Why the UI is Important
When was the last time you included User Interface (UI) requirements in an MRD? If you are like most Product Managers, you may have included a reference like these in your MRD (I’ll admit to using at...
View ArticleHiring for Success
My company is hiring. Maybe yours is, too. Or at least trying to. If you work in the Silicon Valley, then you are probably aware of how difficult it is to find quality staff for just about any...
View ArticleHow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bug Scrub
Bug scrub is a word that strikes fear and hatred into the hearts of many Product Managers (Developers, QA leads, Release Managers, and Project Managers, too). Not because of the purpose of bug...
View ArticleFast Release Cycles
I wrote a comment the other day on another blog, Security Buddha, in response to a post about how Product Managers (at least not the ones who write blogs) are not really geared for rapid product...
View ArticleHire Fast, but Fire Faster
In a post I wrote back in March [Hiring for Success], I discussed the importance of finding and hiring great Product Managers. But in the same way that great workers can be a boon to your organization,...
View ArticleFighting, er, Working with Engineering
There’s an interesting thread going on across several blogs about the Agile development method (Agile, here and across other posts, is being used as a catch-all for many rapid release methodologies)...
View ArticleHow to Run a Meeting
If you are like most Product Managers that I know, you spend more time than you like in meetings. In the best of worlds, meetings can be productive endeavours where decisions get made and progress...
View ArticleProduct Manager Evaluation
At my company, it’s annual review time, which means that I get to spend quality time writing about what I have accomplished over the past 12 months and how it relates to my role as Product Manager....
View ArticleProduct Councils
One of my goals for this year is to establish Product Councils for my products. Product Councils, or Product Advisory Boards, as they are sometimes called, are made up of people who are familiar with...
View ArticleEthnography or Just Good Requirements Gathering
On my way back from a trade show, I spied an article in the airline magazine about how companies are starting to use the “novel” technique of Ethnography to understand how customers really use their...
View ArticleBuilding a Working Roadmap
Many years ago, when I was going off to start grad school, BW (at the time, she wasn’t BW, just B) and I rented a big yellow truck to haul all of our prized personal belongings to our new home (at...
View ArticleNew Life Re-Use
I wouldn’t label myself an environmentalist, but I try to do my part. I recycle paper, aluminum and glass in my home. I make homemade notepads out of old printouts. I drive a Honda Civic on my workday...
View ArticleRediscovering the Known
I was in a meeting a few days ago where we were discussing the schedule for the upcoming release of my product. To my knowledge, everyone in the room already knew what the schedule was, but we have an...
View ArticleGut Feel
Steve Kaufmann posted an article over at Dumb Little Man about how not everything requires How-To manuals. The post covers a variety of areas, but one struck me as especially relevant for Product...
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Cornell Note-Taking Method
I’ve been listening to career-related podcasts on my commute to and from work lately and one of my favorites is Manager Tools. They are basically two management consultants (Mark Horstman and Michael...
View ArticleFollow-up on the Cornell Note-Taking Method
It’s been a little over a month since I started using this new note-taking method and I wanted to provide some details on how it’s going for me. To be honest, it hasn’t been as easy to switch to this...
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Switching Teams
Some of you may have noticed that I have changed jobs recently. This move included changing from a waterfall-style development organization to an Agile one. Well, sort of. We’re getting there. While I...
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Books for Product Managers at Start Ups
Back in December, a reader named Adam sent me an email about a book that I had just reviewed, What Customers Want by Anthony W. Ulwick. Adam asked me about my recommendation, which was “…it’s not a...
View ArticleWhat I Learned @ #PCAMP09
At this year’s P-Camp, I learned a lot of things. Some about Product Management. Some about people. And some some about organization. Here’s a short list of my observations and learnings. If you are on...
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Time Keeps on Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’
Unless you live in some alternate reality (and maybe you do), every Product Manager I know always has a lot going on each day. We go to meetings, we take calls from Sales, we answer emails from Sales,...
View ArticleMRDs: Too Much of a Bad Thing
I have recently been embracing the change from traditional waterfall product development to an Agile framework. In the past, I have been wary of Agile, especially for enterprise products, but as I...
View ArticleForrester Product Management Open House
Last week (3Dec09), Forrester Research Analyst Tom Grant led a discussion on Agile in Technology and how it pertains to Product Management. I took some copious notes on the discussion and thought I...
View ArticleAgile, Agile, Everywhere?
It’s not hard to find Agile projects and development teams, especially within the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but I am starting to see Agile methods (Scrum, specifically) used for a variety of...
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Good Enough Isn’t
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes products successful (or not), and was following a discussion on an email list that I participate in (The Inbox Insiders, a collective of email marketing...
View ArticleThoughts from the Agile Cafe
I spent the morning at the Agile Cafe event put on by Rally Software in Silicon Valley. Check out my twitter stream if you want to see my comments. The agenda included the following: Panelists share...
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