Magnus Billgren of Tolpagorni Product Management talks with Rich Mironov about the importance of roadmaps as part of a coherent product strategy. How do we handle customer requests that are not in plan?
Video: Importance of Roadmapping
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Author Archives: Rich
Podcast: Galvanizing The Product Management Career Path
I was honored to join Cindy Solomon’s Product Management Talk podcast series on April 16th. Co-hosted by Adrienne Tan and Nick Coster, we had a lively conversation about Galvanizing The Product Management Career Path.
Measuring Product Managers (in Swedish or English)
I’m back from a week of product management workshops and seminars in Sweden, including a Product Leadership event hosted by Tolpagorni’s Magnus Billgren.
In a half-dozen discussions with the heads of product management groups, I was struck by how familiar their concerns are. We could have been in Sunnyvale rather than in Stockholm. Topics that came up repeatedly:
- What metrics do we use for evaluating product managers, and how can we tell if they are doing a good job? Are there PM KPIs*?
- Our agile development teams tell us that roadmaps are no longer needed, but our customers and sales teams still demand firm commitments. Continue reading
What’s A Vice President of Product Management?
My last two posts were about getting into product management and the climb to Director. This third post asks how Vice Presidents of Product Management (VP PMs) are different from Directors, why they are so rare, and where else Directors can look for organizational advancement.
Product groups vary widely and are not rationally designed. (Sorry.) So let’s imagine a pure VP PM position generalized from my own tours of duty plus a half-dozen interim/acting VP PM roles. Your organizational mileage may vary. Continue reading
Stockholm Product Leadership Days
Stockholm’s third annual Product Leadership Days (“Produktledardagen“) was held on March 22-23, drawing more than 60 
product management professionals and technologists from Sweden and northern Europe. (Agenda in Swedish.) This year’s focus was on sustainable profitability for B2B tech companies. Continue reading
Product Camp Silicon Valley 2012
Five years after the first PCamp, it’s thrilling to see Product Camps become a global phenomenon. Over the next few months, we’ll see events in Austin, Vancouver, St. Louis, Washington and Boston. Last year’s far-flung camps included London, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Melbourne. The world’s biggest Product Camp, of course, is here in Silicon Valley on March 24th. A sell-out crowd of 650+ is assured.
Dublin’s Software Pioneers
I had a chance to spend a week with some of Dublin’s software thought leaders, including two days teaching in a Postgraduate Diploma Program in Product Management offered by the Dublin Institute of Technology and Software Skillnet. In addition, the Irish Software Association generously hosted a workshop and lecture, where we talked about technology management, agile, and building commercially successful products. Continue reading
Moving Up To Director
In the second of three 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
Getting Your First Product Management Job
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 three posts split along job levels:
- How do I move into tech product management, especially if I’m currently a developer?
- How do I move up from an individual PM role to Director?
- I’m a Director of Product Management, and want to be a VP.
Webcast with John Peltier
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:
- How Product Camps can increase awareness among senior and executive level product management
- How product managers can help engineering organizations to understand what product managers do outside of engineering to help ensure the success of a product
- Options for a product manager to advance in the field
Listen to the entire session here.