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The Productologist

Exploring the Depths of Product Management

Product Management Reader: 8Jan09Yesterday

Well, it’s 2009 and you may be asking yourself, “Hey, Productologist…what have you done for me lately?”

To which I respond, “What about that post 3 days ago?”

And then you say, “I said, LATELY!”

“Wellllll, how about the biggest list of Product Management articles EVER!”

“Cool.”

“And by the way, they’re all from 2008…just thought you should know.”

:”Oh, well, OK, I guess that will do for now.”

1. Still More on Agile Product Owner vs. Agile Product Manager
   [Scaling Software Agility]
2. Product Managers Need to Show Engineers “What Good Looks Like”
   [Technopodge]
3. How Can A Product Manger Creat

Product Management Question Corner: Gerardo Capiel, GydgetJanuary 5

The PMQC brings you a different slant this time. Today, we are hearing from Gerardo Capiel, CEO at Gydget, a social marketing platform for music groups, sports teams, non-profits and other organizations. Gerardo is not your typical Product Manager, as you’ll learn, but much of what he says rings true for Product Management professionals.

Q: How did you become involved in Product Management and was it planned?
A: I have not had a specific Product Management title, but I have been a key influencer in the Product Management process for much of my career.

Q: What are the biggest challenges that Product Managers face?
A: Determining priorities based on input from different customer groups.

Q: What is your greatest Product Management achievement?
A: Changing a company strategy and building a whole new product in under three months to support the strategy.

Q: What was your worst Product Management mistake and how did you recover?
A: There have been many, but the most significant was ignoring the conclusions from a consumer survey we ran.  Common mistakes have been attempting to build too many features into subsequent releases or not enough into an initial release to make the product useful to even one customer segment.

Q: What Product Management tool(s) would you consider most effective and why?
A: Trac, Excel/Google Docs, Survey Monkey and Wikis.

The Productologist 2008…That’s a wrap!December 24 2008

The end of the year is a time for reflection (and so frequently, hasty efforts to catch up). In between all the hustle and bustle of the last few days of 2008, take some time to count your accomplishments, cherish your blessings in life, and examine your challenges. Life, like Product Management, requires understanding the market, identifying some requirements, and measuring how well you met those requirements. Then you start the cycle again for the next release. Make sure YOU are ready for YOUR next release.

No more posts from me, save a few twitters here and there, but there’s already some great stuff in the pipeline for 2009 including some more Product Management Question Corners and book reviews. I’ve also gotten a few questions via email, so I will put some posts together around answering those.

To all my readers, old and new, thanks for tagging along. May we all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.

Ivan Chalif
The Productologist

Product Management Question Corner: Mary K. Marsden, AcxiomDecember 22 2008

Today’s Product Management Question Corner brings us some insights from Mary K. Marsden (she prefers just Mary K), New Business Leader for Retail and CPG accounts at Acxiom, a developer of large-scale enterprise business intelligence and marketing databases. While Acxiom is not a start up in any sense of the word, Mary K has participated in her fair share of entrepreneurial efforts. Read more below about how she leveraged her Product Management experience in CEO and leadership roles.

Q: How did you become involved in Product Management and was it planned?

A: No, this aspect of my career was not planned. When I was working in Marketing Communications at Novell back in 1988, we were growing so fast and having challenges recruiting people our executive team expanded marketing’s responsibility and that is when I got my first leadership role in Product Marketing.

We were divided into 2 discipline areas Product Marketing and Product Engineering. Product marketing was responsible for the market requirements, pricing, release schedules, communicating with Sales, Marcom, PR, product launches, new release priorities, bug fix priorities… We were also responsible for the business case and presenting any new products to the innovation center.  Product Engineering defined the mos

Product Management Question Corner: Sean O’Neill, uTANGODecember 15 2008

Psst…Hey kid. Wanna learn a little somethin’ about Product Management? I know a guy who knows this guy who can help. He went to one o’ dem fancy bidness schools, ya know, the one in Chicago. No, not that one, the other one. Then he got hisself a job at some big company in Seattle. No, not that one, the other one. He moved ’round a bit at dat place, learnin’ tons of’ stuff ’bout how the retail bidness works. If you want, I could introduce youz. Be careful though…he talks a lot.

Q: How did you become involved in Product Management and was it planned?
A: Originally I was a financial analyst, before business school.  This gave a good grounding in attention to details and focus on the cash flow as the ultimate measure of success: how a business makes money.

I went back to b-school to move into technology product management.  Kellogg gave me a great grounding in the cutting edge issues facing businesses.  I was recruited by Amazon.com and joined them in 1999.  I started off as a Product Manager in the Books retail team at a time when the goal was Get Big Fast.  I spent time in several other teams in a variety of Product roles, managing a range of features and services from Shipment Pricing to Transaction Feedback (s