Tag Archives: market needs

6 Lessons for Non-Development Executives at Agile Software Companies

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In many conversations over the last few months, I’ve see executive teams grappling with the positive effects of agile software development on their non-development processes and organizations. If you’re a VP of Marketing or Sales or Finance or Operations or Support at an agile software company, or one that is becoming more agile, improvements in how we build software will be shaping how you think about the software business and non-engineering departments. Here’s a short list of items that you need to consider in the face of increasing agility. Continue reading →

Profitably Pairing Software and Professional Services

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to a hammer...Wearing our software product management hats, it’s easy to think that all problems should be solved with software. (To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) Software PMs need to be looking for opportunities to combine professional services with software – because services can be highly profitable, meet customer needs more quickly, and market-test ideas for future products. Continue reading →

Customer Input and Planning Horizons (Haas Executive Education)

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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, Haas Berkeleytalent 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.

Insider Thinking

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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 →