I had a funny discussion about roadmaps recently.

Me: If you can't hit your dates, then you shouldn't distribute roadmaps.
Client: But we must distribute a roadmap to sales people.
M: And what happens when you do?
C: They give it to clients.
M: And what happens?
C: They attach the roadmap to a contract.
M: How's that working for you?
C: Well, we usually miss our dates.
M: If you can't hit your dates, then you shouldn't distribute roadmaps.
C: But we must distribute a roadmap to sales people.
M: And what happens when you do?...

In Don’t Build a Stupid Product Roadmap!, Scott Sehlhorst at Tyner Blain writes,

A product roadmap is the product manager’s equivalent of a project manager’s rolling wave planning. In a sound-bite, you provide short-term details (for the next release), and long term “broad brush” discussions. If you don’t plan your product to address the needs of a particular market, and then execute against that plan, the only way you will succeed is by luck.

That's it. A roadmap is a plan, not a commitment. It says, "here are our current plans. Our objectives may change and we'll change our roadmap accordingly."

As they say, If you don't know where you're going, how will you get there?

In our Roadmapping seminar, we provide five different tools for articulating product strategy. The roadmap is evidence that you actually do have a strategy. The roadmap is the tool of choice for communicating with executives, sales people, and clients. And in fact, seeing your product roadmap is often a legitimate request from your clients and your sales people.

However, and I've ranted about this before, things don't change nearly as quickly as everyone thinks. That is, market problems exist for years and years. It's your awareness of those problems that changes day-to-day. I'd prefer that your long-term roadmap focus on industry problems and persona goals. In talking with a client about product capabilities, this client's feature request becomes critical. Talking to another client results in another critical feature request. As you talk about features, you discover the delta between the problem and your current solution. But if product managers actually interviewed the clients instead of just reacting to sales demands, we would see these problems years in the future.

You don't hear problems with your mouth. You need to create an environment where you can hear problems... with your ears open and your mouth closed. Better yet, see the problems by observing your ideal persona in a working experience.

You can observe a lot by watching.--Yogi Berra

Art Petty asks, "Marketers, Are Trade Shows Extinct Yet?"

I used to love trade shows, especially the ones in Las Vegas and Reno. Maybe because no one cared if you had a drink at 10am and you could smoke everywhere. Perhaps it's because I'm secretly tacky. In any case, I don't do many trade shows any more. When I do attend, I'm there as a speaker rather than an exhibitor.

That's always been my rule: if we exhibit, we must also speak. Some conferences, like the government, want sponsor's money but not the sponsor. You want my money? Then you get me as a speaker. Don't want me as a speaker? No money for you.

Trade shows are hard to justify based on ROI; webinars are easy to justify.

I love conferences--you are face to face with the industry, competition and customers--but I don't do them much any more; they're too expensive.

I hate webinars--the format is stilted, you can't see facial expressions, the Q&A process is confusing--but I do them all the time because they're rather cheap and usually effective. (I'm doing a webinar on The Four Roles of product management. Join me!)

A product designer is--or should be--a valued member of any product team. Cooper's Kim Goodwin writes,

These days, more and more companies are recognizing that design and innovation are essential to their strategy and bottom line: effective design sells products and services, improves your position in the marketplace, and turns customers into loyal advocates for your brand. If you've gotten your organization to this point, take a moment to enjoy your success! Creating demand for design is no small achievement. Unfortunately, to reap the full benefits of design, you probably still have a lot of work to do on your organization's structure, processes, and culture.

Read more in Where does design belong in your organization?

How can you make money when your product is available free?

I've just purchased Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's a clever young adult (YA) novel about being a kid in America in the very near future--with access to so much technology yet victimized by an overbearing government. I'm only six chapters in so far but I love this guy's writing. (Hint: don't read this book if you strongly support the Patriot Act.)

In a case of "new rules" marketing, he is offering the book through the traditional vendors but also via free downloads!

Doctorow explains,

For me--for pretty much every writer--the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

And when you love a book, don't you tell people? And don't you buy a new copy after you lend the old as a gift? I've done that with Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, The Old Man's War, Pillars of the Earth plus Inmates are Running the Asylum, The Deadline, The PC is not a Typewriter, New Rules of Marketing, and others.

The same is true of products. The challenge for most products--and product marketers--is overcoming obscurity. One way for people to find you is to publish. Fill your web site with white papers, ebooks, news releases, implementation guides... rich content written for users and technicians, not just brochureware for buyers.

Just win me over! And then I'll buy and buy and buy.

My friend Saeed has decided to start a little controversy. Is product management really a profession? Can it be defined? Can it be learned? In particular, why is it that we say we want to be strategic but all of the discussions and webinars and articles seem to be about tactics: product launch, templates, leadgen, running the agile stand-up, writing better user stories?

Saeed asks,

What have we done in the last 10 years to make our lot better? And I don’t just mean incrementally better? I mean significantly better?

What I hear from hundreds of seminar attendees over the years is that new product managers need help figuring out where to spend their time. Or to put it another way, three days of training is better than zero days.

Adam from Write That Down adds:

Is product management hard? No. The trick is not being the best marketer, accountant, UI designer, developer, sales person all rolled in to one. The trick is to make sure that features get built, marketing communicates them, support can answer questions, and sales can sell.

So let's sound off. Post a comment below or on Saeed's site about the results that you have seen based on strategic product management.

I just love being quoted in a news release! It makes me seem so clever, particularly when I use long sentences that are also well-written. I don't even care that the release came from my own marketing department. Is that sad?

My friend Art Petty writes Too Many Projects Chasing Too Few Resources:

Learning how to say "No" and how to say "No More" are two of the most difficult lessons for a maturing organization.

In particular, Art comments:

The firm that failed had developed such an inbred culture of selling development commitments to make sales that all sense of strategy was lost in the never-ending chase to fulfill.

It doesn't take long before selling development commitments turns into 'selling more than we can deliver'. And 'selling what we cannot deliver' isn't far behind. Like Icarus, these "anything for a sale" companies seem to fly high--but only for a while.

One point I often make is this: deals outside of your market segment are always a bad idea. But invariably someone brings up contract revenue. For enough revenue, many companies will do anything.

The issue isn't contract revenue; the issue is market revenue. Not "can you sell it?" but "can you sell it again and again?" With limited resources--and isn't that the case for all of us--you must focus your efforts on delivering complete products in markets where you can be the dominate vendor.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." -- Groucho Marx

Lately we've been renting from Enterprise to save $5. I've had two or maybe three car rentals so far--and today I received my "Enterprise Plus" membership.

Honestly, joining the elite Enterprise car rental club seems quite a non-distinction.
They said, "to activate your account online, visit enterprise.com/activate" and I got:

"It's just one more Plus that makes renting easy." -- Jim Runnels, Sr VP, Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Yeah, right.

Product Beautiful's Paul Young, along with Pragmatic Marketing's John Milburn and others will lead Austin's first ProductCamp. ProductCamp is a collaborative, user-run event focused on Product Management and Marketing topics (see a description of the recent Silicon Valley P-Camp, if you are not familiar with BarCamp events). Paul writes,

ProductCamp Austin will happen on Saturday June 14th. Right now we are lining up sponsors and venues, and are focused on planning and execution. We need your help. No ProductCamp or BarCamp can be planned by one person. Thankfully I already have several people who have raised their hands as willing to step in and help shoulder the load, like John Milburn, Roger Cauvin and Rob Grady.

If you're in the Austin area this June, you'll definitely want to participate.

My friend Bill wrote,

In our class, you told an amusing story relating to poorly designed user interfaces. The example you used was pay-at-the-pump card readers, where the user has to interpret some convoluted diagram to insert the credit card properly, so that the mag-strip is read.

I pulled into a gas station today and sure enough the pump had the exact card reader technology you described. But, my purchase experience was not without the required dissatisfaction. I accidentally selected the wrong fuel grade. On every gas pump I use, the grade choices are listed sequentially from left-to-right from lowest to highest octane. Not this pump, this pump had the choices in the exact opposite order: far left was highest octane, instead of economy, which I wanted to purchase. I selected high octane by mistake.

I wonder sometimes if stuff like this is poor design and/or poor implementation--or if it's a trick to sell more premium gas. The left pump is always the cheapest; it's a de facto standard. And now you feel cheated. This thinking got them an extra $1 this time but you'll never return to this station so they lost a customer for lifetime.

As a serial entrepreneur, my friend David has learned a few lessons about running a company. He shares his experiences with the world of startups on his blog. In the importance of knowing your sales process, he comments,

Regardless of the type of business you have I think it's really important to understand in a reproducible way how to sell your product or service.

Before you hire the first sales person, someone with both product and sales savvy should define a repeatable sales process--or at least a straw man of one. Much of typical sales methodologies is really product management methodology: define the personas, identify their problems, and craft a clear message (ie, positioning) to help them choose your solution. Follow a process to move someone from a prospect to a satisfied client. Write the process down and that's the basis of your internal product training.

If you've ever attended sales methodology training, you know that the best sales people take this repeatable approach to selling.

"How do I get my executives on board?"

It's a fairly common issue with product managers. After taking a Pragmatic Marketing course, they can see the value of being strategic; they even have some practical techniques for implementing change. But how do they get the message to colleagues and executives?

How 'bout sending them an ebook?

Over the years I have been asked frequently for help selling the idea of product management. This ebook is one that I've wanted to write for quite a while. Download The Strategic Role of Product Management: How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy.

The ebook explores how product management can be the focal point for product strategy, explains the difference between product management and product marketing, and shows how the role can add value in both traditional and agile environments.

Share it with your friends and colleagues. Post it on your company’s intranet. Pass it around the office. Print off a couple of copies to leave in a public area. Blog about it.

In 2008, we're going to be bringing many new tools to help sell the strategic value of product management to your executives. Keep watching this space.

The typical product manager is dealing with dozens--or hundreds--of emails every day. John Care offers some very effective techniques for dealing with emails.

Yes, there is indeed such as thing as a bad buyer. Sales people can't understand it but customer support people sure can. My friend Bob has a great post on this.

He writes,

How many of you have been burned by a customer who shouldn't have bought your product but did? When a company spends perfectly good money on a vendor solution it doesn't need or can't possible use successfully, the vendor loses more than the buyer - because buyers have this strange habit of talking to each other.

Go read Bob's post. I can't think of anything to add (although I really ought to say something about the Speedo).

My friend Scott has an interesting post on the overwhelming nature of email. He reports that Michael Arrington has 2400+ unread emails in his inbox. Here's a long-standing problem that many of us have, although perhaps not taken to this extreme. Join the discussion on how to solve this problem.

People (and markets) know they have problems; they just don't know how to solve them.

• Our email problems are legion (not even counting spam). We get too much of it; we can't find specific messages later; we often reply the same thing again and again.
• We knew we needed to connect individuals and businesses long before we had access to the internet. 
• I've known about Kensington's presenter's remote for years but rarely is one provided when I do speak at conferences.
• Wireless phones have too many buttons!
  
• TV remotes have too many buttons.
• The Amazon Kindle solves a big problem but dang! it has too many buttons.
  

What other problems have we lived with for years?

Meanwhile developers and engineers know about solutions but don't really know about market problems. So they assume that their problems are the same as everyone else's. Are your developers, your peers, your execs "regular people"?

That's where product management comes in. We need to build the bridge between the market's problems and the developers' solutions. But alas, in many situations, the product management role is merely to prioritize what development has already decided to build.

Where do those ideas come from? The effective product manager knows that problems come from the market.

I've been invited to speak at this year's Business of Software conference held on September 3 & 4 at the Seaport hotel on the Boston waterfront. The speakers so far include Joel Spolsky, Eric Sink, Richard Stallman, Dharmesh Shah and Jason Fried... plus me, of course.

More on this conference as it gets closer.

My friend Annie Peng Cui at Kent State University is doing a survey for her dissertation on the value of product management. Let's help her out. Take the survey here.

When developing personas, you may not need as much primary research as you think. Call your HR department and see if they have a hiring profile for the title of your persona. Thanks go to Mike for that great tip!

It is not really funny but... Sharper Image has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing declining sales, three straight years of losses, and litigation involving its Ionic Breeze air purifiers. Yes, I can see these are bad issues.

But maybe it's as simple as selling products that are possible but stupid doesn't work in the long-term. People don't want what they don't want. And no amount of perfume can overcome the stench of a pig product.

Our annual product management survey reveals that a typical product manager has three products to manage. The number of products per person tends to be higher in older companies but perhaps that's less a function of age and more a function of product revenue. Maybe the relevant comparison is revenue instead of products.

My friend Saeed at onProductManagement is running a survey to get some numbers on this issue. He writes,

After reading my article, “You can never have too many Product Managers“, the person asked me whether I knew of any published numbers that provide guidelines for the number of product managers a company should have relative to its revenue.

What do you think? Come offer your experiences to the survey. Saeed will post results on his web site soon.