A Blog - Practical Tips & Articles on High-Tech Product Management. No Highfalutin Theories!
An hour ago, I did something without much conscious thought at all. I uninstalled the Twitter client I used to like (Tweetdeck), and installed a new one (Seesmic). And there I went, merrily tweeting.
Then, I caught myself and started thinking why I did that. The more I thought, the more I realized that there are a few valuable lessons in it for all of us who are involved in building software or products in general.
Here is my story, followed by the lessons…
[Read more…]
Mark Kromer at TechProdo blog recently wrote a nice blog post titled SaaS Product Management: Is there a difference?
In his post Mark poses the interesting question (applicable to a lot of product managers):
I was wondering what differences I would find in my role as a product manager if the products that I was managing moved to the software-as-a-service model…
As our company makes a popular SaaS tool for product management teams, we have good first-hand experience in this – and I’d like to share my thoughts here.
My short answer to Mark’s question is… [Read more…]
Today, at the vast majority of software companies that have 500 or more employees, there are two separate but closely related departments: “Product Management” and “Product Marketing“.
I believe this is a fundamentally flawed setup for today’s fast-changing markets – a setup that leads to confusion over roles, lack of ownership, unnecessary politics & poor morale – and often RUINS innovation.
This belief is based on my experiences at successful companies in Silicon Valley over the past two decades, and discussions with friends/colleagues in the industry who manage Product Management and/or Product Marketing departments.
In this blog post, I describe the reasons for my belief and provide an alternative solution.
[Read more…]
One of my pet peeves with most software is the cryptic, unfriendly error messages thrown up by so many of them.
At Accompa, we try to make error messages in our own software as friendly and useful as possible. I think we still have a long way to go, but we work hard at it.
I just saw the following error message from bit.ly – the URL shortening service used on sites like Twitter. On most websites, this is usually a cryptic “404 Error” message. See how bit.ly has made it so friendly and fun! 🙂
[Read more…]
Mike Boudreaux, a fellow Twitterer on Product Management topics, said the following recently – tongue planted firmly in cheek (I think)!
Typical win/loss analysis from sales force: majority of losses due to product and price. Majority of wins due to relationship.
Once I stopped chuckling, this got me thinking of the many pitfalls of overly relying on Win/Loss Reports to drive your product roadmap. Here was my tweet to Mike.
I’d like to expand on my tweet in this blog post.
[Read more…]
Subscribe by Email: Get weekly email with fresh posts...
3) Do not read this blog one sentence per day during your lunch break, while eating a quadruple bypass burger. If you do - by the time you finish this blog, you will be a total fatty and may even die. Again, we're not responsible for it.
