The State of Product Management: Tweets, Conversations and Near Quotes….

While not at all scientific, I’ve been talking more to folks doing software product management and I have compiled some near quotes, found some twitter posts and made some of the quotes up.  The general theme from folks is that something has to change inside their organization.  Everyone’s story is a little different – revenues are up, quality is down, resource reductions goofin up product delivery, profit is down and management expectations are just a little too aggressive for the marketplace. So here are some things I sorta overheard over the past 90 days:

“Yeah so I’m expected to run all strategy, product lines and market facing activities with no direct influence on development and a Sr. Manager title.” – Sr. Product Manager – 12/08/2009 at ~11:30 am

“It’s not like you can assume business as usual” @Brioneja

“So the market is requiring contractual service levels and the customer support folks say that’s unacceptable and aren’t going to do it.  Yeah – that should be a CEO level discussion topic.” – Dir, Product Marketing – 12/08/2009 ~1PM

“So I had to spend like 85 person hours of cross-functional time to convince everyone that promotional marketing required a process based approach and why a value/problem based approach was the better idea over offering a 50% discount” – Product Manager – 12/08/2009 6PM

“Dude, I’m so glad I’m a technical product manager – those folks who don’t have a specified role with expectations can’t be having fun.  All I have to worry about is exiting the sprint, doing demos and training folks.” – Product Owner – November

“Is it roadmap update season already?” – Product Management Evangelist

“Last time I checked, you have a quota and I have a P&L – we have different time lines on our goals for the business.” VP, Product – October

“I need suggestions for managing ideas from anywhere into, through, and out of the product dev cycle. Software? #prodmgmt” – @DanielRunion

“Just give me the goals, a bunch of poorly written epics and I’ll give you a finely groomed backlog” – Product Owner – November

“Roadmaps are evidence of strategy. Not a list of features.”  – Product Management Consultant

“So we are working the third strategic plan of the year, of course you need the next big thing before the first one’s 50% done.” – Product Marketing Manager – Early November

“Going to be tough working there… I’m thinking I can’t triple the product revenue with reduced resources and the same marketing budget the last guy had.  Does that make me negative?… Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna take the job though.” – Soon to be employed Director of Product Management. – 11/20-ish

“I guess it’s exciting to be in charge of the biggest piece of shit in a dying market” – Dir, Product Management 12/4

“I’ve got 18 months of cost reduction and platform consolidation to wring out profit.  Next year’s metric is going to be so easy.” – Sr. Product Manager – 12/13/09 2PM

“Don’t get me wrong, I think big thoughts all day long and I like it, but at some point we need a decision and might just need a little time to build it.” Director of Development – 12/10.

“Is connecting online to Product Managers in your locale important?” @trevorrotzien

“roadmapping session drinking game: drink when you hear the word “refactor”” – @ptyoung

“I just chuckle at my “I see stupid people” coffee mug, I rotate that with my Pragmatic mug – “your opinon although interesting is irrelevant” – the sad thing is no one has called me out on it after 18 months – REALLY?!?!” – Interim Project Manager in search of Product Management Gig – 12/14/09

“I think CEO”s are beginning to think Product Marketing is the new MARCOM.”  – Product Marketing Consultant, 11/24

“in an adolescent market, a 1% position is completely unsustainable.” – CrankyPM

December 16, 2009 by
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Software Market Assertion: Why are so many software companies SO disfunctional (sic)?

softwaremaven

corrigan

Things are tough all over for software product managers. Layoffs, mergers, the general market and all kinds of spooky downturn stuff, but that just might not be all that is afoot which just might make some software companies increasingly dysfunctional.   Thomas Friedman’s recent piece on “The Do It Yourself Economy” asserts:

In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. economy today is actually being hit by two tsunamis at once: The Great Recession and the Great Inflection.

The Great Inflection is the mass diffusion of low-cost, high-powered innovation technologies – from hand-held computers to Web sites that offer any imaginable service – plus cheap connectivity. They are transforming how business is done. The Great Recession you know.

The “good news” is that the Great Recession is forcing companies to take advantage of the Great Inflection faster than ever…

Pervasive connectivity and access to most of the needed capabilities online for the typical user is presenting markets new ways to manage transactional interactions for businesses, marketers and buyers.   Doubt it?

  • Are you sending more text messages?
  • Did you get yourself one of those Twitter accounts?
  • How are those people from high school on Facebook?
  • Did you upload your latest presentation on Slideshare?
  • How’s that Ning Community you set up for your customers?
  • Did you update your leads via a mobile application for salesforce.com/insert other business application?
  • Needed to send a file which was too big for email through an online tool?

We’ve gone mobile, we like our applications in bite sized feature sets and if you could deliver it as a service that would be best for the prosumer.   This prosumer driven cloud consumption has just got to be impacting the fundamental mechanics of the software markets, right?

While I have no idea what was the driver to @softwaremaven’s question, I do think the the whole impact of SaaS/the cloud and the rise of the prosumer is making product management tough in legacy software companies and just might be making them increasingly dysfunctional.

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December 14, 2009 by
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The Santa Hat Believer’s Club

santa-hatI typically blog about technology product management, private equity, venture capital or monetizing social media.  Today I’d like to write about something a little more holiday-centric – the Santa Hat Believer’s Club.

I have loved the Christmas season since I was a child.  Even as I approach the ripe age of 50 it is my favorite time of the year.  I remember to this day almost every Christmas from when I was a child.  My parents had a set of wonderful holiday traditions and regardless of the situation we were in our family always had a great Christmas season.  To this day my Mother remembers the Christmas when my three brothers and I served as Altar boys at Mass and my Dad was the lector.  When I was an adult, my father maintained a gift giving tradition of new socks, a ball, a book, and a game for Christmas.  It was certainly a bit corny, but it was just one of those simple traditions we enjoyed at Christmas time.

Today, I am a blessed man.  I have a wonderful wife and five kids ages 24, 20, 12, 11, & 9.  In 2001 I started a Christmas tradition of my own that has become to known as the Santa Hat Believer’s Club.  The rules of the club are pretty simple.  Starting the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Day I wear a Santa Hat every time I leave the house, regardless of where I am going.  Also, all of the stations on my car radio are set to the station that plays Christmas music 24 hours a day.  Finally, I end every discussion with someone I meet or talk to with either a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays as appropriate.  Two other members of the club, my daughters Marisa (11) and Jackie (9) do the same thing.  My 12 year old daughter Lily has been a card carrying member for years but decided that in the 7th grade it wasn’t too cool to be seen wearing a Santa hat to school every day for a month.  My dear wife Leti simply thinks I am kind of nuts.

So why do I do this?  I may be an incurable romantic but in the United States the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when everyone at least tries to set aside their worries and concerns and celebrate the season, their faith, friends, and family.  Random acts of kindness abound and charity and gift giving are the norm, versus the exception.  I enjoy when people chuckle and smile at me when they see me and my children wearing our Santa hats when we are stopped in traffic or we are cruising the aisles at the local grocery store.  More than one person has stopped us and asked about our hats and the ‘Club’ and a few of them vow to adopt the tradition as well.  Wearing the ‘Hat’ helps to remind me to celebrate the season every day

Perhaps nothing sums up better the philosophy of the Santa Hat Believer’s Club than a story from 102 years ago – the infamous ‘Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus’.  According to Wikipedia “In 1897, Dr. Philip O’Hanlon, an assistant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia (1889–1971), whether Santa Claus really existed. Virginia O’Hanlon had begun to doubt there was a Santa Claus, because her friends had told her that he did not exist.  Dr. O’Hanlon suggested she write to the New York Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” While he may have been passing the buck, he unwittingly gave one of the paper’s editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, an opportunity to rise above the simple question, and address the philosophical issues behind it.”

Here’s the editorial that Church ran on the front page:

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’  Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”

“VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Please accept my best wishes for a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, or Happy Holidays as the case may be.  I encourage you to take out a trial membership in the Santa Hat Believer’s Club.  Dig out your Santa hat and wear it around town for an afternoon and see how many smiles and chuckles you can create.

December 12, 2009 by
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