Download or read book Product Development Lessons for Product Managers written by Jim Anderson and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a product manager without a product? Nothing. That's why it's so very important that when a product is being developed that the product manager be involved. Now exactly how best to go about doing that is an entirely different question. What You'll Find Inside: TRACKING YOUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN'T HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR PRODUCT IS ON TRACK OR IN THE WEEDS? A NEW WAY FOR PRODUCT MANAGERS TO DISCOVER BREAKTHROUGH PRODUCT FEATURES ADVANCED JOB MAPPING FOR PRODUCT MANAGERS The process from having an idea for a product to actually having a product is a long and treacherous road. So many things can go wrong that either cause the schedule to have to be extended or cause a product with the wrong features to be developed. A product manager needs to discover ways to stay involved in the process while at the same time not slowing things down. That being said, a product manager is not a project manager. There can be a number of similarities between the jobs, but a product manager is responsible for so much more than a project manager. The difference between the roles has to be understood and communicated to everyone who is involved in the creation of the product. The good news about product development is that it is something that has been done many times at other firms. By taking the time to study their successes and failures product managers can learn what they need to be looking for in order to detect development issues before they derail a development project. Creating a way to map how a customer performs their job can provide the input that is needed for a development program. It can be all too easy to include or exclude features from a product that the customer will feel strongly about. Taking the time to understand how your customer will use the product that you are developing is the key to creating a successful product. This book has been created to pull all of these ideas together into one place for product managers. By reading the book you will be able to discover just exactly what the role of a product manager should be during the product development process. By doing this, you can ensure that when it's all done, you'll have a product that your customer will want to buy. For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at: www.TheAccidentalPM.com

Download or read book EMPOWERED written by Marty Cagan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-12-03 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--

Download or read book Customer Lessons For Product Managers written by Jim Anderson and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the end, it all comes down to what your customer wants to tell you about your product. However, how many of us have been taught how to listen to our customers? What You'll Find Inside: LET'S GO VISIT THE CUSTOMER, PRODUCT MANAGER ARE ANGRY CUSTOMERS A PRODUCT MANAGER'S BEST FRIEND? CUSTOMER LED NEW PRODUCT DESIGN: NOTES FROM THE FIELD YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE IDIOTS & YOU NEED TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO If only it was as easy as having our potential customers pick up the phone to give us a call and tell us what they'd like our products to do for them. That never seems to happen so product managers have to take a different approach. The good news is that information on what our customers want our products to do is out there - we just need to know how to find it. Visiting the customer is a great way to get important product information if you know how to ask the right questions. Additionally, we all collect tons of information on our customers and our products, but knowing what to do with it is another story. You wouldn't think that an angry customer would be able to help a product manager improve their product, but you'd be wrong. Angry customers will tell you in very clear terms what your product is NOT doing for them. Your ultimate goal as a product manager has to be to involve your customer in the product creation process. Since your customer is the one who best knows and understands what their needs are, the more that they can contribute to the design of the product, the better your chances of selling it them are. Finally, depending on how new or innovative your product is, your customers may not understand what it does or even that they have the problem that it solves. When you find yourself in this situation, you've got the job of educating your customer about not only their problems but also the solution that your product can provide them with. This book contains the answers that you need in order to better understand what your customers are trying to tell you. It's a matter of understanding how to listen to them and then how to understand what they have been trying to tell you. After you've read the book, you're going to be a product manager who understands what your customers are trying to tell you better than anyone else! For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at: www.TheAccidentalPM.com

Download or read book My Product Management Toolkit written by Marc Abraham and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-03-07 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are some products a hit while others never see the light of day? While there's no foolproof way to tell what will succeed and what won't, every product has a chance as long as it's supported by research, careful planning, and hard work. -Written by successful product manager Marc Abraham, My Product Management Toolkit is a comprehensive guide to developing a physical or digital product that consumers love. Here's a sample of what you'll find within these pages: Strategies for determining what customers want-even when they don't know themselves Clear suggestions for developing both physical and digital products Effective methods to constantly iterate a product or feature Containing wisdom from Abraham's popular blog, this book explores product management from every angle, including consumer analysis, personnel management, and product evolution. Whether you're developing a product for a small start-up or a multinational corporation, this book will prove invaluable.

Download or read book Building Products for the Enterprise written by Blair Reeves and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you’re new to software product management or just want to learn more about it, there’s plenty of advice available—but most of it is geared toward consumer products. Creating high-quality software for the enterprise involves a much different set of challenges. In this practical book, two expert product managers provide straightforward guidance for people looking to join the thriving enterprise market. Authors Blair Reeves and Benjamin Gaines explain critical differences between enterprise and consumer products, and deliver strategies for overcoming challenges when building for the enterprise. You’ll learn how to cultivate knowledge of your organization, the products you build, and the industry you serve. Explore why: Identifying customer vs user problems is an enterprise project manager’s main challenge Effective collaboration requires in-depth knowledge of the organization Analyzing data is key to understanding why users buy and retain your product Having experience in the industry you’re building products for is valuable Product longevity depends on knowing where the industry is headed

Download or read book Product Leadership written by Richard Banfield and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today’s lightning-fast technology world, good product management is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage. Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it’s rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don’t? This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource. In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore: Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristics Best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company’s evolution Strategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders

Download or read book Escaping the Build Trap written by Melissa Perri and published by O'Reilly Media. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You’ll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small. In five parts, this book explores: Why organizations ship features rather than cultivate the value those features represent How to set up a product organization that scales How product strategy connects a company’s vision and economic outcomes back to the product activities How to identify and pursue the right opportunities for producing value through an iterative product framework How to build a culture focused on successful outcomes over outputs

Download or read book The Influential Product Manager written by Ken Sandy and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive and practical guide to the core skills, activities, and behaviors that are required of product managers in modern technology companies. Product management is one of the fastest growing and most sought-after roles by job seekers and companies alike. The availability of trained and experienced talent can barely keep up with the accelerating demand for new and improved technology products. People from nontechnical and technical backgrounds alike are eager to master this exciting new role. The Influential Product Manager teaches product managers how to behave at each stage of the product life cycle to achieve the best outcome for the customer. Product managers are under pressure to drive spectacular results, often without wielding much direct power or authority. If you don't know how to influence people at all levels of the organization, how will you create the best possible product? This comprehensive entry-level textbook distills over twenty years of hard-won field experience and industry knowledge into lessons that will empower new product managers to act like pros right out of the gate. With teaching experience both from UC Berkeley and Lynda.com, the author boils down the most complex topics into principles that are easy to memorize and apply. This book methodically documents the tools product managers everywhere use to align their teams with market needs and organizational goals. From setting priorities to capturing requirements to navigating trade-offs, this book makes it easy. Not only will your product succeed, you'll succeed, too, when you read the final chapter on advancing your career. Let your product's success become your success!

Download or read book Product Failure Lessons For Product Managers written by Jim Anderson and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Product failures are never something that a product manager wants to talk about. We all live with the secret dread that someday the product that we are responsible might turn out to be a failure. When that happens, we all expect that we'll be asked to leave the company. What You'll Find Inside: HOW DELL PRODUCT MANAGERS STOLE CHRISTMAS NEW COKE: A PRODUCT MANAGER CAMPFIRE STORY PEPSI FUMBLES A GATORADE MAKEOVER: LESSONS FOR PRODUCT MANAGERS FIRE SALE - WHAT HAPPENED TO CISCO'S FLIP CAMERA? It turns out that we're all missing an important learning opportunity here. Products do fail and they end up failing for a wide range of different reasons. Every product failure is loaded with fantastic learning opportunities for product managers. We just need to take the time an open our eyes to see what we can learn from each failure. Some of the biggest companies out there have suffered very public product failures. Talented product managers at companies like Coke, Dell, Pepsi, Cisco, and Microsoft have all done their best to bring a product to market with the hopes of having a runaway success only to fail. Given all of the resources that they had at their disposal, these failures are even more surprising. As product managers we need to carefully study what happened in each of these cases. There are lessons here for us. The better that we can understand what went wrong at these well-funded and well-staffed firms the better chance we have of avoiding making the same mistakes. Contained in this book are the tips and tricks that you are going to need in order to start to spot when a product is going to turn out to be a failure. As you read each chapter, take a moment to think about how you can start to use the information in your job immediately. I think that you are going to be both surprised and pleased with just how much this information is going to help you to avoid making the mistakes that have caused so many other products to fail!

Download or read book Making It Right written by Rian Van der Merwe and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Product management is one of the most exhausting, exhilarating, stressful, and rewarding careers out there. It's not for the faint of heart. It's for people who want to move mountains. It swallows some whole, but others derive endless invigoration and passion from the pace and the impact and the glory and the huge potential for failure as well as success. There's no other job like it, and this is a book to help you make it your job. The role of a product manager goes by many different names - and if that's not reason enough to be confused, some companies define product manager completely differently from how it's understood elsewhere. We sometimes get stuck in our quest to define the damn thing, but in the case of product management, it's effort well spent, because it's quite the jungle out there.

Download or read book INSPIRED written by Marty Cagan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do today’s most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business. With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations—dramatically improving their own product efforts. Whether you’re an early stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success. Filled with the author’s own personal stories—and profiles of some of today’s most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix—INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love. The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new—sharing the latest practices and techniques of today’s most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product.

Download or read book The Founder s Mentality written by Chris Zook and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Bestseller Three Principles for Managing—and Avoiding—the Problems of Growth Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external—increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What’s more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further—and can actively lead to decline. The key insight from Zook and Allen’s research is that managing these choke points requires a “founder’s mentality”—behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder—to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers: • An insurgent’s clear mission and purpose • An unambiguous owner mindset • A relentless obsession with the front line Based on the authors’ decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder’s Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds—not just start-ups—and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader—not only a founder—can instill and leverage a founder’s mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.

Download or read book Take Charge Product Management Time Tested Tips Tactics and Tools for the New Or Improved Product Manager written by Greg Geracie and published by Greg Geracie. This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlock your product management potential and achieve breakthrough performance for your products and company! If you're looking for an effective and proven approach to product management – one that recognizes that the majority of product managers enter the field with little or no training and must learn through trial and error – this is the book for you. Take Charge Product Management guides you step-by-step along the product management path with tips, tactics, and tools to make you and your products more successful. Whether you're a new or experienced product manager, or a seasoned executive leading a team of product managers, this hands-on guide arms you with best practices to optimize your time and effectiveness and increase your value. Learn how to: • Understand what's expected of you at each stage of your company's growth • Add value to your organization by understanding your executives' expectations • Evaluate the range of product management approaches available • Gather the mission-critical information you need to succeed • Develop an effective vision for your offering • Align your organization behind your product decisions • Form cross-functional teams and synchronize with the development team • Shift from reactive to proactive product management • Document your results

Download or read book What Product Managers Need to Know about World Class Product Development written by Jim Anderson and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As product managers it is our responsibility to create products that our customers will want and that will end up being profitable for our companies. It turns out that this is no easy task. Identifying what a customer really wants and then turning that into a feature that can be delivered to a customer is hard work. The key to being successful is to understand exactly what goes into world-class product development. What You'll Find Inside: HOW CAN PRODUCT MANAGERS PICK THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY FOR OUR PRODUCTS? HOW YAHOO PRODUCT MANAGERS ARE KICKING GOOGLE'S BUTT FAST PRODUCT MANAGEMENT LESSONS FROM A PORSCHE 911 WHAT EVERY PRODUCT MANAGER NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE HADOOP DATABASE SOLUTION Every product uses some form of technology no matter if the technology is embedded in the product or if it is used to create the product. Product managers play a key role in selecting the correct technologies to use. Any product requires the company to make an investment in it. One aspect of this investment that is important to a product manager is the cost of capital. That money will be spent creating a product team. As product managers we need to realize that we'll have team members of different ages and we need to know how best to manage them all. As we look around different industries, we look for examples that we can follow when developing products. The competition between Yahoo and Google in the area of financial reporting provides us with some good examples of what to do and what not to do. Because creating a new product is such a risky undertaking, we need to look for ways to hedge our bets. One thing that can reduce our risk is to copy something that someone else has already done. We need to keep in mind the amount of risk that will be involved. Innovation is the key to creating new products that your customers will want. Examples from companies like Porsche can provide us with suggestions on how to go about doing this. The plan that we create to deliver a new product is just that - a plan. We need to make sure that we take action despite what the plan says in order to make sure that our product is delivered on time. New technologies, such as the Hadoop database, may play a key role in our ability to accomplish this. For more information on what it takes to be a great product manager, check out my blog, The Accidental Product Manager, at: www.TheAccidentalPM.com

Download or read book The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development written by Kenneth B. Kahn and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Product Development is one of the most important challenges facing organizations today. The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Handbook of New Product Development 3rd Edition provides an exceptional review of cutting edge topics for both new and experienced product development leaders. It offers a comprehensive and updated guide to the practices, processes and tools critical to achieving and sustaining new product/service development success in today’s world, delivering valuable information about the fundamentals as well as emerging practices such as venturing, virtual product development and the use of social media in NPD. As the premier global advocate for professionals and organizations working in the fields of new product/service development, PDMA has assembled in the Handbook unique content on the critical aspects of product development success including its 2012 Best Practices Research, Lessons Learned from its Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Winners and keys to success from organizations with proven innovation track records. The 3rd Edition is an essential reference for anyone with responsibility for product development activities, from novices looking for fundamentals to experts seeking insights on emerging concepts, and is relevant for all functions and all product/service industries.

Download or read book Product Development For The Service Sector written by Robert G. Cooper and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1999-10-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the lines between products and services become less and less distinct, many managers and consultants advocate that manufacturing companies learn to think like the service sector—get close to the customer, offer multi-dimensional solutions, provide high-quality support. But in today's highly competitive and constantly changing marketplace, managers in service industries, such as banking, insurance, financial services, utilities, and retailing, can benefit enormously by thinking like manufacturers—employing a rigorous product development model to create and test new offerings, develop the most promising ones, and see them to market successfully. In Product Development for the Service Sector, product development experts Cooper and Edgett draw from their extensive research, teaching, and consulting experience to offer service sector executives and managers a comprehensive overview of the principles of product development and how they can be successfully applied in any service industry.

Download or read book The Art of Product Management written by Rich Mironov and published by Booksurge Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Product Management takes us inside the head of a product management thought leader. With color and humor, Rich Mironov gives us a taste of Silicon Valley's tireless pursuit of great technology and its creation of new products. He provides strategic advice to product managers and tech professionals about start-ups, big organizations, how to think like a customer, and what things should cost. He also reminds us to love our products and our teams. The Art of Product Management brings together the best insights from more than seven years of Product Bytes, Rich Mironov's long-running series on product strategy, technology companies, and how the two interact. This collection is for everyone who builds or markets the next new thing.This is more a how to think about products book than how to templates. Product managers (and others who are deeply committed to great products) will recognize themselves and their daily process struggles. How do I think about customers and solutions? Why does my organization behave the way it does? Can I help others to think long-term, or do I need to think for them? This book captures the inner life of product champions.