Product Management is Inherently Political
Recently, I had lunch with a bright young product manager trying to perfect the process for deciding which features to…
Product Management
179 posts
Risk-Sharing and Customer-Perceived Value
Whenever customers buy your product or service, there’s a leap of faith that they will get value from you.…
Sales-Friendly Price Lists
Price lists are never quite current enough, sufficiently detailed, or cover enough of the awkward special situations that customers raise.…
Where Should PM Report?
A perennial problem for Product Management (PM) is finding the right organizational home. In companies large enough to have a…
Parenting and the Art of Product Management
Over the years, I’ve told variations of this story many times: being a product
champion is a lot like…
The Roadmap Less Traveled
Every tech start-up struggles to create a roadmap: that short set of PowerPoint slides which defines the next six quarters…
The Strategic Secret Shopper
I’ve often played the “secret shopper,” hired to approach key competitors as a
customer or as a consultant to…
Mo’ Beta
At some time in every product cycle, the executive team wants to help product management “improve” its customer beta process.…
"Goldilocks" Packaging
Established companies in established markets generally have some standard ways
to package and price their new offerings. Product extensions are…
Getting into Customers’ Heads
Sometimes, at the end of a heroic development effort, we find lukewarm prospects instead of purchase-order- waving customers. How can…
Avoiding a Ticking B-O-M
In our enthusiasm to get started on software projects, we often jump right into the coding and UI design that…