possibly cover all the ground that needs to be covered? - from PRODUCT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES A Newsletter of Tips For Companies that Develop ...
No One to Blame: The Perfect Crime	Satisfy customer needs with a mindset of being customer-driven. By Eran Livneh.
OEM'ing Software for Product Managers	The "ins and outs" of identifying OEM'ing opportunities, successfully negotiating OEM agreements and bringing the deals to fruition. By Daniel Shefer
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Articles on Product Management