By far, one of the most common questions that I run across online and in discussions at events is how to transition into a Product Management role from outside. This can often be a challenge, since in most companies there are relatively fewer Product Management roles than there are roles of other kinds — even development management jobs are more frequent and often more than Product Management, simply as a function of the number of teams your average Product Manager works with. Here are a few tips on how to assess your readiness for such a transition, as well as how to achieve that transition if it’s really something you want.
Archives for January 2015
Are You a Leader or Just a Manager?
A very long time ago, I stumbled across a wonderful book entitled Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge by Geoffrey Bellman. While the entire book has great tips, tricks, and advice on how to lead and achieve through influence rather than position power (a challenge that all Product Managers face daily), one chart in particular has stuck with me, and it’s something I’ve actually posted on the wall everywhere that I’ve worked. Bellman presents a very clear distinction between the definitions of Leadership and Management, presented in a format much like that of the Agile Manifesto, where leaders value those attributes on the right more than those attributes on the left. [Read more…]
Being the Voice of the Customer is Something You EARN!
During a discussion with a UX designer and a development manager at a recent Product Management Consortium meeting here in Seattle, one of the topics that came up involved some of the things that Product Managers do or say that they find annoying, ridiculous, or just upsetting. And, interestingly enough, one of those was the insistence that Product Managers are the “voice of the customer.”
Initially, this shocked me a little bit, as one of the things that nearly every PM training program, certification program, and general rah-rah pow-wow reinforces in us is that we need to be the “voice of the customer” in everything that we do. Obviously, the fact that something so heavily ingrained in our profession causing such aggravation with the very people we rely on to express that voice is something worth digging into.