Feb
25
You Might Be a Product Manager If…
BySince we at Pragmatic Marketing just released our 2010 Product Management Survey, the time is right to revist one of my favorite topics: You Might Be a Product Manager If… In the spirit of the American comedian Jeff Foxworthy (“You Might Be a Redneck If…”), this year, product managers around the world contributed to the #YMBAPMI list over Twitter, LinkedIn, and this blog. And the results were excellent. So without further ado, I present the 2011 list:
You Might Be a Product Manager If…
- … you count number of iPads, iPhone4s, and/or Droids you see traveling, and consider how that compares to your hometown. @cheubaum
- …you have a #roadmap for Thanksgiving. #prodmgmt @barbaragnelson
- …the bartender in the Admiral’s Club knows you by first name.
- …you only buy clothing that has multiple use cases @austinogilvie
- …time with family at holidays is rationed in FAB order? :) @johnpeltier
- …you have “elite” status with >2 airlines and >3 hotel chains.
- …you know how to skip straight to a certain slide # in PowerPoint without leaving presentation mode (hint: type the slide # and hit enter).
- …your spouse can rattle off the kill points for each of your top competitors…
- By virtue of my surname, I would like to bend this a bit…You might be a REDNECK product manager if you’ve ever looked at a piece of blue tarp and thought to yourself, “Now THERE is some great product packaging!” – Jim Foxworthy
- …you find yourself tackling home improvement projects in terms of buy, build or partner, “Should I do that myself? Should I outsource it? Or maybe I can just use someone else’s?” – Charity Mason
- …you know how to challenge development’s first response of “that is not possible” or “that is not how users would use it” @gopalshenoy
- …you can look at something and quickly Roadmap the next two releases. – Ratul Shah
- …you’ve plotted a strategy matrix for your love life.
- …you look at common everyday products (think broom, backpack, stapler, etc.) and immediately think about what the requirements would be for the existing product and usability improvements for version 2.0, 3.0, etc. (Broom 3.0: knows when the floor needs to be swept, sweeps it, empties dustpan, puts itself back in the broom closet, plugs itself into the outlet to recharge.) – Irina Doliov
- …you refer to your kids as “release 1.0,” “release 2.0,” etc!
- …you look at your child’s stuffed Eeyore toy, saw how the tail was attached and thought “wow, some product manager must have had to fight with engineering to get that extra feature”, and then wondered what the COGs impact was. – Christina Hausman
- …you make all your personal decisions in Excel with multiple scenarios to go over with your wife. – Kirk Sadler
- …when trying to figure out how to use a new product you’re thinking, they must have missed the usability requirements. – Lynn Sigler
- …you ask your kids “what problem are you trying to solve?” when they ask for a new toy…
- …you are an expert at herding cats @gopalshenoy
- …you ask your spouse what they consider to be your distinctive competence. (credit: John Milburn)
- .. you’ve set up individual buy-in meetings with each member of your family before making a big family vacation/purchase/etc decision and have them all do what you wanted them to do without any of them knowing it! – Melanie Curtiss
- …you wish Amazon presented an ROI argument for buying Amazon Prime. :) – Jon Guild
- …you are thinking about your own “customer requirements” as your kids pick out a new pet. – David Critchley
- …you might be a Rural product manager if you stack rank your firewood. – Scott Overhill
- …when awoken in the middle of the night, you roll over and mumble “It’s on the roadmap” – Mathew Lodge
- …it’s dangerous to get between you and the white board – Mathew Lodge
- …you realize that you can’t keep everybody happy and some decisions are just tough to make. It is normal. @annua
- …u know that ever changing priorities is like the New Eng weather. If u don’t like it, just wait & it will soon change again. @gopalshenoy
- …when 11 y/o wants a tree house, you ask “What are your requirements ?” @DigitalDon
- …you discuss WHY you make each decision in your home remodeling project and use it to resolve stakeholder disagreements @sehlhorst
- …you use the word ‘feasible’ when asked a yes or no question #prodmgmt @rattay
- …you have a 100 to 1 ratio of ideas to resources and get interrupted every hour with new ideas to add to the list #prodmgmt @rattay
- …you can stack rank your children.
Apologies if I missed anyone’s contribution, we had a lot of great entries this year!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Christian Almgren and Prasad Gupte, Stueccles Flipboard. Stueccles Flipboard said: You Might Be a Product Manager If…: Since we at Pragmatic Marketing just released our 2010 Product Management Survey… http://goo.gl/fb/3Zw8Z [...]
…if you are posting to this thread during a family vacation to disney, where you can’t stop analyzing their market segmentation strategies
That is pretty hardcore Shawn! Go enjoy your family :)
You order dinner at a Restaurant and poke your head in the kitchen every 5 minutes to make sure its getting cooked right!!
You find yourself arguing semantics with engineers at least once a week
Here’s a few more (what can I say, I’m on a cross-country plane ride with wifi):
1. you make ordered lists, for everything.
2. you try to take control over non-work group activities (like ordering at a restaurant).
3. you assume everything will arrive late (pizza, friends, movies, planes).
Hi,
i am student in biotechnology field and i register in MBA congress.my subject is “biotechnology product management”.
could you help me please?
i need some journal pdf to prepare my poster.
i search many site and i hope you guide me.
parden me if i disturbed your time.
[...] for the 5th (almost) annual “You Might Be a Product Manager If…” list! Favorite entries from past years [...]