Category: business
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Software product manager’s elevator pitch?
When I interview software product manager candidates, the first question I ask them is to give me their elevator pitch in one minute. Many candidates resemble a deer caught in the headlights and I am very surprised. If you cannot explain who you are, what you can do for the…
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Software Product Manager’s toolchest
I have been thinking lately of all the software tools and resources I use everyday to get my job done and to get better as a software product manager – here is my list in no priority order. 1) MS Office 2) Outlook 3) Google 4) GotoMeeting, Webex – to…
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Is Saas the real solution to address software piracy?
Software vendors have been struggling to find a solution to thwart software piracy with very limited success. Anywhere from 70-90% of software used in Asian countries like India, China, Vietnam and in the former Soviet republics is estimated to be pirated. There was nothing you could do when pirates made…
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9 elements of a good functional spec
A while back, I had written why a functional spec is needed in addition to a PRD. So what does a good functional spec need to contain? Here is what I consider elements of a good functional spec. I tend to use smaller paragraphs or bullets to make it readable.…
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Small decisions can impact product success …..
Last weekend, I volunteered to spend an hour at our local grocery store handing out flyers to shoppers on an upcoming Town hall vote on Grafton school feasibility study. We had a simple decision to make – do we hand out the flyer when shoppers are coming into the store…
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Five guidelines to prioritize feature requests
As a product manager, you are very likely to have more feature requests than what you can put out in a given release. In my case, a good product manager’s job at release planning is figuring out what to eliminate from consideration – you have to make hard decisions –…
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Small nuggets … Big payback
Recent news article about the airlines report how they are looking at flying slower to save fuel costs. Consider these numbers from the above article ….. $42 million – Southwest Airlines will save in fuel this year by extending each flight ONE to THREE minutes. $13.6 million – Jet Blue…
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Corporations ask for Mac, Apple says not interested …
The latest Business Week cover story reads Mac in the gray flannel suit and talks about how more and more corporations are now allowing their employees to use Macs in the office. Apple on the other hand has shown no interest in catering to this market. The above article is…
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You want to talk to customers – ask me, I was a customer once …
Have you heard this one before – I have – internal pundits claiming they know what the market wants because at one point in time (read “eons” ago, before your market segment even existed), they used to be in the customer’s shoes. “Hey, I used to do product design” or…
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Where do your customers get information?
When interviewing customers to determine their needs, take the time to also ask them where they get information that keep them up-to-date in their profession. 1) Are there organizations that they regard in high regard that a recommendation from such organizations is considered valued? 2) What magazines do they read…
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First experience on a US long distance train
I have been living in the US for the last 18 years and I have never traveled on a train over a long distance. This week, I had to travel to New York and decided to take the Acela Express. What a remarkable experience – I don’t think I will…
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Product Integration – Usability killer?
I used to own (until it was stolen:-( ) a Magellan Roadmate 700 series portable GPS system. The system was so simple to use – it did one thing – GPS and it did it very well. The controls were very easy to use and programming it for a trip…
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Working with recruiters – set the ground RULE !!
Once I finished my previous two posts on job hunting tips, I was asked by a friend who is now looking for a job on how to work effectively with recruiters during a job hunt. I have recently spoke to some HR Directors/Managers where this issue has come up as…
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Job hunting cheat sheet
In my previous post, I referred to a 1-2 page cheat sheet that I used to create for each company (say Company X) to which I had applied. Here are the key things that I used to have in the cheat sheet. 1) Market space – what industry is Company…
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Ten job hunting tips for a product manager
I had mentioned in my last post that I would post tips from my experience looking for a job as a product manager – in fact I had to do this twice in the last 7 months. So here is what worked for me … Remember one thing – job…
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Email and 7%
I happened to come across the notes taken during the Effective Networking seminar (run by Diane Darling) that I attended a year back. One of the things that was mentioned was that communication power is based on: 55% body language 38% voice/tone 7% words This means, whenever you send an…
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Love the customers who hate you
I have been a big proponent of online communities and social media – I have written at least two blog posts on this. So when the latest Business Week arrived with the main section titled “Consumer vigilantes” I could not put it down. The most interesting article among many dealing…
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Passion vs. decibels – How to manage vociferous customers
In my product management career, I have always had some users who were more vociferous than most of the others. Their decibel level when they asked for new enhancements or yelled at you for the bugs in the software was orders of magnitude higher than majority of the users. The…
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Help your customers buy …
I bought a new car last week. I was very clear what I needed – a Toyota Camry Hybrid and knew the exact options I needed. I did all my research on the web in reading user generated reviews, dealer invoice prices and so on. After spending about 3 hours…
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Avoid excuses for not conducting customer visits
Customer visits have always been one of my pet subjects because the only way I have learned to deliver good products is by getting out of the building and talking to real people who buy or will buy my products. At SolidWorks, customer visits was ingrained into our working culture…
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Free products like gmail – do users have a say?
For the last week, gmail has just stopped working for me. Boy, it has not been fun, being locked out of your personal emails. I also use google docs and the story is no different here – I am locked out of my documents as well. I have tried everything…
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Are you agile?
I have heard this question being asked a lot of times – do you use agile development methodology? How about scrum, how about spikes? I heard this asked yesterday. To tell you the truth, I have some idea what agile is but to me it sounds very much like the…
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Customer Service Experience
How often have you called customer service at credit card companies, airlines, medical benefits and you have been asked to enter information such as your credit card number, your zip code, your social security number, your frequent flyer number etc. and then finally when you get to a live person,…
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The beloved “Nano”
Last week, Indian automobile industry took a major step. Tata Motors, one of the companies in the revered Tata conglomerate unveiled “Nano” – the long talked about 1 lakh car (1 lakh = 100,000 and 1 lakh rupees = $2500 US). This was a dream come true for Ratan Tata…
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How best to ask for resources?
Imagine that you have to make a business case to your upper management for a product/project you want to get funded. There are two ways a product manager can ask for this: 1) I need $$$$$ and XXXXX number of people to do this project? 2) I have this idea…
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State of You?
As a product manager, you are quite busy doing product roadmaps, gathering requirements, working with cross functional teams, getting the messaging right,writing positioning statements etc. You are busy trying to do all the work with less time and resources available at your disposal. In the midst of this chaotic professional…
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3 types of words in positioning statements
Other day, I was talking to Jon Hirschtick (founder of SolidWorks and my previous employer) and we were talking about positioning statements. Jon had an interesting way to put it – he said words in any messaging consists of three types of words: Blather words: In other words, marketing buzzwords…
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It is not what you say but how you say it !!
Have you seen the latest HP’s TV ad that features Burton snowboards? In the ad, the narrator says ” … it still did not catch on, people just did’nt get it. Maybe it was not what we were saying, but how we were saying”. This is true with many products.…
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Pain points vs. Requirements
I was involved in a conversation last week where we were trying to unearth customer pain points. One of the software product managers explained that main pain points were integration and scalability. This is what set me thinking about the difference between pain points and requirements. The two are not…
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Balancing Strategy vs. Execution
Product Managers are responsible for managing the business of their products. This requires one to have a product strategy to ensure that the product continues to remain relevant to the marketplace in midst of new market trends and changing customer needs and also continues to provide a good size market…
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Need more than a PRD? Functional specs to the rescue
Product Managers are all familiar with writing MRDs (Market Requirements documents) and PRDs (Product requirements documents). Are these enough to communicate to engineering all the customer requirements that would result in engineering building a product that is usable by customers to solve their problems? Unfortunately in my experience, a PRD…
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How useful are the error messages?
Have you got error messages when using applications that have made you wonder whether a real person wrote these messages? It has happened to me numerous times. The best error message I have ever seen is when Pro/PDM, a CAD data management product from PTC once crashed with the error…
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Apple customer service complaints!!
My previous post was about the horrible customer experience at the Apple store. I find out that I am not alone – there are more and more stories on the internet how their customer service is bad. Here is a recent post on San Jose Mercury News – very much…
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Apple is all about sales – customer service sucks
Yesterday, my Mighty Mouse, only 10 months old and the one I purchased with my iMac, stopped working – all I could do was scroll down and not scroll up. I decided to take it to the nearest Apple store in Natick – about 25 miles away. I also had…
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Consumer in charge? – Great Video
Here is a great video that I came across produced by Geert Desager of Microsoft – watch for yourself, it is fun !!
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Wonderful customer experience – Fallon Clinic
My previous post was about how product managers should think more about customer experiences. I had mentioned about how I have had the most memorable product experiences when I bought my iPod and my iMac. Here is another one that is service related that has truly been enjoyable. For the…
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Customer experience – how often do you think about it?
Not often !! Think back to all the products that you have bought in your life – for how many of them has the buying/first usage experience been so good that you have remembered it. In my case – exactly two – iPod and iMac. In fact, I was so…
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What can we learn from the New England Patriots?
Over the last week, I cannot tell you how embarassed I have been to say that I am a New England Patriots fan? I have loved the Patriots since I moved to Boston in 1996. Them going to the Super Bowl my very first year here in Boston helped of…
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Remove the unnecessary so that necessary can speak !!
This morning, while walking through Terminal 3 of the San Francisco airport to get to my gate, I happened to notice the design museum display near the moving walkways. The museum is titled “From Prototype to Product: Thirty-three Projects from the Bay Area Design Community“.Behind each display, were quotes of…
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Who is a customer?
I was visiting the Nilgiri’s coffee shop on Brigade Road, here in Bangalore when I came across the following quote of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Indian Nation. I thought this was one of the best definitions of a customer that I have read: A customer is not an…
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Keep your customers informed !!
Many a times you may have to let your customers know about some bad news – implementation taking longer than expected, your inability to deliver on a committed feature on time, a bad bug in the just released software patch. In all these cases, be upfront with the customers on…
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What to look for in a product manager?
I have been asked quite a few times over the past couple of years in what skills are needed to do well as a product manager. While there is no guaranteed recipe for success as a product manager (a very versatile, wear-multiple-hat role), I look for some specific generic skills…
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Bazaar Buzz – New title for the blog
Well I am not good at naming things and that becomes obvious given how many times I have renamed my blog. It started with “Temple of the customer” – agreed a mouthful, then went to a bland and generic “Voice of the customer”. I think I have finally settled for…
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Web Innovator’s group meeting
I attended my second web innovator’s group meeting held last night at the Royal Sonnesta hotel in Cambridge. The event is hosted once every two months by David Beisel, who now works at Venrock (VC firm) in Cambridge. There were maybe about 150 people in attendance – felt like the…
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Transferring from Vox
For the last 7 months, I maintained a blog on Vox and now I am leaving Vox to start my blog here. If you want to find my old blogs, please visit them on Vox. The main reasons for me to decide Vox were: 1) Anyone who has to leave…
Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy 