Rich will be a visiting instructor for Dublin (Ireland)’s Postgraduate Diploma in Product Management for the Software and Technology sectors – offered by Software Skillnet and the Dublin Institute of Technology. The program will be delivered via 9 multi-day workshops scheduled from October 2011 through September 2012. See full program and application information.
In the second of four posts about the product management hierarchy, we’ll focus on technology product managers (PMs) who’ve been in their jobs long enough to consider what comes next. (User story: “As a Senior Product Manager, I want to be promoted to Director so that I get more money and respect and glory.”)
Let’s break this problem into a few parts: likely candidates for promotion; how the Director job differs from line Product Management; and ways to show that you’re ready for a bigger role. Continue reading
Looking over dozens of discussions, presentations and Quora threads from the last few months, a frequent question has been “How do I get a job in technical product management?” Here is the first of four posts split along job levels:
John Peltier is a seasoned product manager out of Atlanta, and does a periodic 
webcast with guest product folks posted on his Product Owner Vision blog. He generously included me in an interview posted on12 December. We recorded a half hour discussion covering:
Listen to the entire session here.
IEEE Technology Management Council hosted a talk by Rich Mironov, primarily for program and project managers as an introduction to product management.
“ProDUCT management is a murky role: poorly understood and inconsistently practiced across tech companies. It’s often confused with proGRAM management and proJECT management. Yet done well, product management is often a driver of 
market success and effective development.” This session helped define the basics of product management, contrasted them with project/program management, and identified ways for all of us to work more effectively together. An interesting, very energetic discussion followed, bridging various organizational gaps.
Continue reading
As a break from stealth start-up work, I led a discussion for SDForum’s Engineering Leadership SIG on “How Engineering Can Work Better with Product Management.” This was a VERY spirited discussion…
We gathered some (good and bad) experiences from attendees about their interactions with product management, tried to define what the PM role is, and shared some thoughts on how to cooperate better for great products and organizations. Lots of questions about how to get into product management, and why people would stay in such a role! Continue reading
I got an early look at allthis – a community of people using their talents, skills, and social connections to support their favorite causes. Hope that you’ll visit as well, and participate if the spirit moves you.
In brief, allthis lets people post offers (services, goods, special items) that they’ll provide in return for charitable donations. You do what you’re good at (or what you hope others will appreciate), and 100% of the money goes directly to the cause of your choosing. Continue reading
It’s been a tough week on the technical front, with a variety of products failing to perform their core functions for me. Which prompts a somewhat emotional question for those of us who oversee products (or services) for a living:
Does your product suck? Does it #fail to do the one thing that customers buy it for?
I’m struck by the words people choose, and by how their pronouns reflect their management style. In particular, I’m working with a team that’s been hungry for leadership and trust – and is now blossoming. This provides me with an excuse to recap what we all (should) know about leadership, trust, and how the words we use shape the behavior of our organizations.
A thoughtful choice between “I” and “we” and “you” is a reflection of the workplace emotional temperature: are managers and executives motivating line employees to do their best, or “throwing them under the bus?” Are we rewarding cross-functional cooperation and market impact, or angling for promotion and impressing our peers? Continue reading
It’s easy to confuse actual progress with intentions to make progress.
Why point out the obvious? I’ve just come out of another agile conversation where prospective clients confused “we want to build better software faster” with “we hope that some new processes will instantly catch us up on years of slipped deadlines and missing features.”
So paraphrasing Confucius, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but is still a thousand miles long. Even at twice your normal walking speed, be prepared for a very long slog.”
For context, nearly every software development team would like to be more productive, ship better product, and be innovative. Almost by definition, though, those with the biggest productivity issues are the furthest behind – with months (years) of unmet customer requirements and technical debt. Continue reading