Archive of Product Management Articles

The maturity model approach to describing organizations and processes comes and goes out of fashion.  It is a repeating framework de jour.  In the game of agile jargon whack-a-mole, the agile maturity model is poking its head up again.

When defining requirements, you always start in the context of a goal – either a user goal or a corporate goal.  You need to be aware of both.  Having a positive user experience is important, and requires a user-centered understanding.  Achieving your corporate goals might be in conflict with some user goals.

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For you product managers out there – here are a couple upcoming productcamp unconferences.  For you business analysts, here’s an excuse to do a little domain modeling and practice your UML class diagram skills.

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Pictures can convey messages much more powerfully than words.  In a recent discussion about writing whitepapers, I suggested combining the idea-creation advice from Made To Stick with the image-creation advice from Back of The Napkin.  Check out this article to see some concrete examples.

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Blue Ocean Strategy provides an interesting reactive analysis of companies and markets.  Personas are used to understand your customer’s needs.  Combining the two provides powerful proactive insights when positioning your product for market success.

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A lot of books and blogs and experts tell us to use “The System shall…” when writing requirements.  Read on to find out why that’s not a very good idea.

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Is your market competitive, or concentrated?  What’s the difference, and how can you be objective about it and not just subjective?  The United States government uses a measure called HHI – the Herfindal-Hirschman Index – as an objective measure of how competitive a market is.  They use this measure to determine if a company is operating monopolistically, or to determine if a merger needs to be explored from an anti-trust perspective.  The ask the question: would the merger create an anti-competitive market?

You can use this metric to get insight into how competitive your market is, and to gain a better appreciation for trends in your market.  Read on to review the competitive landscapes and trends for email, search engines, browsers, and internet service providers.

Growth is a make or break measurement for products and companies.  Investment is often determined by expected value, which is based (in part) on expectations of growth.  When you create a product, there are aspects of growth – how many people can use your product, and how many people do use your product.  When dealing with a freemium business model, there are two elements of use - paid use and free use.

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No cell for Dell.  According to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, carriers rejected prototypes from Dell because the “lack of differentiation.”  As product managers, we know the importance of keeping up with the Joneses, but we also know the importance of including differentiated value in our product offerings.

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We spend a lot of time (rightly) on the capabilities of our products – identifying valuable problems and compelling solutions.  This focus is ideal for addressing the needs of our users.  But what if people abandon our products before trying them?  First impressions matter – both for buyers and users.

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