Dec
18
You Might Be a Product Manager If… (2011 version)
ByIt’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not the holiday season, it’s time for the 5th (almost) annual “You Might Be a Product Manager If…” list! Favorite entries from past years include:
- You might be a product manager if your wedding included a PowerPoint presentation.
- You might be a product manager if you stack rank your children.
- You might be a product manager if you ask your kids “what problem are you trying to solve?” when they ask for a new toy.
New entries this year, from the team at Pragmatic Marketing include:
- You might be a product manager if you’ve ever A/B tested invitations to a party – Rebecca Kalogeris
- You might be a product manager if you and your spouse refer to your chores as a backlog @sjohnson717
- You might be an (agile) product manager if you decorate for Christmas in short sprints @barbaragnelson
- You might be a product manager if you calculate the opportunity cost of hiring a maid or lawn service @ptyoung
Add your own in the comments below, or via Twitter on the #YMBAPMI hashtag. I’ll update this post as they come in, and the best one will get a copy of TunedIn! Happy Holidays from everyone at Pragmatic Marketing!
If you’d like to connect with me in-person, the best places are at a training that I’m leading or at a ProductCamp. I will be leading a Practical Product Management training in Orange County, California on January 23-25, 2012. I will also be at ProductCamp Austin on February 18, 2012.
” . . . you either complain about lack of authority or scoff at other product managers who complain about it.”
… every morning you triage your inbox, ranking in “Ignore”, “Fugeddaboutit”, “that is interesting”, and “OMG the sky is crashing”.
… every interaction with sales is like negotiating with the recently departed Kim Jong-Il.
… You start dreaming about 3 year roadmaps for your home renovations.
… 2 days of vacation (where you really unplug) leads to 750 new messages in your inbox.
… you eagerly await the next http://www.crankypm.com post
… you wonder why on earth you ever wanted to do this in the first place.
I am sure I will think of some more.
- You might be a product manager if you’ve considered doing win loss analysis on the last date you been on. OR
- You might be a product manager if you’ve given your children a prioritized backlog as a method to buy you the right birthday present.
You might be a product manager if online shop because you hate sales people.
You might be a product manager if have calculated the ROI of your kids.
You might be a product manager if:
- you tell people that you work “in marketing” so as not to kill the conversation
- you have uttered the sentence “pricing is not a democracy” to an entire Sales team
- you wonder about the value proposition of Christmas presents
- making dinner is considered “just in time kitting”
- you wonder why the airport security ask if you’ve brought a laptop
- you know the average monthly temperatures of most cities
…if you spend half your time taking screenshots of better looking products and websites and “arrowing” them with Skitch to show your dev team what they don’t know
…if you spend the other half meeting of your time in meetings with executives who want great product sales but have no clue themselves on how to get there
…actually you are a product manager, so you have more than full time…so if you are a product manager you are constantly reading Techcrunch, WSJ, Economist and wondering why your products and companies are not getting reviews anywhere there while you are arguing with your boss on why he needs to give you money for a 60 second animation video production that will somehow make your product viral and sexy
…lastly if you are product manager, you think your children are nice features of your product family and try to show them off to customers instead of your real products at work
…you spend the morning doing in-depth market interviews, lunch analyzing market trends, afternoon presenting product strategies to executives, followed by changing the sump pump battery in your basement.
.. you have 3 open web browsers and use tabs/bookmarks as a way of doing market research
.. you analyze & organize your PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns by products rather than just the overall click through rate
.. you spend any time reading/writing/promoting white papers