The Accidental Product Manager
Home Of The Billion Dollar Product Manager Where You Too Can Learn To Be A Wildly Successful Product Manger
A job map identifies what your customers are TRYING to get done at every step of a task while they are using your product. This differs from process mapping which simply defines only what the customer is actually doing at each step – a subtle, but important distinction. Product managers who take the time to … Read more
Last time we talked about “job mapping” how a customer “hires” your product to perform some task. If you can do this well, then you will be able to create an understanding of what aspects of your product the customer likes and is using as well as which ones he/she does not like and is … Read more
As a product manager, you are ultimately responsible for your product’s features. If you’ve guessed well, then you should have a successful product. If you’ve guessed badly, then you may be sitting on a stinker of a product right now. No matter which situation you find yourself in, you are facing one of the greatest … Read more
So I just happened to be leafing through an issue of Information Week and I ran across an article that was talking about how IT is run over at Coke. In a nutshell, the article was a glowing review of the changes that Jean-Michel Ares has been making. However, what really caught my eye was … Read more
The Wall Street Journal ran a story today about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection department deciding to put off their grand plans for building a futuristic “virtual fence” between the U.S. and Mexico. The fence is being built by Boeing and was originally designed to cost $20M but has become much more expensive over … Read more
Ok, so how many times has this occurred: someone asks you what you do for a living and you tell them that you are a Product Manager and they fire back at you “Oh, so you manage projects?”. Grrr, it’s really no fair – the two disciplines really have nothing in common. Well, wait a … 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
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
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
The job of product management often takes on a program management flavor when it comes to keeping track of how the development of a new product is coming along. It’s probably important that I come right out and say that product management is a completely different job than program management; however, the two worlds do … Read more