Steve Johnson on product management

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Product management evangelist and guitar player.

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March 2010

 

who're you close to?

A friend was laid-off yesterday. That sucks. It's a reminder that you need to be close either to the product or to the customer. Otherwise you look easy to outsource.

Also, even tho' they shouldn't, sometimes executives do shoot the messenger. 

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

DC and London product camps seeking leaders

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Two product camps--one in DC and one in London--are in the process of starting up and are seeking your leadership. Want to volunteer to move these projects to the next level? 

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Agile Product Management with Scrum

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I'm reading Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love by Roman Pichler

Agile Product Management with Scrum is a really great book that explains all the mechanics of being a product owner, grooming the backlog, participating with teams--all the details of Scrum from a product owner's point of view. 

One of the key concepts of Agile is that the team must work at a sustainable pace. The same is true for the product owner. Yet in too many cases, I see product owners overwhelmed with too many daily development tasks--such as daily stand-ups for 5 or more products. The common rule is for product owners to spend at least one hour per day with their Scrum team. Five teams = five hours each day = when are you gonna do your work? 

The best practice for Scrum is one product owner per team and one team per product owner. 

But even with one team, you need some time to do the rest of product management. Take a look at the Pragmatic Marketing framework. In addition to dealing with development, product managers and product owners need to spend time with marketing, sales, support, finance and others--oh, and also with both old customers and new markets. When will you find time? 

For more on  the comparison of product management and product owner roles, read the free "Living in an Agile World" ebook.

I guess I'm outa sync with the Agile community on this. As a product manager or product owner, you can't spend time every day with development if you're also going to interact with the market and support the rest of the business. Yes, I think a product owner should spend time each week with development... but not every day; I prefer a few hours at the beginning and end of the week, rather than spread out across the week. 

Here's a good work schedule: 
Monday: backlog and sprint planning with Development
Tuesday: work with Marketing and other corporate folks
Wednesday: available for sales calls and customer visits
Friday: Review and retrospective with Development in the morning followed by fajitas and margaritas!

Need more help. Attend our Living in an Agile World seminar or watch the many webinars at http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/archived-webinars

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

does your software look like this?

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Thanks to Alain for sharing...

Filed under  //  Just for fun  
Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Next Toronto pCamp

The Date: Sunday May 30, 2010

The Location: Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management in downtown Toronto.

Get the latest on productCamps at http://www.productcamp.org/

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

Rich Mironov Product Bytes articles judgment

All of this is to remind us that we lead through credibility, marshalling of market insights, maintaining the long view, and appreciating functional experts for what they can do.  And a strong daily dose of humility.
via mironov.com

Rich offers some tips on convincing others and using your judgment. I always look forward to a new issue of Product Bytes. If you aren't reading it, you should! Sign up; it's free but very valuable.

Filed under  //  product management  
Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

tickled with my ICON

I recently purchased a Jawbone ICON, the 2010 bluetooth headset from Aliph, and I was struck by their "new rules"  product marketing. First, their web site is at Jawbone (the product), not Aliph (the company). They have created a different model each year with only six variations of the current model. Nice clean designs; nice clean price sheet.

Jawbone

Those of you who are product-oriented will appreciate the demo on the home page: "Jawbone eliminates noise" is an actual phone call that illustrates the before and after of "Noise Assassin." Marketing-types will appreciate the Media Library that includes Press Releases, News, and product imagery with product shots, people wearing Jawbones, and packaging shots. Sure makes it easy to include an authorized image in a blog post. And they're active in the social media community as well. They have Facebook and Twitter accounts--and they actually post stuff. Okay, gushing=OFF.

So I'm a satisfied buyer and user (I bought three for me and the kids) but what prompted this blog post was this: 
Jawbone_icon

Want to know what features they should include in a future product? Just look at the discussion board. There are 4 pages of remarks about battery life, 5 pages on support for A2DP (which, by the way, friends, is a spec, not a req; the req is to play podcasts and music), and 3 pages on volume controls. 

Does a product manager need any more product research? The answers are right there in the discussion board. 

A discussion board is a great way to have users help users and for customers to learn more about buying. But the sheer volume of posts indicates where the product could be improved. Happily for Aliph, the firmware on ICON can be updated via the web site. Nice! 

Overall, I'd say that Aliph has done a near-perfect job of product design, delivery, support, upgrades, and a great job on their product marketing from website to video to social media to discussion board. And also comes in environment-friendly packaging.

What have you done this week to create a better product and marketing experience for your customers? 

Marketing is too important to be left up to the marketing department.--David Packard

Filed under  //  product marketing  
Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

What's a pCamp?

This is what makes productCamp great.
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Come to a pCamp and before you know it, you're a volunteer or a speaker. pCamps are about people connecting with people, about sharing your experience, not selling a product. 

Lots of pCamps coming up--hope to see you at one soon. Go to http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/about/industry-events to see a list of the ones we know about.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

ProductCamp Austin Spring 2010

Pragmatic Marketing is pleased to sponsor another productCamp, Austin's 4th session, on March 27.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

pCamp Chicago now online

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Another great pCamp opportunity is online. 
Chicago pCamp. (no date set yet)

Welcome to Chicago’s very first ProductCamp! ProductCamps have been a hit in Silicon Valley, Austin, Toronto, Boston, Raleigh, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, Seattle and Amsterdam, so we thought it was high time we had one in Chicago. Let’s show those folks how it’s done in the Windy City and put our own stamp on what will sure to be an annual must attend event here!

Pragmatic Marketing will be there. Will you? Register today!

(By the way, beautiful execution of the web site! But did I miss something? Where is the event date shown?)

Posted by Steve Johnson