Archive of Product Management Articles

Writing Verifiable Requirements should be a rule that does not need to be written.  Everyone reading this has seen or created requirements that can not be verified.  The primary reason for writing requirements is to communicate to the team what they need to accomplish.  If you can’t verify that what the team delivered is acceptable, neither can the team.  This may be the most obvious of the rules of writing requirements – but it is ignored every day.

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Writing unambiguous requirements is about understanding what is written, and what is read.  Without a clear understanding of your market, you can’t write unambiguously.  Even when you understand your market, you risk writing something that is ambiguous to your readers.  Documenting requirements is about communication.  Don’t break this rule, or you’ve wasted all the energy you spent understanding your requirements.

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Accept has invited me to participate in their webinar series on Transparency and Innovation – this Wednesday, July 28, 2010 (10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern).

Join us and join in!

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vs.

What happens when billionaire media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, pits his idea against a Nobel-prize winning idea from the beautiful mind of economist and mathematician John Nash?

When you act on what you hope your market will do, instead of what you predict your market will do – you’re in trouble.

This is a story about understanding your market, and an example of using game theory – specifically, the Nash Equilibrium in “non-cooperative game theory” to predict market responses to your products.

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As product managers, we talk about creating the right solutions with our products. Understanding the very real problems our customers face, understanding the very real opportunities our markets present, and manifesting that understanding in a product roadmap.

Other than being “not as good,” how expensive is it to build the wrong product?

Most companies ignore their markets – and they will struggle to survive.  Some companies listen to their markets – and they have an opportunity to succeed.  You have the opportunity to understand your market, and transform it into your market – but you can’t get there just by listening.

Don’t listen to your market, understand your market.

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“For what one idea do you want your product to stand in the mind of your customer?”  I heard Roger Cauvin ask that question at the most recent ProductCamp Austin [correction - he said it here - thanks Roger], and the quote has been jumping to the front of my mind almost daily ever since.  Maybe by writing about it I can exorcise the demon and get back to using the idea instead of being haunted by it.

Consistency in writing requirements is important on two levels – strategic and tactical.  Tactically, you need to write your requirements with grammatical consistency, so that potentially ambiguous statements will be interpreted similarly.  You also need to write requirements that are logically consistent, so that you avoid “impossible” requirements and gaps of unspecified meaning.   Strategically, your requirements need to reflect a focus on markets and problems that are consistent with your business objectives and the vision your company is manifesting

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April Dunford just presented Startup Marketing 101 at DemoCamp Toronto.  Great ideas from the ‘marketing and your startup’ point of view.  I’ve often said that product managers and product marketers care about much of the same market data, they just do different things with it.  The idea of minimal feature set came up in April’s presentation – this article talks about product management, agile, and initial market acceptance.

ProductCamp Austin is here again!  The Spring 2010 session is this Saturday, 27 March 2010 at the AT&T Conference Center on the UT campus in downtown Austin.  Make sure and say hi when you’re there!

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