Product Managers & The Secret Of The Color Wheel

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!So I’m just a little bit off the beaten path with this discussion, but I’ve recently had to sit through so many bad presentations that I’m feeling an overwhelming need to try to make the world a better place for … Read more

How Product Managers Can Get Better At Creating Powerpoint Slides

Yeah, yeah I know that everyone says that they hate Powerpoint – “death by Powerpoint” and all of that. However, the reality of modern Product Manger life is that we end up using Powerpoint to communicate a lot of information about our products and the current status of our projects. Thank goodness you took all … Read more

What Is A “Product Vision”?

I was working with a client the other day who had a unique problem: they needed a vision for their product. Now, I’m pretty familiar with the whole “vision” thing as it applies to a company – it’s that thing that you put on the wall that nobody ever reads. However, this was the first … Read more

How To Use Web 2.0 To Be A Better Product Manager

Right off the bat, I need to apologize for using “Web 2.0” in the title. It was a cheap trick to get you to read at least this far, but it sure seems to have worked. With all of that out of the way, hype aside, it sure does look like the Internet is  changing … Read more

Teaching Product Managers How To Win Every Time In Vegas

You walk into the casino and saunter over to the roulette wheel. Peeling off a wad of $100 bills, you plunk them down on black seven and then the wheel spins. When the ball comes to a rest, it is on, what else, black seven. You pick up your immense winnings and head for the … Read more

How Can Product Managers Pick The Right Technology For Our Products?

Just imagine if you were a movie studio executive back in the early 1980’s: what format should you release your new movie on for the home market – VHS or Beta? Both technologies were battling it out and it was very difficult to try to predict a winner. That was a long time ago (buy … Read more

How Product Managers Can Maximize Marketing

In order to have a successful product, you need to convince people to buy your product in the first place. We like to call this marketing. The problem is that lots of money can be spent on marketing with no real apparent return on the investment. Let’s take a look at what product managers should … Read more

Product Manager Marketing Mistakes

Where did you learn your marketing skills? At school? On the job? Never learned it? I’ve got some bad news for you: a lot of what you know may no longer be correct. A lot of what serves as conventional wisdom in the world of marketing is based on the way that things used to … Read more

Are Executive MBAs Valuable To Product Mangers?

As the world’s economy continues to shudder, everyone is scrambling to find ways to make themselves more valuable to both their current employer as well as to their next employer (if needed). For a long time, getting an MBA has been an option that many product managers have considered. The big drawback has always been … Read more

How To Survive The Product Manager Bermuda Triangle

I can remember being something like 9 or 10 years old when I first learned about the Bermuda Triangle. I’m not sure where I first got my facts, but I’m willing to bet good money that it was that classic TV show with Leonard Nimoy called “In Search Of…” I didn’t sleep for something like … Read more