The Clever PM

Tips, tricks, and hacks that help you to be a better, more clever, Product Manager.

How to Be Successful as a Non-Technical Product Manager

by

There seems to be a strong bias in many large companies toward assessing a product manager’s ability to perform based as much (if not more) on their technical ability, background, and knowledge as their real-world, market, and user experience.  To me, this is an entirely backward way of approaching the problem, as the entire purpose of having a strong product manager is not to provide an additional technical resource to determine the “how”, but to provide a strong and knowledgeable resource that can accurately describe the “what” and the “why” of the problems that your product should be solving.

This means that someone who brings a lot of knowledge and ability to the table, but who lacks certain “check the box” background skills in the technical realm may be at a disadvantage.  Here are some tips and tricks that someone coming from a non-technical background can use to excel as a Product Manager in nearly any company.

[Read more…]

Improving Your Relationship With Sales & Marketing

by

The relationship between Product Management and the Sales and Marketing teams in some companies can be unnecessarily strained.  Often, this shows itself in such counter-productive behaviors as sales reps making promises to prospects or renewing clients based on their own interpretation of the roadmap, or the marketing teams creating collateral that materially misstates the capabilities of the product.  Unfortunately, when left unchecked, these behaviors create a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of both the Sales/Marketing teams and the Product Manager.

The good news is that there are some things that we can do as Product Managers to both proactively minimize these situations, as well as to respond to them when they occur in a way that stops the vicious cycle of bad behavior and centers everyone on the same goals — to create a product that delights the buyer and users who are out there looking for solutions to their problems.

[Read more…]

Break Down the Walls – Five Tips to Become a Product Manager

by

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.

[Read more…]

Are You a Leader or Just a Manager?

by

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!

by

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.

[Read more…]

Forests or Trees – The Constant Tension of Product & Project Management

by

It’s a rather sad fact of life that many companies, hiring managers, and even supervisory managers commonly conflate the jobs of Product Management and Project Management.  I literally cannot count the number of times I’ve corrected people at a variety of companies, telling them that I’m a “Product Manager” and not a “Project Manager.”  In fact, it’s almost become somewhat of a joke to me.

But, in reality, it’s deadly serious.  And it impacts our daily jobs by altering the expectations of us as Product Managers.

[Read more…]

What Exactly *IS* Product Management, Anyway?

by

Trying to come up with a single, global definition of what “Product Management” is and what it incorporates, often seems like a massive exercise in folly. Wikipedia describes Product Management as “an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.” And, while that is an entirely accurate statement, it’s also completely useless to those of us who have taken a role in a company that calls itself by that name. Looking further afield, you’ll find others who claim to have a definition that’s both specific and useful. Consider the following:

  • Pragmatic Marketing: “Product Management is the messenger of the market.”
  • AIPMM: “Product management is the cross-functional discipline within a product development organization responsible for managing a product (a tangible good or intangible service) throughout all phases of its lifecycle.”
  • Marty Cagan: “The job of the product manager is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.”

Some of these are better than others, but to me all of them fail to capture the practical side of what exactly it is that a Product Manager does, and why it’s important to a business to have a professional PM in that role. To that end, I’ve coined the following definition of Product Management, that I’ve polished and updated over the course of my years in the profession:

“Product Management is a multi-disciplinary role that guides the strategic and tactical efforts of a product to ensure that, in the end, a marketable product is delivered to the end user. Their primary purpose is to gather market intelligence, perform customer research, translate customer ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ into requirements, and occasionally to shepherd those requirements through to delivery.”

[Read more…]