Every year, Pragmatic Marketing conducts a survey about roles, responsibilities, and compensation for product management and marketing professionals. You can find prior years' results on our web site. As always, we're asking some questions to get more visibility into a typical day in the life of a product manager. And we're still asking compensation questions so you can see how your company's salary and bonus structure compares to the rest of the industry. Read more in the November Pragmatic Marketing update.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 11/08/2006

Seth Godin explains what every entrepreneur, geek, brand manager and marketer needs to know about trademarks.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 11/05/2006

How do you deliver the right products, not just the most features? Where should you wow the customer? When is "good enough" enough? Find out in the Pragmatic Roadmapping seminar to learn how to achieve success by aligning your product strategy with the market.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 11/03/2006

The Sep/Oct issue of productmarketing.com magazine is posted. Read it online at Issue 5| Understanding Market Needs.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 11/02/2006

The third annual Software Marketing Perspectives Conference for May 23-25, 2007 will be held at the Boston Marriott Newton Hotel in Newton, Mass. They're issuing a call for papers now, with a deadline of Nov. 30, 2006. Learn more...

posted by Steve Johnson @ 11/01/2006

Scott Sehlhorst of Tyner Blain updates Writing Correct Requirements:

We ran a series called 'Writing Good Requirements: The Big Ten Rules' in May 2006. The original series started with a summary of the ten rules to writing good requirements, and then we followed up with ten articles with details of each rule. And now we add another one--writing correct requirements.

Read Writing Correct Requirements plus the entire series of articles on writing requirements.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/31/2006

Companies have a personality, whether conservative or not, friendly or not, kooky or not. The voice of the company should be consistent in positioning and messaging, in documentation and online help, in printed collateral and electronic.

My friend David writes, "It is important for all organizations to create a distinct, consistent, and memorable Web site or blog, and an important component of that goal is the tone or voice of the content. As visitors interact with the content on your site, they should develop a clear picture of your organization. Is the personality fun and playful? Or is it solid and conservative?"

Read more in Develop your online personality.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/30/2006

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

"Please design and build me a house. I am not sure of what I need, you should use your discretion. My house should have between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so I can arbitrarily pick one." Read more in Todd's Humor Archive.

Sounds like when execs ask, "When can I have it?"
"Uh, well, it rather depends on what 'it' is."

(Also, here are 35 things that I hope you'll never do to us during a seminar.)

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/26/2006

Kathy writes,

Today, the more you try to prevent failure, the more likely you are to fail.

That wasn't always true, but geez... how many more [whatevers] do we need today? There are way too many of all the things we already have and not enough introductions of things we don't have. We all know the reasons why companies play it safe, and why employees are often forced to play it safe, but this me-tooism isn't helping anyone.

Read more in Dilbert and the zone of mediocrity.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/19/2006

from You pull, Wii push: "With the launches of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii only weeks away, speculation is running high over who will win the next-generation console war. Some interesting data has come forth from an anonymous source at CompUSA, one of the top retailers in the US. According to the information, Microsoft and Nintendo are pursuing two very different strategies for their game consoles at retail."

Microsoft uses their promotion capability to get consumers to pull the products through the channel while Nintendo is relying on the channel's ability to push consumers to one product over another.

Read You pull, Wii push for a discussion of these two strategies.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/16/2006

If you haven't already seen it, the Pragmatic Marketing Update for October is now posted online.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/16/2006

“Daddy, where did I come from?”

Every parent knows the gut-check that happens when a child asks, “Where did I come from?” Your mind races through the possible ways of illustrating the birds and the bees, “when two people love each other…,” how to offer medical explanations without getting too graphic.

Always answer the first question with a question: “Why do you ask?”

“Well, my friend Tiffany comes from Atlanta. Where did I come from?”

The customer asks Kevin, the world’s worst sales person, “How is the product priced?” Immediately, Kevin offers a diatribe about pricing and discounts. “The cost is $20,000 per year but for you, I’m willing to drop down to $17,000. In fact, if you need me to, I can probably get it down to $15,000.”

Customer: “Uh, well… thanks, but is it priced by usage or by storage?”

A developer asks, “What do you mean?” and the product manager designs a solution. “It should be a dialog box that invokes the API to issue an email to the address in the contact_name field.” We give detail when developers need context.

At a demo recently, an attendee asked, “how is it packaged?” The instructor went into a 10-minute spiel that I couldn’t follow—and I already knew the answer. I leaned over afterwards and said, “the software is bundled with the hardware.”

Maybe we answer questions based on our fears rather than on the question being asked. I fear the “parent talk” with my daughter; I fear our pricing model; I fear that I’ve not been detailed enough. We answer the question that has not been asked.

Communication is a two-way process. Understand the question before the answer is given. We all need to learn what is being said, not just what we’re thinking about when the question is asked.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/16/2006

While effective meetings may not be the key to success, ineffective meetings are inarguably one of the largest time wasters in corporations. Scott Sehlhorst offers these tips to make your meetings 60% more effective.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/14/2006

from The SME Revolution Starts In Dubai And GCC: "The Western economies realized decades ago that small and medium enterprises are really the main drivers of the economy. While big businesses are necessary to preserve and maintain structure within the economy, surely they have considerable problems of their own. Mega corporations of the earlier era have increasingly lost their edge to smaller, nimbler organizations, which have spouted all over the Western landscape. The Middle East is now a new turning point for SME's to begin a grassroots revolution."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/14/2006

Scott Sehlhorst discusses the difference between customer Wants and Needs.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/13/2006

David writes, "When I see words like 'flexible,' 'scalable,' 'groundbreaking,' 'industry standard,' or 'cutting-edge,' my eyes glaze over. What, I ask myself, is this supposed to mean? Just saying your widget is 'industry standard' means nothing unless some aspect of that standardization is important to your buyers. In the next sentence, I want to know what you mean by 'industry standard,' and I also want you to tell my why that standard matters and give me some proof that what you say is indeed true." Read his analysis in The Gobbledygook Manifesto.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/12/2006

For those in the Santa Clara area, come hear Pragmatic Marketing instructor Barbara Nelson discuss Extreme Product Management (XPM) at SoftSummit 2006. Pragmatic Marketing will also have a booth in the exhibit hall so come by to visit.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/12/2006

Seth explains why cheaper isn't better in Seth's Blog: Cheaper: "She sent me a note asking me to persuade her bosses that the best way to grow their resort was to lower prices. When I responded that perhaps she ought to consider raising prices and using the extra money to create a remarkable experience, she got really angry with me."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/10/2006

A new blog on product management and designing great products is online at Product Beautiful: "Product Beautiful is all about what makes products great, their inner beauty that only a Product Manager might think about or consider. That's what matters most, right?" Indeed.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/07/2006

Laura Ries offers this recipe for Marketing a Non-Profit Brand. She writes, "They are really the same as building a strong for-profit brand since the goal is the same -- to own a position in the mind." It's a clear straightforward list of things we should all be doing.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/07/2006

Scott Sehlhorst offers these 21 Dysfunctional Definitions. My favorite is "Innovation: What happens when managers fail to do their jobs correctly."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/07/2006

from Work together to increase your sales: "The secret to getting your salespeople and marketing people to work together is to stop the interdepartmental, political arguments about the selling process and start focusing everyone's attention on the customer's buying process. This is the only way to stop the political tug-of-war."

Read the whole series of articles on Revenue Journal.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/06/2006

Nilofer Merchant writes,"In my opinion, there are two really hard jobs inside a company. One is being a CEO, and the other being a product manager. A few reasons why I believe this. Both the CEO and Product Managers are expected to be the most flexible acrobatic kind of leaders-- adjusting to people's styles, making sure to communicate with clarity the requirements of what is needed, translating vision into specifics and constantly at the beck and call of many constituents. It's a wonder someone would take the job. Either one." Read more on the role of product management in Best Practices: Sales & Marketing.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/03/2006

LeeAnn pointed out these Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces from SAP Design Guild:

The SAP Design Guild Website is full of guidelines and tips for good user interface design, and it's not the only one on the Web. Nevertheless, we see examples of bad user interface design everywhere--many more than users would like to see. As people like to do just the opposite of what one is proposing, we thought that it might be a good idea to promote bad user interface design. Therefore, we collected "Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces" on this page--please help yourself (and do the opposite). We started this page with ten rules and are continually expanding our collection.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 10/02/2006

Some product managers spend more time designing products than they should. If you're drawing screen samples and logic flow, you're not writing requirements, you're specifying design. Check out On Reqs and Specs to understand the difference. Product design is a skill! Hardware is designed by an industrial designer. Why isn't software?

One such designer comments: Occasionally, some poor fellow at a dinner party makes the unfortunate mistake of asking what I do for a living. My initial (and quite subdued) response is that I help design software for artists. Then comes the inevitable question, "Oh, so you are a programmer?" A gleam appears in my eye and I no longer feel obligated to blather on about the rainy weather. With a great flourish, I whip out my gold nibbed pen and draw a little diagram on a napkin that explains concisely how modern software development works. In the grand finale, I circle one of the little scribbles buried deep in the entire convoluted process and proudly proclaim "And that is what I do!" This admittedly selfish exercise usually keeps everyone involved merrily entertained until dessert arrives. Read more about software design in Software Development's Evolution towards Product Design.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/27/2006

Allan discusses the conundrum of buying versus using criteria in Lights, Camera, Distraction!

"That's when it hit me. I had fallen victim to one of the classic product management blunders. I focused so heavily on comparing specs, performance indicators and review data that I forgot to take into account one of the most important factors of all: How will customers use the technology?"

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/20/2006

Kristin Zhivago offers these ten truths that are not imparted by the educational system. Most people discover these truths, one at a time, in the school of hard knocks. Knowing these truths, and taking them to heart, will make it much easier to succeed in the world of business, either as an employee or as a business owner. Read more in the truths that will put them on the track to success. Share them with those friends and family who are just entering the world of business.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/15/2006

from strategy+business Resilience Report:

Not so long ago, some observers were nearly ready to declare outsourcing dead. A series of well-publicized corporate outsourcing and offshoring failures--involving Dell, Lehman Brothers, J.P. Morgan Chase, J Sainsbury, and Sears--had led to the conclusion that the future of the global business services industry was questionable. Some analysts predicted a backlash in public opinion, in which the loss of jobs in North America and Western Europe would make outsourcing politically unfeasible. Others argued that in a world of increasing political volatility and security risk, the offshoring of business services could not continue to grow.

These predictions have proven wrong. Read more in How to Be an Outsourcing Virtuoso.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/15/2006

FastCompany writes:

In the course of this year's Customers First research, no company produced a more polarizing debate than Apple and its Apple Stores. Some people lauded Apple's in-store service desks, called Genius Bars, for spinning an experience out of customers' problems with their iWhatevers. An equal number argued that Genius Bars mask the fact that Apple products don't always get the job done.

The divide cut to the heart of a larger question: Do you have to master the basics before you create meaningful customer experiences? Or can experiences, in effect, ameliorate any underlying troubles in your business? To us, the answer is clear--which is why Apple Stores isn't among our winners. "Are you delivering on the promise of your business?" asks Phil Terry, CEO of experience consultancy Creative Good. "Once you get that right, then you can innovate and do exciting stuff." Read more in Basic Training.

In our classes we argue that every company should have a distinctive competence but a company also needs competence in the basics too. Our approach to product management helps companies focus on running the business, creating products that sell using a repeatable process, and focusing on the needs of a market rather than just each deal-of-the-day. Product managers can be leaders in getting the basics right.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/15/2006

WikiHow offers these tips on How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger. Funny but true.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/13/2006

Grillin' in the Storm offers some tips on estimating:

"How long will that take?" It seems like such a straightforward question...

When planning iterations or releases, we always need a sense of time. For development teams, this can feel like a trap. If they estimate conservatively, they get accused of sandbagging. If they estimate aggressively, they get beat up for not meeting their schedule.

Solving this problem breaks down into two parts.

Read more in When will dinner be ready? (the joys of estimation).

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/13/2006

from the September 2006 newsletter: Titles really are a mess in our business. What one company calls a product manager, another calls a product marketing manager. Technology businesses have generally ignored the standard terms used in other industries. In our annual compensation survey we asked people's titles and reported incomes based on the titles without defining what we think they are. We also asked them to report responsibilities. Read more for a side-by-side comparison of product management and product marketing. Read more in the Pragmatic Marketing update.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/09/2006

Jacques Murphy explores pricing: "Today's issue is not a simple one. It's product pricing, or how to structure and set the price of the software product. Like philosophy, there are many schools of thought, some openly opposed to others, and Product Managers find themselves faced with a dazzling array of choices." Read more in Product Pricing and The Socratic Method.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/08/2006

Joel writes in A Field Guide to Developers: "You can advertise in all the right places, have a fantastic internship program, and interview all you want, but if the great programmers don't want to work for you, they ain't gonna come work for you. So this article will serve as a kind of field guide to developers: what the're looking for, what they like and dislike in a workplace, and what it's going to take to be a top choice for top developers."

Everything Joel says about programmers is equally true for product managers--really, for any technical employee. What draws developers and product managers to technology is clarity: things are true or they're not; things work or they don't. Compare Joel's field guide remarks with your environment. What can we--should we, must we--do differently?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/07/2006

Check out The fundamental fact that will put your sales on track on Revenue Journal:

"What makes marketing and selling so different from other business activities? It all boils down to one fundamental fact. It doesn't matter how you think your product should be sold. What matters is how the customer wants to buy it.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 9/02/2006

In advertising, it's called the 3-second rule: get your message across in three seconds or no one will read it. It's a busy world. We've got email, voice mail, IMs and more. We're busy! And our customers are even busier. Kristin Zhivago reminds us to write for the rushing reader. Use active voice, shorter paragraphs, and get your message read.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/25/2006

In this post, Michael explains the various acronyms used for the artifacts necessary to develop tech products. It's a really helpful summary of the most common terms. Many of the terms refer to the same concepts but by different names. BRD, MRD, and PRD offer various details versions of requirements; FSD and PSD refer to levels of specifications. And as Michael points out, the implementation of these documents differs from organization to organization.

In my experience, companies with too many types of documents are attempting to correct the emptiness of one document type by expansion into another. "The MRDs we're getting are not detailed enough so let's introduce a PRD." Product managers who write poor market requirements are often supplemented with Requirements Analysts who write good requirements. So an MRD is actually a poorly written PRD. A poorly written FSD is supplemented with a well-written PSD.

Maybe we would have fewer roles and fewer artifacts if each were well defined and appropriate performed. You get overlap and redundancy if you have too many types of documents. Read On Reqs and Specs for more on this point.

Perhaps this expanded set of documents isn't that they're poorly written but that the writers have smashed together the artifacts from a dozen different methods. Meetings today often take on a tone of folklore as each person describes a process and set of documents from the old days, from an old company, from an old (or new) book. If you're writing SRS documents, someone has read Weigers; if you're writing stories, someone has read Beck.

A requirement is a statement of the problem to be addressed; a specification fully describes it solution. In the end, I fear that many companies are reacting to poor execution in one group by introducing rigor in a downstream document written by another group. Alas, no amount of documentation can overcome incompetence or malevolence.

Be clear on the objectives and content of each document in the process and then hold the writers to that standard.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/20/2006

Intuit does many things right including seeing problems that others have missed. They introduced Quicken and Quickbooks despite dozens of competitors and became the dominate player by focusing on the problems that regular people were having. And now they're entering health care billing to help people get their arms around the ridiculous morass of bills and past due notices.

In Less Insult From Injury, BusinessWeek Online's Susan Berfield writes,

They visited dozens of people in their homes to see how they handled all of the bills and statements generated by the health-care system. Their conclusions were that people would spend hours to get even a few dollars out of their insurance companies, and that they wanted some way to assert control at a time when their lives had been upended by health concerns.

As Chief Executive Steve Bennett says: "We are always looking for a large unmet need that we can solve."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/19/2006

from August 2006 Survey: CIOs Put Out Help-Wanted Sign for Business-Savvy IT Professionals:

CIOs are looking for business-savvy technologists to build new systems. Large and midsize companies are ramping up hiring in programming and systems development; also in demand are professionals in project management, business-process redesign, business analysis and systems integration. The message to IT professionals is clear: A need exists in the U.S. for talented technicians who can be businesspeople, too, especially if they can function in a global economy.

Successful product managers combine technical prowess, market empathy, and business savvy. Looks like CIOs now realize the value of this skill set.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/18/2006

In Dear Libby, Guy Kawasaki summarizes in one place all the "best" techniques for applying for a job: knowing the company, the product, the job, and the hiring manager--and then tailoring your messaging to those. Every word matters and he explains why certain phrases were chosen. Pass this along to your children, nephews and nieces and your friends' kids who are just entering the workforce.

Update: Stephanie Tate is the university relations manager for Yahoo! who took a look at the cover email and resume and critiqued them.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/18/2006

In Let's make people want it , we commented on the table saw that won't cut fingers. But my friend Tim pointed out that I missed the buying and using criteria aspect. He writes,

He's focusing on the table saw user persona, who really don't want their fingers cut off. While this is good, he's ignoring that he has to market to the manufacturer's buyer persona for his invention in order to be truly successful. He's created more problems than benefits for the manufacturer persona. They see additional costs that need to be offset and he isn't taking that into account.

Right or wrong, the manufacturer persona does not have the problem that he is fixing. They are not held responsible for their customers injuries due to the policy of acceptable risk. Their customers still need to buy table saws to cut wood even if they do occasionally get their fingers cut off.

Tim's so right: how often does a product fail because we neglect to identify all the personas in the value-chain? Sure, one type of persona may want it but we also have to get it from here to there, which means we have to identify--and market to--all the buyers along the way.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/17/2006

Amazon used to be a large river in South America--but that was before the world wide web. This month the web is 15 years old and in that short time it has revolutionised the way we live, from shopping to booking flights, writing blogs to listening to music. Here are the stories of the 15 most influential websites to date. Read more in Websites that changed the world.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/15/2006

Design News reports: "Vindication arrived for Stephen Gass on the afternoon of June 28, 2006, when someone finally agreed with him. It had been nearly seven years since Gass invented his skin-sensing table saw, and in that time he'd begun to wonder if anyone would truly see the wisdom behind his device. Acting on a petition from Gass, engineers at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommended that the government begin a "rulemaking process" that could result in mandatory safety standards for table saws. Days later, the agency's commissioners shocked the power tool industry by concurring with the recommendation. They saw the wisdom in his petition. Suddenly, the ultimate outsider joined the game, and now he was holding a strong hand.

My friend Jake writes, "In other words, This guy has technology that's pretty cool but no manufacturer wants, so he decides to have the courts tell them to want it."

This reminds me of the Treasury Departments on-going attempt to introduce a $1 coin; they're solving a problem we don't have with a product that we don't like. Is government mandate a marketing strategy of last resort?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/15/2006

When Stacey Mentzel and I wrote the article on Extreme Product Management, we knew the term "agile waterfall" would create a controversy.

I appreciate Roger Cauvin's posting about the article. But I'm afraid he might be missing our point. Our definition of XPM is using the minimum process and creating the minimum artifacts to deliver products people want to buy.

A key phrase is "products people want to buy." In order to do this, product managers need time to collect the strategic information from the market. The role of the product manager in an agile process is to provide the problems to be solved, for which personas, in which market segments. Product managers need to understand not only users (which is typically where agile methods focus), but also the buyers.

It is hard to convey complex ideas in a one-way medium, such as written requirements--just as it's often difficult to convey complex ideas in a printed article. Therefore, we embrace the iterative approach of agile methodologies. Product managers need to be involved in getting feedback during the process but not in every iteration meeting.

Extreme Product Management is meant to articulate the role of product management in embracing Extreme Programming. XPM is not about managing the sprints and iterations; when building products (not one-time projects), product managers need to operate strategically and bring in market facts.

posted by Barbara Nelson @ 8/14/2006

David at Web Ink Now writes:

Books are great content. I've often said that the e-book is the hip and stylish younger sister (or brother) to the nerdy white paper.

Web content in the form of an ebook sells. An effective content strategy, artfully executed, drives action. Organizations that use online content have a clearly defined goal--to sell products, generate leads, secure contributions, or get people to join and deploy a content strategy that directly contributes to reaching that goal. Content takes many forms including an effective content-centric Web site, blogs, podcasts, and e-books.

Read more at Some great free ebooks to check out.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/13/2006

In Issue 4| Extreme Product Management, we explore Extreme Product Management, why the better product still struggles in the marketplace, a framework for creating effective product presentations, and how investment in Customer Advisory Programs helps build business. Coming soon to your mailbox or read the issue online.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/11/2006

Kathy on Creating Passionate Users asks,

How many things do you own where you can't use more than 10% of what they can actually can do? The home stereo you play CDs on but gave up on Surround Sound. The cell phone that can fry eggs, but you still can't get it to vibrate. The software app where half the menus might as well be Latin. So what are we doing to make sure this doesn't happen to our users?

Documentation is an area that product managers often ignore.

Back in the day, vendors produced both system guides (how to do everything) as well as user guides (how to do what you want to do). Where did those usage guides go? (Probably another victim of cost-cutting.) Are your customers novices? If so, they need more than 'how ever menu item works'; they need how to do what they want to do. More examples, more step-by-step. No wonder the "Dummy" books are so popular; they're really the usage documentation we've been missing.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/09/2006

David is Blogging his newest book:

I have started writing a new book tentatively titled 'The New Rules of Marketing and PR' and I need your help!

I'll be blogging the book as I go through the research, writing, editing, and marketing process and I invite you to follow along, to contribute to the process, to offer suggestions, and to argue with me when I get off track. The book will take about 4 months to write. Please join me.

How the world has changed. Writing a book used to be like programming with the waterfall model; write the entire book, send it to an editor, fix bugs, deliver. Nowadays an author can post ideas--in any order--and get instant feedback. Sounds like iterative development to me. It should be fun to watch David's book take shape.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/07/2006

An amazing glimpse of this promised future has arrived in the form of the Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard. This tiny device laser-projects a keyboard on any flat surface... you can then type away accompanied by simulated key click sounds. It really is true future magic at its best. You'll be turning heads the moment you pull this baby from your pocket and use it to compose an e-mail on your bluetooth enabled PDA or Cell Phone. With 63 keys and and full size QWERTY layout the Laser Virtual Keyboard can approach typing speeds of a standard keyboard... in a size a little larger than a matchbook.

Frankly, this is an invention that probably didn't come from product management but from an engineer who said, "Wouldn't it be cool?" Or maybe saw it in a movie and said, "hey, I can do that!" Is it innovation? I dunno? But come on, it is cool!

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/05/2006

Whether you as a Product Manager report into Marketing, Development, or another group, you play a critical role in helping Marketing position and explain the product so that the message resonates with your product's prospects.

The Marketing folks are the experts at taking an image of your software product and polishing it until it really shines. They can make the product message sound truly compelling, and artfully express how you stand compared to the competition.

But except for a minority of exceptional 'marketeers', Marketing is submerged in the day-to-day mechanics of generating the message, the collateral, the supporting materials, and talking to all necessary audiences from media to investors to prospective business partners.

What the Marketing folks don't have, and it's the raw material that they absolutely need to portray the power of your product, is the specific and essential perspective on the business users of your product and why they use it.

Take a look at How Can Product Managers Help Marketing? to see how you as Product Manager--and you may very well be the only one who can do this--can contribute to Marketing in order to make your product's marketing stand out in the busy, crowded, and uncertain software market that we find ourselves in today.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/05/2006

Blogging is how CEOs and other top-level execs can quickly and easily position themselves--and their companies--as thought leaders in highly competitive markets. Read the whys and hows in ChangeThis :: Beginner's Guide to Business Blogging .

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/04/2006

How--and when--to get information from your customers is problematic. How many web sites ask you more than you're willing to tell? How many of us use no@none.net as an email address for such sites? (Is it just me?)

Kristin Zhivago comments,

There's a conflict between the information you want to get from your potential buyers--in order to market to them effectively--and the fact that asking for that information can prevent them from interacting with your website or making a purchase. Asking for too much information too soon is like the owner of a retail store 'greeting' you at the entrance and forcing you to sign a guestbook before you can start shopping. Most people would decline and leave the store, which is exactly what is happening on your website--except you can't 'see' them leaving without resorting to in-depth web stat log analysis. How do you find out what you need to know without placing barriers in their way?

Read more in Revenue Journal :: How to get information from your customers without slowing down the sale.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 8/04/2006

Tech News on ZDNet reports Microsoft to charge for Office beta: "Microsoft plans next week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads, a move that runs counter to the practice held by most software companies."

The article now has dozens of flame threads complaining about it. Why not charge for it? A nominal fee of $1.50 doesn't seem onerous to me.

I've often wondered about the viability of charging for beta; it does give customers a heads-up and often a competitive advantage over others. But the real question is "what is the point of beta testing?" What's the second word? TESTING! Beta testing is about verifying that your product works in environments that you cannot test in the lab. Charging customers seems to fly in the face of what we're trying to accomplish. In fact, enterprise vendors would probably benefit from more internal testing and much more limited field testing. Microsoft and others with millions of users may want millions of testers; enterprise vendors only need a few. Charging a few beta testers really isn't worth it.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/31/2006

I'm reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. He puts today's 'micro-markets replace mass markets' crisis in context. Excellent read for all marketers. Here's a funny video that sets up the book nicely.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/30/2006

Laura Reis writes:

"When a company gets into trouble, all management wants to do is to use PR to fix the PR problem. Instead they should be doing something to fix the underlying problem that is causing the PR problem."

In effect, she reminds us that PR shouldn't deny problems; PR tells us "what is." Read her full post in Dude, Dell's got a problem.

Her solution: focus on the "best" customers. "Bad" customers want Wal-mart pricing and Nordstrum's customer support. In Dell's case, home users are "bad" customers; corporate customers are "good."

Which customers are your best ones? Should you fire your worst ones? And can you make that sacrifice? Focus ain't easy, is it?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/29/2006

The services you deliver with your software - implementation consulting, installation, and training - aren't accessories to your product, they are an integral part of the product and its success. Software plus services plus customer effort equals success.

Because of this, it's critical to take steps to make each service you deliver predictable, complete, and consistent across customers, channels, and the individuals who provide it.

Yet unlike software, the human element involved in service delivery brings the potential for wide variation in content, quality, and effectiveness. The people who shine in front of your customers, delivering stellar services, are often highly individualistic. Their priority is to perform well when they're in the spotlight - AKA the hot seat. Like sales reps, they don't focus on adhering closely to guidelines but on reaching their goal come what may.

To build consistency in your services, read Tips For Delivering Consistent Services.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/26/2006

Most product managers and marketers are familiar with the term 'Web 2.0,' a reference to the 'post-Google' rise of the web, with new emphasis on online search, web-centric media, and, even more recently, blogs. Smart marketers have embraced what David Meerman Scott calls 'Marketing 2.0' - using the new Web 2.0 media to develop thought leadership based marketing, which is valuable, interesting, relevant, and easy to find. Marketing 2.0 recognizes that marketing success today calls for brand new best practices, which David shared at the May 2006 BPMA meeting. Read more in Marketing 2.0 on the BPMA site.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/19/2006

Two calls come into your phone line at the same time. Through some technical magic you know the caller on line 1 is a customer with a problem and the caller on line 2 is a prospect wanting to buy something. If you can only answer one, which do you answer? Which would your president answer?

A customer-driven mindset will answer the customer on line 1; a revenue-driven mindset will answer the prospect on line 2.

For me, the customer should come first: we've taken his money and made him a promise. The prospect won't go away and might appreciate that you put a customer first, since (he hopes) he will soon become a customer. Despite what many think, a deal doesn't die so quickly, as long as you respond to the prospect in a timely manner.

My friend Alan reported this interaction with AAA:

Thank you for calling Triple-A, where Members come first. To become a member, please press 1. If you are already a member, press 2.

Who comes first again?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/17/2006

Michael reminds us Don't Annoy Customers!

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/16/2006

So you've attended Practical Product Management and gotten all fired up! You come back to the office ready to be market-driven. You're anxiously awaiting the looks of joy and amazement at your newly found skills as a product manager. And then reality hits you... hard! Development couldn't care less! They're not listening!! How could this be??

You missed a step: you skipped the part where you earned credibility. What do you do first? For an existing project or product, start with the ending. Read more in July's Pragmatic Marketing update.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/14/2006

Scott Sehlhorst reports in Product Managers Play Tug-of-War: "63% of product managers report to marketing and 24% report to development. 22% of requirements managers report to marketing with 55% in the development organization. These reporting structures can over-emphasize the needs of new users and super-users, while shortchanging the needs of the majority of users. Product managers will constantly be playing tug-of-war to get time to do the right thing." Scott's post contains references to various studies that could be helpful if you're considering organizational issues.

Our take on the issue can be found in Where Does Product Management Belong in the Organization? In short, if product managers will support one organization primarily, which organization should it be?

And those who have attended Requirements That Work will remember that product managers need to work with proficient customers, as Scott points out. Going on sales calls won't do the job. Product managers, as experts on the market, need to have onsite experience with all users of the product--novice, proficient, and expert.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/08/2006

David Meerman Scott writes in Web Ink Now:

The news from the big 3 automakers has indeed been grim. Year-to-date, GM sales fell 12.2 percent, Ford sales fell 3.8 percent, and Chrysler sales were down 4.9 percent. It has indeed been a bummer of a summer. There are many reasons for the auto industry troubles such as high gas prices, last year's incentive programs, high cost production, a skew to SUVs and other large vehicles at a time when smaller is better, and many other issues. However, one thing the industry can fix is the terrible official websites. Big three automaker sites suck.

Websites are like software products: the real challenge isn't what to include; it's what to omit. Ford, in particular, seems to want to include everything. And the local dealerships are even worse. It's the iPod versus Microsoft packaging example. It's Google homepage versus almost anyone else's.

The problem is, I think, is that the Ford people are sales people first, and marketers second, while Lexus is the other way around. It's as if Ford is saying "I want to sell you something! RIGHT NOW!! at 0% interest!!!" while Lexus is saying "Come browse. Let us help you buy."

At a car dealership recently, I finally had to tell the sales person to BE QUIET; I needed to think and I couldn't concentrate when the sales guys is yammering. I've had so many good interactions with sales people that bad ones just drive me berserk. I ultimately bought from a different dealership.

Is your web site trying to sell or is it helping people buy? There's a difference.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/06/2006

From Real People Doing Real Work:

For eight months, we followed the progress of a group of twelve people in a Fortune 500 company here in the Pacific Northwest who used Office 2007 to perform their daily work. These people graciously agreed to install Office 2007 Beta 1 on their main work computers and to let us track their feedback and thoughts over a long period of time using the software. The participants in the study were not software engineers or in any way associated with high-tech; they were just normal people who use Office to help get their jobs done.

Yes, the sample size for this specific study was small. And yes, the study only included people in one company in the Pacific Northwest. It is true that for these reasons the results of this study aren't statistically significant.

But the purpose of this study wasn't to provide quantitative results. Rather, the goal was to employ ethnographic research strategies to allow us to understand qualitatively how the new Office 2007 user interface fit into daily work lives of typical Office customers.

Marketers and developers are usually anxious to do quantitative research but you don't know what you don't know. Before you can do quantitative, you must do qualitative.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/06/2006

Ever had a project late? Christopher Hawkins explains in Effective Software Development: Estimating and scheduling are not the same. Estimating is the practice of figuring out how many man-hours of labor something will take. Scheduling is deciding when those man-hours of labor will take place.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/05/2006

The new mantra for developers and marketers is simplicity.

Our newfound love of simplicity was the clear message in the spoof video "What if Microsoft did the iPod packaging?" Apple's packaging is simple; the Microsoft spoof was cluttered beyond belief--but remember, it was a spoof after all.

Much has been written about Steve Job's elegant simplicity in his speeches and slides. Many pundits imply that his slides are better because he uses Keynote instead of PowerPoint. That's just silly. It's not the medium; it's the message. He makes only a few points, he makes them simply, he uses the slides to cement the point, and he's really sure of his message.

By the way, I love the new Apple ad campaign with the Windows and Mac guys. If you haven't seen 'em, go here. For a contrary view of the Mac, go here (caution: some profanity).

At TED, the conference for Technology, Entertainment & Design, three presentations use simplicity and one advocates it. David Pogue discusses simplicity in technology development with a few gags that really hit the mark--and some somewhat funny musical bits about Gates and Jobs.

As for illustration through example, Al Gore is truly hysterical in his opening comments about his post-VP career. He then uses a series of slides, each with a single point. Compared to Jobs, Gore's slides are rather sloppy but Gore's delivery makes up for it.

Sir Ken Robinson talks about creativity and education. His talk is humorous, using stories to make a clear plea for emphasizing creativity in education. Does he have slides? I don't remember... but I remember his message.

Hans Rosling reviews census data in an incredibly persuasive manner; complex information delivered comprehensively. How has the world changed in the last 40 years? Bubbles represent countries, the side of the bubble represents the country's population, and then the bubbles move across two axes to show changes. WOW! This is what data mining is all about!

Simplicity in presentations is a beginning. But we also admire simplicity in technology products. Google's home page; Apple's iPhoto and iWeb which mask complexity with elegance; Interlink's PowerPoint remote with buttons for next slide, last slide, and turn off the slide--and nothing else!

Why aren't phones simpler?

I remember attending Rolm phone training in 1983 where we learned how to transfer, park, pick, and conference calls. Yet, here in 2006, how often do you hear, "Wait, I'm going to try to add another person into the call. If I lose you...."

My brother bought a Panasonic home phone with so many buttons that visitors to his house can't answer the phone when it rings. Panasonic engineers appear to think more is better but Bang & Olufsen takes a different approach. Hide the complexity from the novice (just a few buttons) but offer power under the hood (through the menus). Which approach is used for your products? Oh, and while we're at it, wouldn't it be great if your cell phone was easy to use as an iPod? Oh, and while we're at it, wouldn't it be great if your cell phone jumped on your landline when it was in the house? Check out the video of an Apple iTalk. (Is it real? I dunno. Hope so.)

My wife's new iMac came with Front Row, an astounding simple but powerful front-end for DVDs, videos, music, and photos. If I could talk to the designers at Apple, I'd ask them to add a TiVo interface to the iMac and then I wouldn't need a TV at all. (Hey Steve! Please buy TiVo!) My (old) Sony DVD player has dozens of buttons, only a few of which are really used. My wife marked the ones she cared about with nail polish so she could quickly identify them until the dog put the player in Spanish by stepping on the remote; that's why we now have a BOSE system.

My dad's new car knows that the key is within 3 feet of the car and just unlocks the doors. No buttons. But you can't pop the truck, turn on the car, open the sunroof, or any of the many things that are possible (but infrequently done). You can do these things with the key fob but he rarely bothers. And Mom has lost the key fob in the bottom of her purse.

The challenge of simplicity is caring about the customer more than about the developer. How many of your customers want the power features versus the most-often used ones? We need to worry more about the frequent usage of a product and less about the possible, edge-case scenarios.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/04/2006

Writing songs and writing songs for money are two different things.--Don Gant (producer)

The same is true for code, eh?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/03/2006

Just saw a clever IBM ad on television. The final line: "The one test of innovation is the value it brings us, the result. Anything else is just... showing off."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/03/2006

It's been reported that Google employees can allocate up to 20% of their time on developing new products, focusing on anything that interests them. Business Week Online reflects on Google's culture in So Much Fanfare, So Few Hits. In short, the article's author questions whether Google's technology-driven culture has produced any successful products.

The problem is, he says, "Google has product ADD. They don't know why they're getting into all of these products. They have fantastic cash flow but terrible discipline on products," says Paul S. Kedrosky. "It's a dangerous combination."

Furthermore, product managers at Google tend to have less power than engineers, say several former staffers. This can contribute to slow product upgrades, since most engineers want to work on the next big launch.

I've used many metaphors for product management's role in producing new products: president or parent of the product. Sadly, some companies use product management as the janitor or maid of the product, the one who cleans up after the developers. Perhaps Google needs the "product manager as producer" metaphor.

In creating a movie, there are two key roles: producer and director. The director has creative control, determining the actors, the script, the camera angles, which 'take' is the best, the editing of scenes; the director owns the art of the movie. Meanwhile, the producer owns the business of the product: how to promote it, when to release it to the theaters and which ones, how to fill the theater seats, and so on. Not that I'm in the movie business but I imagine there are many heated discussions between director and producer about hitting dates, length of the film, and incorporating test market feedback into the final product. Sounds like product management to me.

Google needs some 'producers' to re-focus the engineers on market requirements, incorporating market feedback into versions 2 and 3, and ultimately finishing the product. Their approach of "always in beta" basically says it all; it seems they work on a product until the team gets bored.

Google has many ideas but do they have products? Products solve a problem for a market segment--and for a vendor, these products have to deliver profitability at some point.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/03/2006

You've read (or heard of) Crossing the Chasm. Lindy McKeown offers this Pencil metaphor:

When reflecting on why every teacher isn't using their computers and Internet connections productively when schools have had computers since the early 80s and the Internet has been in schools since the early 90s, I came up with this metaphor for the various positions people assume in relation to the uptake of information and communications technologies. It might apply at other times of change as well.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 7/02/2006

In Nine things marketers ought to know about salespeople, Seth Godin comments on the expectations that sales people have of marketers, plus two that marketers should expect of sales people. Go read it... he makes some really good points.

(No really, go read it.)

(Did you? OK.)

I originally posted a negative screed about sales people but then reconsidered. Seth's points are all excellent. What is the best way that we in product management can help sales people? Answer: deliver better products. Too many product managers are devoting too much of their time to helping individual sales people close deals; too few are focused on helping development create better products. Recognize that selling technology products is hard but selling great technology products is much, much easier. Product managers must understand the life of a sales person and learn to help them. Here's how: help the company deliver better products faster.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/29/2006

Jensen Harris comments in An Office User Interface Blog : Let's Talk About Customization:

One topic that has come up frequently in our private beta newsgroups as well as here in blog comments from time to time is the issue of customization. As with every component of the Office 2007 user interface redesign, we put a lot of thought into how much customization to provide. Many of you have been passionate in conveying feedback that you wish the UI had absolute customizability. As in my article on the size of the Ribbon, I'm going to lay the facts out on the table and hopefully it will help you to at least understand the rationale behind the decisions we made (even if you wish we had made different ones.)

And yet... fewer that 2% of users actually customize the toolbars. Microsoft developers do, you & I do perhaps, certainly those of us who are beta-testing 2007 do, but are we statistically relevant? Given the market facts of how people actually use the product, these requests are not valid. A few things become clear (at least to me): 1) Developers and power users--who usually want and demand the ability to customize--are not the typical users of this product; 2) since so few customize, getting the default implementation is imperitive; and 3) buyers often ask for stuff that users don't want.

Product managers need to know features requested by the buyers but also understand which are relevant to users.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/27/2006

from Seth's Blog:

In my travels, the group that wants to know the most about marketing, and seems to know the most about marketing (except, of course, for marketers) is engineers. Software engineers and programmers, to be specific.

Why? I think it's because online marketing is particularly interesting and often allied with programming techniques. That and the fact that programmers toil long and hard and get bitter pretty quickly when some marketing dork screws up their efforts.

Read more in Ten things programmers might want to know about marketers.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/27/2006

Gartner reported that companies spent $3.7 Billion USD on application development tools in 2004, with a 5% annual growth rate. The Standish Group has shown that 40% to 60% of project failures are due to requirements failures. At least 1/3 of the money spent on getting more efficient at coding is being wasted--it should be spent on writing the right software. Read more in Companies Will Waste $1B This Year on Software Tools.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/23/2006

Kathy at Creating Passionate Users asks Do your graphics say the wrong thing?: "If a picture really is worth a thousand words, which words? Graphics are usually the best tool we've got for sending a message--instructions, sign, marketing, entertainment, interface, etc.-- but what are we doing to make sure the person viewing the image sees the message we intended?"

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/19/2006

As a Product Manager, your scope of responsibilities calls upon you to get involved across the board in all aspects of the product. There's plenty of work to be done for product requirements, Marketing, Sales, Development, and Professional Services.In order to be effective as a Product Manager, you need to identify those areas in your organization where there are weaknesses or gaps, and bring your talents and efforts to bear to fill in those gaps.

In fact, that idea of 'filling in the gaps' might be one of the best ways to define a Product Manager.

Read more in How to Make Your Product Succeed.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/17/2006

"Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf." In My First BillG Review Joel Spolsky remembers the day his spec was reviewed--and understood--by BillG and the ramifications of technical people making technical decisions.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/16/2006

A key design difference between Windows and Linux is the assumption of an operator. Windows assumes there is one; Linux assumes there isn't. Or to put it another way, a command that works correctly has no output or confirmation in Linux while Windows users expect a response even if it's just a modal alert. In An Office User Interface Blog, Jensen Harris writes about what happens when a Windows program doesn't confirm: "One of the things we've tried to do from time to time is reduce the number of modal alerts that pop up as part of working with Office. Most people don't spend the time to read the text of message boxes--as a result, unless there's an action that needs to be taken, most people just click OK." Read more in The Spelling Check is Complete.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/15/2006

Barbara Nelson, John Milburn, and I will be speaking on Extreme Product Management at the Software Marketing Perspectives conference in San Jose this upcoming week. Get an idea of what we'll be talking about here. We'll also be hanging out at the booth in the exhibit hall between presentations. If you're at the conference, be sure to come by and say "hi!"

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/11/2006

I've just bought a digital SLR camera from Canon and it has me thinking about pricing. Canon is offering a $100 rebate if you buy before August 1--hmmm, just about the time the new Sony SLR camera is planned to ship, the one I've been waiting for. So, for basically the same price, I can get a "better" camera sooner. Sounds like a good deal! Canon has used a rebate to offer predatory pricing without reducing the actual price of their camera. Good combination of competitive intelligence and pricing strategy.

The camera is a delight but the rebate process is troublesome. I think I've spent an hour getting all the paperwork together. Do they make it difficult on purpose? Yes, I think they do! The $100 incentive helps one decide to buy yet they don't actually have to pay the $100. So they make an offer (like the Dr Scholl's guarantee) and then make it difficult to receive the offer (like Dr Scholl's--did you keep your receipt? And can you find it six months later?) And I still fear that I've done something wrong and will get a "so sorry, you messed up" response from their fulfillment service.

Coupons and rebates are methods of offering different prices to different personas. Those who are price sensitive are beguiled by the option while those who aren't don't care either way. The offer is effective before the sale but somehow less relevant after the sale. It's buying versus using criteria.

Can we use this technique in B2B? It certainly seems to affect the B2C sales cycle!

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/11/2006

Sawtooth Software offers an series of papers on Online Surveys and Conjoint Analysis.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/04/2006

Few things have more power to build customer loyalty than holding a customer conference. Just as true, few things require as much preparation, on-site work, and expense. The customer conferences your company holds can be critical to the long term health of your product and your company.

The headaches, expense, and staff time required for a conference are guaranteed. But the payoff is not, and that's why it's so important to assess your product--and your organization's--situation and goals and determine what your aim is for a customer conference, then make strategic and tactical decisions accordingly.

Product Managers can provide good input on customer needs and preferences, as well as what your company needs from its customer base, to ensure that important decisions are made to create a successful customer experience.

Read Holding A Successful Customer Conference for ideas about holding a successful customer conference that enhances the reputation and success of your product.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/03/2006

Here's a delightful video spoof of Blackberry users.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/02/2006

Rich Mironov writes, "Tech Support (aka Customer Support) is on many executives' lists of outsource-able functions. I've been talking with Tech Support teams at several startups, however, and see real value in a dedicated team that helps customers love you. Here's my contrarian view on getting more out of support teams." Read more in Crowding Out Tech Support.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/02/2006

In June's Pragmatic Marketing update, we explore the impact of Extreme Programming on Product Management.

Extreme Programming and other forms of agile development are sweeping into the vendor world. With emphasis on quick iterations and brevity in artifacts, the new approach to planning documentation is a breath of fresh air. Yet there are some who say that product management is the enemy, that product managers will try to impose structure, that product management will require detail where none is necessary. Fundamentally, some say that product management stands for everything that agile is not. Read our take on this issue in Extreme Product Management.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 6/01/2006

In productmarketing.com Issue 3, we explore The New Rules of PR, Building a Better Beta, Prioritizing Software Requirements with Kano Analysis, and a case study of product management at Thomson Medstat.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/30/2006

Successful projects require automated tools for both developers and testers. While much has been written about development tools, Scott Sehlhorst writes this about testing tools:

Automated testing has become a critical component of software product success. Processes like continuous integration require test automation to be effective. Unit testing requires automated testing to be effective as a rapid-development tool. Whitebox testing is almost always done with automation. More and more blackbox testing is being done with automation. A team without a good approach to automated testing is working at a severe disadvantage, and is arguably doomed to extinction.

Read more about test automation in Test Smarter, Not Harder.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/30/2006

Is this a good idea? Interfacing your running shoes with an iPod could be cool or it could be another "possible but stupid" idea. I hope they tested it with some serious runners before they launched it. Or is it yet another "golfing partnership"?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/28/2006

The Office 2007 team wants to know what you think about the features of the beta version. They write, "The best tool to use to give us feedback on Office 2007 Beta 2 is called Send a Smile. Install the Send a Smile tool and two icons are added to the notifications area of the taskbar over by the clock: a happy face to click when you want to give us positive feedback and a sad face to click when there's something you don't like." Read more in Tell Us What You Think About Office 2007 Beta 2.

The tool provides an easy way to send feedback--positive or negative--and sends a screen shot of what you were attempting to do when you clicked the smiley. Pretty clever. (Unfortunately the installation requires a somewhat arduous sign-up/sign-in process.)

And remember, Microsoft is not selling direct but through distribution; couldn't you do something similar in your products?

What are you doing to solicit feedback?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/28/2006

Michael writes, "Don't mindlessly copy features that competitive products have. Focus instead on features that competitive products don't have but customers need." Read his excellent story on the typical 'listening to competitors instead of customers' in Sun Tzu on Product Strategy - Part 1.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/28/2006

Scott Sehlhorst writes,

Sailboats can sail into the wind because the sail acts like a wing. Why did we wait decades until someone actually used a wing instead of a sail? We've had the data since the Wright Brothers built the first wind tunnel a hundred years ago. People were trying to make sails better instead of making sailboats different. We had to wait until someone had a differentiated innovation.

Sailboat designers weren't focused on the market requirement - make sailboats faster. They were focusing on a product specification - make a better sail. Read more in Differentiation vs. Improvement.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/26/2006

Chuck McKay reminds us that it ain't the price that matters. When will your sales people learn this?

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/26/2006

Kristin Zhivago writes,

I recently interviewed dozens of salespeople for a client as the first step in redesigning the selling section of their reseller portal. The salespeople were very clear about what they wanted: Information they could use to answer the questions customers were asking about the manufacturer's products. They wanted to be able to find this information in a couple of clicks. They wanted to spend their time selling, not searching for the information they needed to sell. Here's what you need to do to make sure your sales force has the information they need at their fingertips.

Read more in The tools your sellers need from your website.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/26/2006

You know, I think I posted this--or something like it--before. Must the product manager have to specify everything in the requirements or should the developers know how to be good?

I love my Garmin Nuvi--it's a small GPS that I can take anywhere. Periodically I like to update the software, not that I really need to since it's working just fine but I like to keep "current."

So I jump on the Garmin web site, download the web updater and the problems begin. First, the software is installed at C:\ instead of in the program directory where it belongs. That really bugs me! Must the product manager have to specify everything in the requirements or should the developers know how to be good? "The product shall install in the Program directory" seems an unnecessary stricture.

Then I run the updater which does some type of LiveUpdate and downloads the new software. After some confusion about how I should reboot the GPS, it asks, "Do you want to install version 3.30?" Cool. It reinstalls the software but deletes all the configuration information from version 3.20. Huh? I had set up preferences plus a few dozen Favorites that are now gone. In what world do the developers feel that a clean install should be the default? Must the product manager have to specify everything in the requirements or should the developers know how to be good? "The product shall retain preferences, configuration, and saved locations from previous versions." Yeesh!

But I'm patient--or perhaps I'm an idiot--so I decide to re-enter all my saved locations. But the GPS thinks I'm in Kansas (since that's where Garmin is based I'm guessing). Now I have to go outside so the GPS can find out where I am. I'm wandering up and down the driveway for ten minutes while it finds itself. How do I set my "Home" location again? Do I just save as string "Home" or is there a menu option somewhere? I forget. Now what's Bob's address again? Lemme look that up in my address book and then re-learn how to save an address that is not my current location. Durn it! Never mind; I'll just enter it next time I go to Bob's house. And since it doesn't save my preferences from one release to another, there's really no need to stay current on the software. And certainly no "lock-in" for me to continue using Garmin when I make my next purchase.

Must the product manager have to specify everything in the requirements or should the developers know how to be good?

What does "good" mean? Good programmers adhere to industry standards--at least when it makes sense. Put your programs in the programs directory; don't corrupt or destroy data; retain preferences and customization between releases--or at least offer to convert them; be clear on how to complete any operation that is critical but rarely performed--such as installation and version upgrades.

To say that these should be in the requirements is a cop-out; it's just lazy programming. It's programming that says "I don't really care." Product managers shouldn't have to specify everything; developers should know enough about their target environment and customer to know how to be "good."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/21/2006

"It's not always the stories that we tell to prospects and consumers that matter. It's often the stories we tell ourselves. In talking with companies that are unhappy with the way they are growing, I find two common themes (and one a little less often)." Read the Three Barriers in Seth's Blog.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/16/2006

Scott Sehlhorst offers clarity on requirements artifacts and roles in the development process. Read One Man's Trash on his blog.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/12/2006

The initial product launch may be the only time that sales people get information about your product. Your sales people probably have more information about your competition's products and strategy than they do about your own. Think about it. How much time do your sales people spend learning about your product? And how much time do they spend learning about the competition? And being reminded constantly of the competition by their customers?

Sales people need to be schooled continually in the value of your product. By making product information available and accessible, you can give sales people the tools they need to help themselves. Read more in On-going sales education.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/11/2006

In another post, Geoff Moore writes,

You have some success, some momentum, and therefore some inertia, and it is the inertia that has you worried. By design, inertia resists change. This is a good thing, as long as you are headed in a direction you want to go. But when the market changes, inertia acts against your future interests. Now you are right to be worried. So you raise the topic of innovation in hopes of getting some insight. Good luck. My recent research leads me to believe that innovation, as a topic, leads the business writing industry in twaddle per page.

With that in mind, let me dispel what, in David Letterman tradition, we might call the Top Ten Myths about Business Innovation.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/10/2006

And speaking of pricing, Geoff Moore discusses when it makes sense to make pricing sacrifices in pursuit of market share--and when it doesn't.

Competing for market share drives some of the best--and some of the worst--management decisions in business. Companies are particularly susceptible to going astray at the end of the quarter when they seek to use market share impact to justify horrendous deals--that is, deals that sell out all future quarters in order to make the current one. Here are some guidelines to help you stay on the straight and narrow.

Read Competing for Market Share--Maybe for guidelines on pricing and strategy.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/10/2006

Pricing is a mysterious thing. We talk about pricing in Practical Product Management and find that almost everyone has a point of view and a recent challenge with pricing. "Do I charge a lot or not?" "Should I do a site license?" "How about different prices by segment?"

Joel Spolsky explores the conundrum of pricing:

"You've just released your latest photo-organizing software. Through some mechanism which will be left as an exercise to the reader, you've managed to actually let people know about it. Maybe you have a popular blog or something. Maybe Walt Mossberg wrote a rave review in the Wall Street Journal. One of the biggest questions you're going to be asking now is, 'How much should I charge for my software?' "

Read Joel's strategies for pricing in Camels and Rubber Duckies.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/10/2006

Pam writes,

"I have met you in meeting rooms, hallways, on conference calls and on the internet. You work for large corporations which you detest. You arrive at your cubicle every morning with a vaguely sick feeling in your stomach and begin your day of work. You have too much to do. Co-workers left and no one replaced them, so you have inherited their job and all the work that went with it.

"I did what I could to comfort you and give you hope. But since I am helpless to change the overall state of corporations, here is my best advice."

Read six life lessons for dealing in a cubicle world in Open letter to employees across the corporate world.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/10/2006

"Our customer doesn't know what he wants," complained Sandy. "I try to get him to talk about the product and tell me what he wants, but it's like pulling teeth."

Sound familiar? Read more in Building a Requirements Foundation Through Customer Interviews by Esther Derby.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/07/2006

Tom Hogan of Catapult Direct advocates more customer focus and less product focus. He writes:

Despite being in its thirties, high-tech marketing is still an industry in its adolescence. And like any adolescent, it's unsure of where it wants to go but knows better than anyone else how to get there. Part of the problem is the crowd that Marketing runs with. Marketing hangs out almost exclusively with 'Product Guys' - not salespeople. Product Guys are like those guys who go on first dates and talk endlessly about themselves. Finally, as the evening wanes and the date is utterly bored, they smile engagingly and say, 'But enough about me. Let's talk about things I like to do...'For these Product Guys, it's all about 'The Product' and its capabilities. On sales calls, when talking about The Product, they just can't stop. 'But enough about the features, let's talk specs...'

Read more in Time for Software Marketing to Grow Up. I wish he used the term "Customer focused" instead of "Sales focused," as the latter implies that we should focus more on our sales people. And most people know that that is a formula for failure too.

posted by Steve Johnson @ 5/02/2006

from Advertising Age: "Marketing and psychology are closely related. If psychology is the 'systematic study of human behavior,' then marketing is the 'systematic study of human behavior in the marketplace. The halo effect also works in marketing. What's behind the phenomenal success of Apple Computer? In a word, the iPod." Read the full post...

posted by Steve Johnson @ 4/21/2006

Scott Sehlhorst comments in Gartner research on Agile Requirements Definition and Management: "Gartner has a research report available for $95, titled Agile Requirements Definition and Management Will Benefit Application Development (report #G00126310 Apr 2005). The report is 7 pages long and makes an interesting read. Gartner makes a set of predictions for 2009 about requirements definition and management (RDM) systems, and the software created with RDM tools. Gartner misattributes several benefits of good process to RDM tools. We give them a 3.5/7 for their analysis - check out the details here."

posted by Steve Johnson @ 4/20/2006

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