Thursday, October 07, 2004
Product Management is an interesting job - sometimes called as a job with responsibility but no real authority. While trying to catch up on the web to see how other folks felt about this space of "product management", I realized pretty soon that the same thread runs amongst most firms.
One interesting presentation that I chanced upon was from Ashvil D'Costa . Some of the observations he makes hits the nail on the head. Simple as it may sound: requirements from customers is paramount to product management. Yet, firm after firm, product manager after product manager do not seem to get it completely. Maybe I am being too harsh here and instead what I should really be saying is product managers do not seem to rise above their organizational workings to properly manage this fundamental task - of listening to customers, taking feedback, asking for solutions and basically repeating the process till the real pain points are locked down firmly before offering solutions to solve those pain points. The task that gains importance right after locking down the requirements is how to best address those problems. That's where the creative genius of the product manager and engineering team comes to focus.
For a well-established company the set of problems could be quite different from a relatively new product company. Established firms will have a large customer base which translates into proportionally high requirements and the task there will be to manage and prioritize individual requirements that appeal to the maximum customer base.
One interesting presentation that I chanced upon was from Ashvil D'Costa . Some of the observations he makes hits the nail on the head. Simple as it may sound: requirements from customers is paramount to product management. Yet, firm after firm, product manager after product manager do not seem to get it completely. Maybe I am being too harsh here and instead what I should really be saying is product managers do not seem to rise above their organizational workings to properly manage this fundamental task - of listening to customers, taking feedback, asking for solutions and basically repeating the process till the real pain points are locked down firmly before offering solutions to solve those pain points. The task that gains importance right after locking down the requirements is how to best address those problems. That's where the creative genius of the product manager and engineering team comes to focus.
For a well-established company the set of problems could be quite different from a relatively new product company. Established firms will have a large customer base which translates into proportionally high requirements and the task there will be to manage and prioritize individual requirements that appeal to the maximum customer base.
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