It's been quite a while since I last posted and during that time I've spent a lot of time of building out the best product roadmap and plans for the Dynamic Data Center. It has really made me think about the skills, personal attributes and values that make up great product managers.
Product Management is one of the most challenging role in any technology company. Many people have described the product management role as the CEO of their product. I don't particularly like that description but certainly they are the focal point of success for their product. They are the hub that keeps a successful product wheel moving.
So what are key success criteria for great product managers? In my mind the following are key themes that make up great product management.
- Know your Business
- Research of the overall market - business segment analysis. Macro market segment analysis.
- Assess the opportunity - Total Addressable Market See "How big could your business be" for a good simple description.
- Estimate your ability to execute and determine Serviceable Market your product fit and Total Serviceable Market (See "Flaws with Top down Market Sizing"). This is critical as it will determine your product fit and your ability to execute and will allow great targeting to opportunity)
- Keep your ear to the ground and be aware of trends and market shifts. You have to love your area and follow the industry news.
- Know your Competition
- Fairly obvious one this one but clearly you are almost never playing in green fields. You have to have detailed analysis of your competitors strengths and weaknesses. A simple tool that seems to work is of course SWOT analysis of your product ( see wikipedia defn. SWOT analysis)
- Winning attitude
- You have to want success for your product - both customer success and sales success. Ask yourself the question "Will my product win?". Then fill in the gaps so it will win
- Release planning with engineering
- The product management role is not an island activity but the hub of activity. Really effective cross team planning jointly with the engineering teams will assure your success and ability to deliver a winning product. Processes are your friend and can help manage high quality product releases. Use Program Management teams to help effective planning and tracking.
- Sales Ready
- Ask and answer the question - "Is my product Sales Ready?"
Great product managers execute well against all of the prior themes but they bring more. There's certain personal attributes that are necessary for success - without which product managers can fail. These are soft factors, they're not measurable or predictive, process driven or analytic - they are about attitude.
- Responsiveness
- Sales skills
- Teamwork
Together the key themes and the personal attributes are what make great product managers. I am happy to say at NetApp and the team I lead we have these people and I'm impressed every day by their attitude and customer understanding.
Great Products come from Great Product Managers - I am thankful every day that my team are up to that task.
Adios,
Paul.
PS. A great resource for Product Management can be found at Pragmatic Marketing's site
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