The Accidental Product Manager
Home Of The Billion Dollar Product Manager Where You Too Can Learn To Be A Wildly Successful Product Manger
drjim Nobody ever said that being a product manager was going to be easy, and I think that we can all agree that it’s a tough job. There’s been a lot of talk about finding a way to certify product managersby making them go back to school; however, I think that at the heart of the … Read more
Who would have ever guessed that a big chunk of the art of product management would revolve around your ability to make good guesses? We like to call it estimating; however, at the end of the day it’s really guessing. The cruel fact of life is that he/she who does the best (most accurate) job … Read more
We had talked about force majeure awhile back, and apparently it was interesting enough to catch the attention of one of my colleagues. Phil is a hard-charging product manager who works in the telecommunications space and he just sent me an email that was talking about another story where a vendor had to declare force … Read more
The late George Carlin became famous thanks to a skit that he did titled “The 7 Words That You Can’t Say On Television”. I’m thinking that he missed a word — RISK. Why should this be added to the list you say? Simple — nobody dares to say it out loud! A couple of university … Read more
… leadership. Sorry in advance for this rant, but I’ve just about had it with product managers who spent their time whining and complaining that nobody listens to them. Pretty much across the board I’ve seem organizations where IT Product Managers get less respect than Rodney Dangerfield (on a good day!). In talking with these … Read more
If you’ve even come close to a business book in the last 5 years or so, you have probably discovered that “innovation” is what every IT organization is desperately trying to capture, grow, encourage, enhance, etc. Although this sounds like a great idea, and product management is one area that would directly benefit from this, … Read more
The IT field can learn a great deal about new product development from other industries.This time we’re going to learn from the big drug firms – they make excellent teachers. If you think about it, we’ve got a lot in common: both industries have to make big bets on unproven projects with the hopes that … Read more
We’ve talked about why Product Mangers find it hard to get any respect. Now it’s time to talk about the why’s and how’s of what to do when you run into another department (or person) who acts like a brick wall. Thanks to millions of years of evolution, we are all pretty good at recognizing … Read more
Warren Bennis is a smart guy (professor of business administration and chairman of the leadership Institute at the University of Southern California). He’s cranked out a book called Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls and it has a few ideas that really relate to how IT Product Managers can make better decisions. It turns … Read more
As a product is being developed, one of the big questions that a product manager has to continually answer is if the product is on track or if somehow things have gotten mixed up and it’s heading off into the weeds, so to speak. Although this sounds like a simple question to answer, in truth … Read more