tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-215373422024-03-06T00:22:34.878+00:00Stream121A STREAM of commentary on software product management & marketingArthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.comBlogger342125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-60164602937733205762024-02-29T10:05:00.004+00:002024-03-02T09:08:56.668+00:00Product Management on the London UndergroundSeen in the carriages of the Tube - broad scatter-gun advertising to pretty niche audience!Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-29223414156158659872023-10-12T18:06:00.015+00:002024-01-05T09:22:48.041+00:00Prioritising the Product Backlog Louise Cantrill (Head of Consultancy at Tarigo and one of the sponsors of the Cambridge Product Management Network) writes an
excellent article on the various Methods to Prioritise User Stories.
All prioritization techniques attempt to rate all the possible
projects. Doing the high value / low cost projects are a no-brainer, of
course. And you don't need aArthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-79951714606049878952023-04-12T08:16:00.005+00:002023-04-12T08:54:05.407+00:00The tough end of product management - sunsetting or cannibalising a productSunsetting a product (elegantly) is far harder than creating a product. And cannibalising a existing product with a new one is the hardest of all.New product development is easy. If it was house-building, you get to choose the brick and where you're going to put it. With sunsetting, it's like putting a wrecking ball through someone's home and expecting them to like it. You could say that Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-3337844111235811322023-01-24T12:54:00.007+00:002023-01-24T12:55:54.069+00:00Product Management for Corporate Glue AND Lubricating OilProduct Managers have a fascinating, all-encompassing role. They can be called many things, CEO of the product, Janitor, Super User. See Product Manager is a janitor basically.All other business functions are well understood: Engineering develops the productQA assures that the product Sales converts a product into justifiable business value for each customerMarketing communicates Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-64344345677592960642023-01-09T09:59:00.008+00:002023-01-09T09:59:00.169+00:00ChatGPT for product managementWith the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT at the very end of November last year, there has been an explosion of enthusiasm. Here’s their trajectory to a million users!(Thanks to Azeem Azhar of Exponential View)Initially, the response was ‘Look at this cool poem that ChatGPT wrote.’ Thankfully more considered use cases are now developing.So here are my thoughts on how ChatGPT can help Product Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-35782865963035965702022-06-06T14:11:00.002+00:002023-03-08T17:40:43.762+00:00Product Management in big companies vs small companiesIf you haven't already, then I urge you to look at the product management resources at Lenny's Newsletter. His top articles are really REALLY good. Sign up for the newsletter too - you won't be in bad company, there are over 300k subscribers.Lenny was my Head of Engineering at Webmetrics (San Diego, California, about 25 people), when I was his (only) Product Manager - see case study. He left to Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-7312423174199587842021-12-14T09:07:00.004+00:002021-12-14T10:59:29.473+00:00Requirements are like meteorites"Perseid Meteor Shower 2016" by Jaykhuang is licensed under CC BY 2.0There are lots of them, many of them (the majority??) are 'out there', floating around in space: oddly-shaped, unloved, cold and alone. The ones that we can see are pointing towards us. Once in a while, a requirement will ignite into life, perhaps it gently bumps into other similar requirements and they Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-13126607997030216992021-12-09T16:08:00.007+00:002021-12-09T16:08:56.830+00:00Kim Cameron and the Seven Laws of IdentityKim Cameron, who died at the end of November, was the author of the seminal Seven Laws of Identity in 2004, which remains a super test of the good use of personal data and identity. A good man & a man for good - RIP.Working in identity in the early 2000s, I remember early versions of the Laws being circulated by Kim when I was working at Midentity.The Law of Identity in summary
Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-7806584915017833142021-11-26T14:55:00.004+00:002021-12-10T17:00:18.814+00:00Product Stack - all the tools for today's Product ManagerProduct Stack - a comprehensive visualization of the tools and solutions that serve the modern product leaderAlso see their ProductCraft's free tools directoryCredit: ProductCraft Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-13583091136476948622021-10-26T15:46:00.014+00:002022-01-10T10:18:14.675+00:00A Zoo of Management Acronymsimage from DeanOnDelivery.comYou may well have heard of HiPPO, the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. If everybody in the room has an opinion, it’s the HiPPOs opinion that will win.
Just because it makes us chuckle, it isn't totally invalid. As Jim
Barksdale (Netscape CEO, FedEx COO, AT&T CEO) said, "If we have
data, let's look at data. If all we have opinions, let's go with mine."
And Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-26877388090641171532021-05-17T09:33:00.000+00:002021-05-17T09:33:22.500+00:00The huge challenge of Consumption PricingSoftware Pricing Partners pen some excellent thoughts on the merits of consumption pricing as a charging model: It’s Wise to Question the Big Assumption about Consumption PricingThe key fact is here: Perhaps the most important challenge when considering a consumption pricing model is to align the use metric to the value the customer derives from your solution, which can evolve over time.ThisArthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-61043011360102275752021-05-12T12:59:00.001+00:002021-05-12T13:01:11.780+00:00Alternative business models: open-source, crowd funding and tokenisationAt the Cambridge Product Management Network meet-up, Liam Crilly presented the fundamental business routes for open-source project. I talked about the various flavours of crowd-funding. From my experiences at Fetch.ai, I proposed that open source and crowd funding are prerequisite to tokenised business models. I left a question with the audience: If Tim Berners-Lee came to you withArthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-55935071344562424602021-03-10T12:43:00.006+00:002021-03-10T14:02:54.161+00:00Product Management Tube MapProduct Focus have just published their Product Management Tube Map - SUPERB!As well as being a lovely graphical interpretation of the role of Product Management, it shows the interconnected nature of product management and product marketing with many other business functions.But Mind the Gap. In many companies, the focus is on Agile and Product Owners, and the strategic & leadership role of Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-40778148296961453482021-03-02T12:17:00.005+00:002021-03-02T12:30:22.571+00:00Signs that your Product Pricing Strategy isn’t WorkingMy thoughts on Software Pricing's blog about the Signs your Pricing Strategy isn't working.
1. A customer base littered with bespoke deals.
The main problem usually encountered is that there isn't (much of) a discounting
policy or it isn't adhered to. When I worked at NeuStar, there was a solid
discounting policy AND a robust methodology to go beyond it.
"Special deals" had to be Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-6553964815613374582020-10-26T09:21:00.010+00:002020-10-26T09:21:00.347+00:00Product Metrics SpikesA friend pointed me to How
to crack product metric questions in PM interviews. In essence, it
discusses how does a service provider respond to a change in a metric or
KPI (Key Performance Indicator).
A definition from the article:
Metric interview questions test if candidates can perform data analysis
and select key metrics that matter most to the success of a Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-85101947399691706962020-06-12T07:30:00.006+00:002023-01-31T12:35:41.083+00:00Product Managers: Now, Next, Future Steve Johnson,
one of the respected voices in Product Management, cleans up some of
the confusion about product roles and titles in Product Management. He
admits that he (like me) is fan of the “product
management triad” - a product or portfolio team responsible for
strategic planning, release planning, and launch planning. Here's the link to the Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-71694238536322048892020-05-19T16:04:00.008+00:002023-01-31T12:34:21.867+00:00How everyone else views the first-in-post product managerCEO mutters that maybe it is time to hire a product manager.
Everyone else wonders, "Err, and how will they help?" And they get that
uneasy feeling that the company is going to be less fun and more
restrictive and more "NO!" Perhaps the first publication of the Employee
Handbook had the same reaction - mildly menacing, but necessary for some
(other) slightly Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-50608201651409852592020-05-11T09:31:00.003+00:002020-05-13T08:31:55.865+00:00The challenge of beta programmes
In a previous
post, I looked at the Product Management & Product Marketing model
that Redgate Software (a local
Cambridge-based company) uses. In it, I identified a component, that didn't
appear to be addressed: beta programmes.
A quick diversion into pronunciation
In the UK, it is pronounced 'Bee-ta'.
In the US, it is pronounced 'Bay-ta'
It's a Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-90175030319945686492019-12-11T11:29:00.001+00:002020-11-19T14:25:27.961+00:00Product Management and Product Marketing - a perfect union in B2B
Redgate Software explain how they define Product Managers and Product Marketing for B2B software - and how, together, they make a perfect union to bring products to market and how those products are consumed.
Their model (above) is based on the SiriusDecisions Product Marketing and Management Model which is reproduced below for ease of consumption as it is hidden behind a (free) Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-18600350253897353962019-11-14T14:25:00.000+00:002020-04-13T13:26:24.905+00:00Continual, but elusive nature of Product Management
An article from Product Focus, entitled Product Management and the Impostor Syndrome made me realise the ongoing learning journey that product management provides and requires in order to master the art.
Their definition of impostor syndrome is
those affected cannot internalize their success and attribute it to external circumstances (“I’m just lucky”). They see praise as an overestimation of Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-56979438040536369722019-10-08T14:26:00.001+00:002023-01-31T12:32:14.046+00:00Career Paths into Product Management and Product Marketing
Last week, at the joint meeting of the Cambridge Product Management Network and Cambridge Network, I shared my observations and thoughts about common (and not so common) routes that Product Managers & Product Marketers have taken to get to their current position. Céline Sharpe from FIS (formerly WorldPay) shared her practical experience.
To view the slides, please go to Career paths Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-85255504769469903682019-10-04T14:49:00.001+00:002023-01-31T12:31:21.223+00:00Rich Mironov on Product Roadmaps The great Rich Mironov, a well-regarded product management guru, speaks about the negotiating your product roadmap for B2B software companies.
War stories, methodologies. An excellent video that can be easily consumed.
Rich was speaking at the Business of Software conference held at the start of October
I'm going to pull out one insight (amongst many):
4. Share trade-offs and scorekeeping Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-43355641913957107622019-07-11T10:12:00.003+00:002023-01-31T12:30:36.446+00:00Product Management is learnt by doing rather by studying
Noah Weiss, a senior product manager at Slack, Foursquare and Google, makes this quote in this article, Five Dangerous Myths about Product Management:
Product Management isn’t an academic subject that one can study; most people learn by apprenticeship. They have diverse backgrounds, murky responsibilities, and wildly varied role definitions across companies.
Although the sentiment is broadly Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-22031825118252053562017-09-24T10:28:00.000+00:002020-03-27T09:54:32.966+00:00SCOTSMAN for sales qualification
My previous blog post about communicating the commercial imperative of products was originally prompted by how frequently I, as a Product Manager, have discussed sales qualification of a prospect with respect to product differentiation and competition.
Frequently I had shared my insight with the sales teams:
"If customers says their problem is this, then this implies that they have Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21537342.post-44530666839690346572017-09-24T10:07:00.006+00:002020-11-24T18:16:56.236+00:00Sharing the commercial imperative of our productsI find that as a Product Manager or a Product Marketing Manager, we spend a lot of time communicating the value of our proposition's features, differentiating capabilities, value and how one's solution moves our customer's business forward to our sales and customer service teams.
But this message needs to be widely understood across the company.
Scenarios that I have frequently encountered:
Arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07950168837348641265noreply@blogger.com0