Why Product Managers Should Avoid Product Complexity

July 13, 2011 By

I recently came across a blog post by The Cranky Product Manager about product-line complexity. It’s an entertaining post. More importantly, it makes good points regarding the pitfalls of complexity. In this post, I will share my thoughts on this.

Product and product line complexity happens when we add too many features or when we add overly complex features. Often this happens over time as a product “matures”. It can also happen because of lack of rigor when writing requirements. When it happens, both your customers and your company suffer.

Here is a short list of… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Product Roadmap, User Experience Design Tagged With: , ,

Product Management vs. Product Marketing: Who is Responsible for “In-Product” Messaging?

May 24, 2011 By

Recently I saw a question on LinkedIn:

Product Management or Product Marketing, who is responsible for messaging in the product to convert trial users to paying customers?

This is a great question, and is especially important for companies building SaaS applications.

Here is my opinion… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Product Marketing Tagged With: ,

How a Director/VP of Product Management Can Develop His/Her Team

April 18, 2011 By

Just saw a nice blog post by Marty Cagan. If you are a:

  • Director of Product Management
  • VP of Product Management
  • Or aspire to be one of the above (I think that should cover just about everybody in product management, don’t you think?!)

, then check out Marty’s post.

Having said that, there is one point about which I don’t fully agree with Marty. That point is… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Product Marketing Tagged With: ,

How to Hire Product Managers for Startups

March 22, 2011 By

Mark Suster (who has founded and built two successful software startups)  recently blogged about hiring at a startup. It’s an excellent post and got me thinking about hiring product managers at a startup.

From my experience of having built Product Management teams at two different successful startups, and having been an early member of the PM team at a third successful startup – I believe all of Mark’s points apply well to hiring product managers at a startup too.

Read on for my comments on how some of Mark’s points apply to hiring product managers at startups… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Product Management, Product Marketing Tagged With:

The Best Source of Innovation?

March 7, 2011 By

The best companies (B2B) I’ve worked for during my career were highly innovative, and they continuously innovated. But the source of their innovation was not:

  • Whiz-bang Technology
  • Genius Personnel, or
  • Competitive Research

What was the source, you ask? Well, the type of innovation those companies practiced was… [Read more…]

Filed Under: Innovation, Product Management, Product Marketing Tagged With: ,
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