Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy

Category: product management

  • Customer Obsession & Credit Cards

    A fundamental product management principle that I live by is Customer obsession! To me, everything starts with the customer and the painful problems they have that they expect my product to solve. I have always coached the product teams I have led using this mantra. No one in the office…

  • 5 Steps to Creating a Data-Driven product culture

    Often times, product teams say that they are data driven or express an interest to become data-driven. But what does “data-driven” actually mean? Data-driven means you rely on data (facts) than personal opinion or intuition to make informed decisions. One of my favorite quotes is the following: “If we have…

  • 10 Proven Tips to increase your odds of landing a job

    Over the last few months, I have been interviewing for a software product management leadership position – Director or VP level. The search took over 6 months (discounting the lull between Thanksgiving and New Year when hiring activity is understandably very low).  Over the course of my 25+ year career,…

  • Product Manager is not a “CEO” of their products

    From the time product management has been around, there is a notion that to be effective, product managers should behave like CEOs for their product. A belief that the successful product managers have the power to make decisions for their product like CEOs do for a company. Others can provide all the input they…

  • Fear of Missing Touch – How to lose your way with your target market

    You all have likely heard the term FOMO – “Fear of Missing Out” – the fear that makes us buy products/services because everyone else is doing it and for the fear of missing out on something that others are getting out of it. A fear that has been proven to move…

  • Effectively managing your communication with your manager

    In the past 4 years, I have had 5 different managers – CEO, CTO, CMO and 2 VPs of Product. By the time I had got adjusted to the style of my manager and established a working relationship, I had a new boss. This constant change has made me come…

  • Communicating when “fires” break out – “We are on it”

    As software product managers, we often deal with cross-functional issues from time to time such as projects that fall behind schedule and now risk making a release, creative designs not ready for implementation, serious production issues that require immediate swats to be released etc. When such problems crop up, keeping…

  • Book Review: Cracking the Product Management Interview

    If you are a product manager thinking about your next career move or someone looking to move into product management, this is THE book you should read and have as your reference.  I have been doing product management for many years and I found the book so resourceful. Gayle Laakmann…

  • How do I become a product manager?

    This is the most frequent question I get from readers of this blog. Folks who currently are developers, QA engineers, sales professionals, customer support specialists have all asked me this question. I have written how you could start making the move to product management. But here is a course that…

  • Product Manager Interview – 7 Cardinal Sins

    So you have landed an interview for a software product manager position. You are excited! You show up for the interview and the interview is a bust. You do not get the job. Causes? Having interviewed many product managers, who looked very promising on the resume and ended up being…

  • What should keep a product manager awake?

    Should it be the state of product development, the next release, the next sprint? Should it be what keeps the company executives awake? Should it be the competitors? While some of these should indeed keep a product manager awake, the most important thing that should keep him/her awake should be…

  • Power of “Breaking it down” – 10 minutes and NOW

    It has been months since my last blog post. Call it laziness, lethargy, procrastination, sudden lack of confidence in my writing skills – every one of these had something to do with it. I used to tell myself that I had to do it. But never did it. Last night,…

  • Agile vs. Waterfall – what is the big deal?

    I have been working in companies the last 5 years where we have followed the agile methodology in product development. Shorter sprints, faster releases as opposed to month long development cycles that were common in waterfall. Here is a guest blog post written by Mike Cudemo of Sparta Systems that…

  • Importance of sprint demos

    In an agile development process, you typically launch new features into production every 2-3 weeks. Before launch, it is important to ensure that all stakeholders get to know about the new features to be released. It is especially important for Customer Support, Training, Translators, Sales etc. to get to know…

  • Starting on the right foot in your new job as a product manager

    In the past, I have written what a new software product manager should plan do in the first 30 days on a new job to be successful. If you are planning to start on the right foot at a new job, a key thing you need to understand is constraints.…

  • 3 mistakes to avoid in a Product Manager Resume

    I have been reviewing tens of resumes lately as I have been looking to hire a product manager in my group at Care.com. Here are some patterns that I have noticed that makes me to quickly move on to the next resume: Buzzwords: When I read “Builds and manages relationship…

  • Customer Visits – Do’s and Don’ts

    I attended the Product Camp Boston over the weekend and shared what I have learnt doing over 300 Customer Visits in 10 countries (US, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, Netherlands, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan). Customer visits can be the best qualitative method to learn the most about your customers/prospects –…

  • I am looking to hire a Product Manager

    I am looking to hire a Product Manager who has minimum 4 years of experience doing software product management (mostly consumer) to join my team doing product management for International products at Care.com. Details below. You MUST have 4+ years of experience to be considered. If you or anyone you…

  • Market Sizing – Quick and Dirty Techniques

    This post is a guest blog post by Ilya Mirman, former VP of Marketing at VMTurbo, CilkArts (acquired by Intel), Interactive SuperComputing (acquired by Microsoft) and SolidWorks Corporation. Ilya is currently an advisor to many startups in the Boston area. I was 9 years old when my father taught me…

  • Product Manager’s friend: Momentum

    What a product manager needs to succeed is momentum. Momentum in product development, in product sales, in customer adoption, …. – you name it. Lack of momentum is akin to death. If your company is not willing to make necessary investments in your product, it will die. If enough engineering…

  • Focus is about saying “NO”

    It has been a while since I have been in blogging and a lot has happened in the world during that timeframe. My idol Steve Jobs has passed, iPhone 4S is out, Gaddafi is dead, Greece has been in turmoil sending the financial markets on a dizzing roller coaster and…

  • Where should product management report to?

    In an organization, where should product management report to? Sales? Marketing? Engineering? CEO? Customer Support? All of this is possible but where can it be the most effective? Before we answer this question, let us make sure we are aligned on the role of a product manager. In my opinion,…

  • Product Management Career Tip – Don’t be an “I” or “they” specialist

    On Friday, I had to complete my self evaluation of my Q2 performance review. As I was reviewing myself, I noticed that I had to continously mention how “I” got this and that done. Too many “I’s” were making me uncomfortable that I had to pause and think about it,…

  • Humans crave for predictability, are you providing it?

    Last week, Gazelle moved its office from Allston to downtown Boston. No move is easy – new desk, new neighborhood, new commute, everything to get adapted to. My commute to the new office is now 1 hour 45 minutes each way. I have to drive to the train station for…

  • When does a startup stop being one?

    When does a startup stop being one? Is it when: It gets funded – no, can’t be because vast majority of them get seed funding. It gets customers – no, that can’t be it either It gets revenues – no, because customers could be paying for the service It becomes…

  • B2C vs. B2B product management – 16 differences

    Most of my product management career has been spent doing B2B product management. For the last year and a half, I have switched over to B2C product management in my current role as Director of Product Management at Gazelle. Last 12 months has been a lot of fun learning a…

  • My recent Product demo experience – 3 key learnings

    In the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to sit through three product demos that were all done using web conference (Goto Meeting and WebEx). Two of these demos went very well, we understood everything we wanted to know and we figured out whether the products will meet our…

  • Prioritize based on frequency, not size ….

    When I have done customer interviews to better understand customer pain points and ways to enhance the product, often times I have been asked one of two questions: Are you really interested in solving this or listening to my problem? I only have 2 licenses of your software. Don’t you…

  • 5 things I learned about Software Product Management in India

    I am currently enjoying my week long vacation in my hometown of Ernakulam after a week of software product management seminars and workshops in Bangalore and Hyderabad. As a bonus, my host Pinkesh Shah, CEO of Adaptive Marketing and I were invited to the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad…

  • Happy New Year! Top 10 blog posts of 2010

    Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2011! Thank you for reading this blog in 2010 and for your support. Here are the top 10 most read posts of 2010: 1) 10 job hunting mistakes you should avoid 2) Software product manager’s first 30 days at a new job …. 3)…

  • Announcing my product management workshops in India (Bangalore and Hyderabad)

    I am very pleased to announce that I will be in India to conduct 2-day product management workshops in Bangalore (Feb 1-2) and Hyderabad (Feb 4-5) early next year. I will be offering these workshops via Adaptive Marketing Inc. that I had introduced in my earlier post. In the past…

  • State of Product Management in India

    It has been 20 years since I left India as a young graduate. Indian software industry was unheard of at that time or was in its infancy. But since then, India has become the global powerhouse in software services. Initially, the industry grew mainly through outsourced projects for clients in…

  • Product Cannibalization ….

    Last week, I got mail from Netflix indicating that my subscription fees was going up by $3 a month from $20/month to $23/month. They suggested that I instead switch to $8/month internet streaming plan. They mentioned that they were fast expanding the library of movies available via instant play. I switched…

  • Field of dreams is not a product strategy

    I have written in the past about how “if you build it, they will come” is not true when it comes to product management. So it is refreshing to read another product person Joe Johnson from High Start Group echo the same comments when he writes about “Field of dreams…

  • Managing stakeholder expectations via Product Council

    From time to time, when I talk to other software product managers about their biggest challenge, they often say that managing internal stakeholder expectations is their biggest challenge. Yes, of course. After all, product management is like herding cats. Sales goes and makes promises to customers without asking the product group,…

  • Watered down products typically fail ….

    A company has success with its enterprise product. But the company wants to accelerate sales and increase the number of customers. Someone says – how about small businesses? Of course, that is a large market. Why did we not think of them? We already have the enterprise product in the…

  • Events force actions

    Events force actions – this has been such a guiding principle for me that it has allowed me to get clarity when there is none, has kept me focused when I have been distracted by too many things to do, has helped me achieve something because the deadline is looming.…

  • Product Camp Boston – this Saturday

    Product Camp Boston is this Saturday – May 22 at Microsoft New England Research and Development Center. If you are a product manager in the greater Boston area, have you registered yet? If not, what are you waiting for? If I get selected by attendees,  I intend to run a…

  • Software scalability and Exceptions

    Growth in business puts scalability and performance demands on the software product that the company provides. These demands could take the form of site accessibility (number of concurrent users) and also number of exceptions that need to be handled by the system. Issues caused by increase in the load experienced…

  • Hidden costs of software outsourcing

    In my software product management career, I have worked with remote software development teams in India, China, Australia, Ukraine and the UK. In many of these cases, we were working with outsourcing partners. I have been wanting to write a post reflecting on what actions ensured success and what resulted in failures.…

  • Friction points – Why customers don’t buy from you

    It is our job as product managers to find out why our customers “buy”. Buying is a very emotional behavior especially when it comes to consumers. When selling B2B products, the purchase cycle typically follows a chain of events – RFP to demos to pilots to implementation to release to…

  • Is software product management needed in a startup?

    Note: I had written this as a guest blog post last year on Subrata Majumdar’s blog called Confessions of a Digital Immigrant, that I am publishing here. Is a software product manager needed during early stages of a startup? If yes, what should be his/her role,  given that everyone tends…

  • Products/features don’t ship with inventor’s name tag

    All products ship with one label – your brand label – IBM, Microsoft Office, HP Pavilion, whatever your company’s brand name is. That is all what your customer gets to see. No product/feature ships with the name of the person who came up with the idea. So it “was my…

  • Started my new gig at Gazelle

    This week, I started my new job as Director of Product Management at Gazelle.com (aka Second Rotation Inc.) What do we do at Gazelle? We allow consumers to get cash for their used electronic gadgets such as cell phones, GPS, laptops, camcorders, MP3 players and even ebook readers. You can…

  • 4 lessons from Massachusetts Senatorial election

    The results of the Massachusetts senatorial election this week to elect the replacement for the senate seat held by Ted Kennedy shocked the entire nation. A Republican named Scott Brown who not many people had heard about about as recently as a month back won the seat convincingly in a…

  • Software product manager’s first 45-90 days at a new job ….

    This is a continuation of my previous blog post of Software product manager’s first 30 days at a new job ….. Now that you are already settled into your new job and the first 45 days have gone by. You have done everything that was listed on the 30 day checklist.…

  • Software product manager’s first 30 days at a new job ….

    Happy New Year! I wish you all a prosperous 2010. So you found a new software product management job or you are moving into a software product manager’s role in your current company. Congratulations! Now what do you do in the first 30 days to make sure you start off…

  • SEO Basics for Software Product Managers

    I am sure you have heard about Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to by its abbreviation of SEO. If not, which planet have you been living on? Welcome back to Earth! SEO efforts in companies are often handled by someone who knows more or is very interested in SEO (smaller…

  • What is good enough? “Lame Duck” vs. Phased Releases

    As a software product manager, you are more than likely called to make the decision whether a product/service is ready for prime time.  Often it is a challenge because there is a lot of pressure from internal stakeholders to release it. There is a fine line between what I call…

  • 3 ways software product managers can work effectively with development teams

    As a software product manager, I spend a lot of time working with my development team in making sure that they are well aware of the customer pain points and the requirements of the solution we are trying to build. I have heard from time to time from my colleagues…