The Heretech is Tom Grant‘s blog for Forrester on technology product management. His August 18th podcast with Enthiosys CMO Rich Mironov covered a range of topics including agile and PM; product innovation and B2B products worth loving; where to look internally for good PM candidate; parenting as metaphor for product management; and dinosaur extinction theories.
Tom’s light touch and literary allusions (“Dinosaurs in the Hands of an Angry God”) always make for good listening.
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.
Not everyone wants to raise children or enterprise software. Consider the following observations before volunteering for high-tech parenthood… Continue reading