Archives for the 'Lessons Learned' Category
Why ProductCamp Will Help Push Austin Over the Tipping Point
Austin has creativity and lots of high tech startups. The time to organize all of that Product Management talent is now. You can make a strong argument that East of the Sierra Nevada, Austin is the high tech epicenter of the U.S., so Product Managers - it’s time to step up and help define the future of Product Management and Product Marketing!
Why Product Management is Open Source’s Fatal Flaw
Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is great - I have released code under the GPL, LGPL, and similar licenses. There are mountains of FOSS available right now for download from sites like SourceForge and others that save businesses millions of dollars. More importantly, open source software offers feature sets and mixes that often [...]
Development: Leave Us the $Foo Alone!
Jeff Lash has a good post up about Delegating. There are some interactions you need to have - like regular tradeoff meetings with Development. As a general rule, programmers hate meetings. A lot of that has to do with the fact that prior to you, they had some “Marketing” airbag pull them [...]
The Curse of the White Sunglasses
Mandy and I went to the mall this weekend to get her some new maternity clothes. While she browsed the Motherhood store, I took up a strategic perch outside so as not to bump bellies with a bunch of pregnant women. Next store was a sunglasses shop, so I figure why not burn a few [...]
To Startup or Not to Startup
A few months ago, John Milburn of Pragmatic Marketing approached me about writing an article for their magazine about my experiences building a product management organization in a startup. After a lot of collaboration and some good debate, we have an article in this issue of The Pragmatic Marketer entitled “To Startup or Not [...]
Margin Analysis
Financial analysis is a key skill for any great Product Manager, yet it is one of the least discussed, taught, or blogged about. Maybe it’s because finances are not sexy or “the accounting team will handle it.” If you are CEO of your product, you had better have a handle on your products’ [...]
Does Passion Matter?
My last post on Is Product Management Compatible with Passion? kicked up some great comments from the PM blog community. Bob Corrigan at ack/nak and I had a google chat about the topic the other day that he posted on his site, it contains some of his insightful thoughts on the topic.
As a follow [...]
Managing a Liscensed Product
Jeff Lash asked me to answer a question on his new site Ask a Good Product Manager. The question was from someone who had the title of Product Manager but was really in a no-win situation as the go between at a company wedged between a client and the software application company. It’s an interesting [...]
Core Teams and Tradeoffs
We all live in a World with tradeoffs. When you write a requirements document, is every requirement non-negotiable in order to ship the product? If so, you’ve traded off completeness for time or resources. If you’re like me, time is your biggest enemy, so even if the requirements outline the ideal solution [...]
Ankle Biters: Machine Tools (was: Don’t be a Tool)
Machine tools are tools used to build other tools, like a drill press or grinder. As a Product Manager, our tools are the internal applications and tools we use to support our data gathering, requirements tracking, and project management needs.
If you’re lucky enough to have budget for a nice set of tools for common PM [...]
