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.
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
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
This year’s Silicon Valley Product Camp (the fourth!) drew the largest crowd ever of product managers and product marketers to share, network, learn and have fun! Estimated at almost 600 and hosted at eBay’s Paypal/San Jose location, it pulled attendees from around the continent for nearly 40 sessions. It also included a job fair with a dozen local companies. I was honored to be emcee and event coordinator emeritus, having passed PCamp management to new leadership.
I ran a session on Understanding the Next Job Up and Getting Promoted…
I presented a guest webinar for Accept Software about the distinct roles/challenges at different levels of the product management organization (individual PM, director, VP).
You can replay the entire webinar here (registration required), hosted by Hari Candadai. Continue reading
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
What: “Reducing Risk through Agile Product Planning” webinar
When: June 2nd, 10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST
Speaker: Rich Mironov, Principal, Mironov Consulting
Replay the webinar here
This webinar is part of Accept’s Agile Management Series, which also includes speakers from Forrester and PRTM.
Agile development teams focus on delivering products faster and with higher quality, reducing the risk of being “late to market.” But product managers also worry about business risks including: building the wrong product, missing profitable segments, and constant roadmap changes. How can we apply agile product planning to reduce our overall business risk?
Rich Mironov gave a talk at SDForum’s Marketing SIG on where/how to build strategy in (young) tech companies. 
What: Where Does (Should) Strategy Live in Your Company?
Where: Marketing SIG @ DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto
When: April 12, 6:30pm – 9:00pm event page
PDF of the slides
Technology companies tend to break strategy into functional pieces: the CTO is responsible for a technology strategy, Marketing has a lead generation strategy and a customer/segmentation strategy, product managers each have a product strategy, Sales drives a channel/partner strategy. Often there’s a disconnect between these groups and their various strategies. This is even more frequent among software companies deploying agile development practices, since Engineering often sets up its own customer showcases and gathers some product requirements.
So what are the necessary elements to a company/business unit strategy, and who should participate? Some companies create strategy departments, which risk losing touch with product groups. Others form ad hoc teams pulled from various functions. Rich talked through some of the ingredients for good strategy, who needs to participate/collaborate, and some organizational models for making it work at start-ups and small single-product companies.
Where Should Strategy Live? (SDForum)
