Talking Directly with (Real) Customers
I speak/write incessantly about the importance of product managers talking directly with their users and buyers (collectively “customers”), not…
Customers
14 posts
Let’s Abandon Customers and Users
I spend a lot of time sifting through documents, positioning and stories – trying to figure out who we’re talking…
Selling Vs. Learning
I talk with product managers all the time, and always ask whether they are talking directly with end users and…
Why (Agile) Program Management Tools Don’t Help (Agile) Product Managers
Agile development teams need tools for tracking the creation of software. There are dozens of well-known, purpose-built offerings including Jira,…
Tuesday is Female Pronoun Persona Day
As a long-time B2B infrastructure product manager, I’m used to thinking about my customers as guys. IT managers and…
Enhancement Requests are Personal and Political, Not Just Analytical
As deeply data-driven, analytical product managers (or product owners or business analysts or development leads), we’d like to pretend…
EOL Cookbook
This product end-of-life recipe has been hiding on my hard drive for dog’s years, but never got published. It’…
Does Your Product Suck?
It’s been a tough week on the technical front, with a variety of products failing to perform their core…
Grocers and Chefs: Software Service Models
This article captured an April 2007 talk I did at SVPMA. The original slide deck is here. I’m talking…
Avoiding the Post-Course Correction
As early as 1961, Soviet and American space scientists planned for mid-course corrections: those tiny bursts of rocket power designed…
Insider Thinking
Product managers and other product champions spend a lot of their time driving internal processes and decisions — the daily incremental…
The Strategic Secret Shopper
I’ve often played the “secret shopper,” hired to approach key competitors as a customer or as a consultant to…