How Well Can You Predict The Future?

Posted on December 30, 2008 by Rich

It’s been a very tough quarter for economic forecasters, quota-carrying sales teams and CEOs. The sudden downturn even caught GE’s legendary planners by surprise. If you’re an executive at a technology company, you may already have started an FY09 planning process to re-examine staffing, product investments and revenue. These already bake in your core business assumptions, though, so you should “stress test” your assumptions using scenario planning. Continue reading →

Understanding the Opportunities of Buy-Side Economics

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Rich

As CEOs of our products, we product managers have a lot to do. Traditionally, this has included “build-versus-buy” decisions. The debate often hinged on whether technical tasks were “core” or just “context”. Over the last decade, this has shifted from “build-versus-buy” to “buy-versus-buy” as we balance more kinds of internal and external resources. Here are some thoughts on sizing various “buying” opportunities to keep products shipping and revenue flowing. Continue reading →

Customer Input and Planning Horizons (Haas Executive Education)

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Rich

Rich Mironov returned to the Haas School’s Product Management Executive Education series, “Product Management: Translating Market Opportunities into Profitability,” for a lecture on product management titled “Customer Input Approaches and the Product Planning Horizon”. This session included an in-person version of the Innovation Game “Buy A Feature.” In a program primarily taught by Haas’ distinguished faculty, Rich was (at the time) the only product management practitioner on the program’s teaching staff.

Where: Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, CA
When: Tuesday, November 4, 2008 (the full program runs Nov 3 through 7)

The Berkeley Center for Executive Development draws on the rich resources, talent and perspectives of top-level business educators and researchers from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and elsewhere to provide top-level executive education courses and custom programs to executives and companies around the world. This includes specific programs in Leadership, Finance, Marketing, and General Management – including Product Management. The 2008 Product Management program draws on The Haas School’s own professors as well as expert practitioners in the field. Rich Mironov is honored to be part of this distinguished group.

Product Companies Need Product Managers, not Product Owners (webinar)

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Rich

A webinar hosted by Pragmatic Marketing
What: “Product Companies need Product Managers, not Product Owners”
Who: Rich Mironov, CMO, Enthiosys as part of a joint Pragmatic/Enthiosys webinar series on Agile Product Management
When: Friday, October 24th, 2008

Product Managers are responsible for the overall market success of their products, not just delivery of software. In the Agile world, a new title is emerging—the Product Owner—which covers a small subset of the Product Management role. While this makes sense for internal IT groups that have traditionally gone without Product Management, Rich Mironov will talk about how Agile product companies (that need to deliver customer revenue with their offerings) need full-fledged Product Managers to drive strategic activities and manage organizational/external participation. What kinds of market failures can we expect when there’s (only) a Product Owner assigned to revenue-producing projects?

Click to see the recorded webinar.

Managing Internet Products (Haas)

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Rich

When: Oct 6th, 4PM (Monday)
Where: Berkeley’s Haas School, Cheit C110
2200 Piedmont Ave, Berkeley CA

As part of the ”Managing Internet/Digital Media Products” speaker series, Rich Mironov gave a talk about “Product Management: Agile vs. Waterfall” as well as the relationship between MBA-type product managers/marketers and engineering teams. This series is a one-unit class sponsored by the Management of Technology Program and Haas’ Digital Media and Entertainment Club (DMEC).

Disruptive Pricing Units

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Rich

During a miserable week of domestic air travel during June, I noticed new fees suddenly appearing for checked baggage and in-flight soft drinks. That caused an announcement about a new airline to catch my eye – an airline offering a radically different approach to pricing. It re-raised a topic that we explore with many clients: shifting the basis of competition by changing pricing units.

On June 6th, a new airline called Derrie-Air started advertising fares based on total passenger weight, with the slogan “Pack Less. Weigh Less. Pay Less.” A flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles was priced at $2.25 per pound – with each passenger paying based on body weight plus luggage. Thus a supermodel carrying only a fashion tote could get to LaLaLand for $210 while Big Uncle Ralph and his steamer trunk would be $830. Continue reading →

Roadmapping (Haas Executive Education)

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Rich

Rich Mironov returns to the Haas School’s Product Management Executive Education series, “Product Management: Translating Market Opportunities into Profitability,” for a lecture on technology roadmapping. In a program primarily taught by Haas’ very distinguished faculty, Rich is the only product management practitioner on the program’s teaching staff.

Where: Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, CA
When: Tuesday, March 18, 2007

P-Camp, the first Agile Unconference for Product Managers

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Rich

Led by Rich Mironov, Enthiosys was thrilled to sponsoring P-CAMP, the first Agile Unconference for Product Managers and other product champions.

This one time

We had more than 170 people joining us for this free Saturday event, and an additional 120 who responded but were not able to join us live. That’s larger than the first Agile Development Conference! (We know, because Luke helped organize that shindig.) Participants proposed their own topics, ran discussions and panels, and networked with peers.

This was so much fun that we’re already thinking about how to size this up for 2009. Nancy Frishberg and Product Box
There is a full page of session notes and presentations on the BarCamp wiki.

Among the talks and panels:
* Nancy Frishberg (MSB) showed us how to learn from our customers using the Product Box Innovation Game
* Christina Noren (Splunk) talked about automating product management with home-grown extensions to Jira. Here is a blog of the session.
* Perry Tancredi (VeriSign) shared some of the ways his company is using Agile roadmaps to bridge long-range planning with fast Agile cycles.
* Erin Kinikin ran a panel on the role of product management in a SaaS world
* Greg Cohen (280 Group) shared why open source makes sense for your product
* Steve Mezak (Accelerance) managed a panel on using a global team to create your software product
* Mike Freier (280 Group) taught us how to run a successful beta program.
* Meghan Ede (Meadow Consulting) organized an intense discussion of user interface, extreme design and Agile.
* Luke Hohmann (Enthiosys) led a rousing group on agilizing your Product Management backlog
* Nils Davis (Accept) had the group collaborating on PM tool challenges
* Chris Sims (Technical Management) had an overflow crowd for an “Agile 101” overview
* Sudha Jamthe talked about Product Management for the Facebook Economy. See the full presentation (with her introductory comments) on her blog, plus our own our blog notes.
* Unmesh Kulkarni (Covad) and Sandeep Jain talked about Distributed Scrum
* Nils Davis (Accept) led a conversation about what tools product managers are using. See his notes.
* Jim Holland (Pragmatic) led a discussion about Agile Marketing
* Justin Quimby (Electronic Arts) talked about the challenges of product/project management in the video game industry
* Joy Montgomery (Structural Integrity) led a session on effective communication.
* Richard Watson (DiVitas) recapped challenges for product managers on cross-vendor projects.
* Chung Wu (Oracle) gathered a big group on defining PM roles and responsibilities
* Al Nevarez (Medallia) ran a hacking demo with GreaseMonkey. Here are some notes.
* Joe Katzman (Defense Industry Daily) moderated “what I wished I had known on my first PM assignment”

Blogs and posts about P-Camp:

* Kiran Thakkar came all the way from Pune (India) and blogged this
* Christina Noren‘s presentation on automating PM functions,
* Glen Lipka blogging on whether Agile really exists, and big-company vs. small-company PMs
* Chris Sims recapping his talk and the day
* Nils Davis declaring P-Camp a success, especially the post-event beer
* ValleyWag had some fun with our event name, but missed (for instance) Christina Noren’s rocking presentation