Insider Thinking

Posted on December 28, 2003 by Rich

Product managers and other product champions spend a lot of their time driving internal processes and decisions — the daily incremental struggle for progress on pricing, packaging, release schedules, upgrade policies and other bits of the production puzzle. This relentless motivation is indispensable, the tech equivalent of keeping the trains running on time. PMs should also be spending time with customers, refreshing their sense of needs and marketplaces. Continue reading →

Where Should PM Report?

Posted on October 29, 2003 by Rich

pendulum A perennial problem for Product Management (PM) is finding the right organizational home. In companies large enough to have a PM department, it has a tendency to oscillate between Marketing and Engineering. Two root causes for this are role confusion and organizational distance. Let’s walk through each in turn, while trying to map a PM’s place in the grand scheme. Continue reading →

Parenting and the Art of Product Management

Posted on August 28, 2003 by Rich

Over the years, I’ve told variations of this story many times: being a product champion is a lot like being a parent. We love our products, make multi-year commitments to their development, hide their shortcomings, and look out for their best long-term interests while other organizations live in the moment. We groom our products for good mergers later in life — and may be heartbroken by market indifference or eventual end-of-life.

diaper Not everyone wants to raise children or enterprise software. Consider the following observations before volunteering for high-tech parenthood… Continue reading →

The Roadmap Less Traveled

Posted on July 29, 2003 by Rich

Every tech start-up struggles to create a roadmap: that short set of PowerPoint slides which defines the next six quarters of updates, minor releases and important advances. Since product managers strive for clarity, having a product roadmap is a critical communications tool. However… Continue reading →

The "Null Service"

Posted on June 29, 2003 by Rich

As customers get more interested in hosted services and ASPs, a lot of product teams are re-conceiving their packaged software as outsourced Internet offerings. The assumptions and infrastructure needed for hosting a service, however, are very different from traditional licensed software. Hosted corporate applications need an underlying architectural layer that is missing from internal apps — but roughly consistent across ASP offerings. I’ve been calling this the “null service.” Continue reading →

The Strategic Secret Shopper

Posted on May 29, 2003 by Rich

Investigative hat I’ve often played the “secret shopper,” hired to approach key competitors as a customer or as a consultant to a prospective customer. The goal is to find out in detail what the Other Guys are really saying about themselves — and about you — plus specifics on their products, pricing, positioning, channels and delivery dates.

It’s very difficult for insiders to do this because [1] return phone calls to their office voicemail give away the game immediately, [2] competitive analysis needs consistency and concentration during several weeks of sporadic discussions, and [3] internal product managers/product marketers already believe they know the answers. Continue reading →

What's Your Pricing Metric?

Posted on April 28, 2003 by Rich

I’m often involved in pricing discussions, which are typically introduced as “what’s the right price for my product?” Much more important is the strategy that should precede this question, namely “what is the right pricing unit for my product and my market?” Continue reading →

Open Innovation: A Great Strategy Book

Posted on March 29, 2003 by Rich

{originally posted in March of 2003, when this book was first released}

I’ve had the chance to read Henry Chesbrough’s new book, “Open Innovation: the New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology.” It’s an insightful mix of practice and theory about how big technology companies are shifting their thinking about R&D — and the opportunities this creates for little companies. Following are a synopsis, a brief author bio, and two lessons I found especially important for start-ups. I hope you’ll buy a copy. Continue reading →

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Yearly Archives: 2003