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
Recently, I put up a small assessment tool for product management teams. This tool is intended to generate discussion and highlight areas for team improvement. Several PMs had follow-up comments and questions along the lines of “what should we do if we’re scored ourselves poorly on a specific item?”
There are no generic prescriptions for improvement, especially in product management. It’s worth drilling into an individual item or two, though, and imagining how we might analyze the situation and take corrective action. Continue reading
We recently finished a major pricing exercise with a start-up in the enterprise software space: tuning up their prices, improving their upgrade model, and looking at alternative pricing metrics (i.e. what to meter when quantifying the customer’s usage). A great opportunity to match quantitative models against actual customer behaviors.
During the engagement, the client’s sales team identified some real-world messiness that we (as product managers) would prefer to ignore: high-end customers who demand enterprise-wide licenses – instead of limited-use licenses tied to volume. These are sometimes called “all you can eat” or AYCE deals. Let’s describe the situation, then explore a few of the messy conclusions. Continue reading
As seasoned product managers, most of us eventually have to phase out old versions and completely eliminate old products. This is called End of Life (EOL) or End of Service (EOS), and is important weed-clearing. It’s generally motivated by our internal economic needs: rebalancing resources in our product portfolio, reducing support costs, moving customers to the latest version, abandoning products that can’t pay for themselves.
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
We were thrilled that the P-Camp/Product Camp movement arrived in The Big Apple on July 18th, and that Rich Mironov was able to participate:
What: Product Camp NYC
Where: Down Town Association, 60 Pine Street, New York City 10005
When: Saturday, July 18, 2009, 8:00 am to 4:30 pm
Cost: Free, more information here
Organized by: New York Product Management Association
ProductCamps are collaborative, user organized professional conference, focused on Product Management and Marketing topics. At ProductCamp, everyone participates in some manner: presenting, leading a discussion, showcasing a best practice, or sharing their experiences. Others help with logistics, securing sponsorships, organizing sessions, or settng up/cleaning up. This is a self-organizing collaborative event that is designed be a fun, rewarding and a unique experience.
Rich Mironov flew out to join more than 100 NY-area PMs. He gave two talks: one on Strategic Pricing for Start-Ups and one on the Agile Product Manager/Product Owner Dilemma. See the slides alongside other event materials on Brainshark or flip through the SlideShare below. It’s wonderful to see the seeds originally planted at P-Camp 2008 Silicon Valley sprouting around the country.
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
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
This week, there’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere and popular press about “crowdsourcing” — empowering crowds of amateurs to do tasks previously filled by professionals. (See Jeff Howe’s Wired story.) The next trendy opportunity for startups to offload parts of themselves onto the market.
Tech Support (aka Customer Support) is on many executives’ lists of outsource-able functions. I’ve been talking with Tech Support teams at several startups, however, and see real value in a dedicated team that helps customers love you. Here’s my contrarian view on getting more out of support teams. Continue reading
2005 was a great year for open source developers and solutions, with a dramatic boost in credibility, tools and respect. As part of this, there are an increasing number of companies commercializing open source: adding value through installers, packaging, coordinated releases, technical support, management utilities and formal product planning.
This has the feeling, though, of domesticating the wild spirit of open source and turning it into another IPO-driven, VC-backed, competitively focused economic model. I’m reminded of Joni Mitchell’s verse from “Big Yellow Taxi”:
“They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charge the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em” Continue reading