Product management is the function of serving as a proxy to a defined set of markets (or market segments), in order to be able to ensure appropriate product creation, and ongoing product health and quality for those markets throughout a product’s entire lifecycle, until end of life.
I like this but the language needs a tweak. My take on this...
Product Managers represent the voice of their existing markets ensuring accurate problem definition and solution facilitation for the sole purpose of sustainable product evolution.
I like to keep things short. At first I didn't like the phrase "solution facilitation" but if you look at some of the resources for "strategic planning facilitation" it fits.
Scott, never at a loss for words, has replied with this.
Product Managers understand markets and the problems faced in those markets. Product managers choose the problems to solve, prioritize those problems, and communicate this knowledge to the people who build solutions. Product managers engage customers and learn from them, continuously improving their products, as long as it is valuable enough. Product management is the job of being a product manager.
I think this the same as I what I said, just less directly. My only major concern with this is Product Managers engage the market - there is danger in only listening to the customer. You end up with faster horses.
Anyway, my two cents. One thing for certain, we need a better mechanism for building this than cross-blogging.
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On the left, we list out our portfolio of suites, solutions or product lines, and their various products. It is also useful to include the key PM or contact for that product.
Along the top, we list out the competitors, broken down into Major, Secondary and Watch List.
Majors are the big few that we run across, the companies that are most comparable to our own in terms of offerings.
Secondaries are generally competitors with strong solutions to pieces of our offerings but, not a complete competitor.
Watch Lists are the ones who do a great job agaisnt us but, only have 1 or 2 products to compare, although are worth "watching".
Using the cells in-between, we can easily start to color code in where our competition lies.
What makes a major competitor major? Easy, the ones with the most cells colored in:)
Seems like a simple step but, is often overlooked. This simple document can easily tell us who are real top 3 competitors are. This can help during portfolio discussions, as one can tell if there are glaring holes in our offerings, or potential opportunities.
It also is critical to starting development of competitive documents for sales. By mapping out the competition in this way, we can easily determine if sales needs competitive information based on solutions, products or even directly against competitors.
Want to have some real fun? Try including segments or solutions that your competition offers which you don't.
Email if you'd like the excel template, I'd be happy to send it along. So what comes next? Sorry, you'll have to wait for the next blog posting...
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P.S. I got this link from Adam... "product management" - Twitter Search at Summize Interesting honest thoughts there.
Update: Weeee....
Friendfeed - http://friendfeed.com/stewartrogers
Twitter - http://twitter.com/StewartRogers
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Lynne VanArsdaleThis year CNBC will show you how to transition from merely "getting it" to "getting it done!"
The 2008 series is currently being aired but the two previous episodes are online here and here.
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