Winning without Sales? Really?

I recently attended a Products That Count presentation given by Shaun Clowes, former head of product [and, later, head of growth] for Atlassian, a company that created very successful software products for developers and others, including JIRA. The essence of the issue he discussed was, “How do you build a $1bn annual revenue business in…

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Managing the Anchor Product Line

While I was talking to one of my clients about the dearth of deep product management guides for managing the complexity of the whole product,  he suggest that there is a real need for a book on how to manage what I call here the ANCHOR PRODUCT.  This is the product an organization has developed…

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Creating an Acquisition Hook – Product View

As the product leader at a smaller company, whether it be a Venture or Private Equity-backed company, or even one just coming out of stealth, you should always have an eye on creating an acquisition hook. In previous posts, I have discussed the need to manage the whole product. In this blog, we will address…

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New Product in a New Market? Use the Customer Maturity Model

There will come a time in your career where you will bring out a new product in a new market space or segment. This blog is not about the new product requirements, or even how to target this new space. I am assuming that you and your team, as professionals, will have done the research…

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Listen to Sales, Mostly

Jointly blogged by Laurent Gharda & Wayne Greene As good product managers and product marketing managers, we are told that one of the constituencies that we need to listen to are the sales teams. Those product sales specialists and system engineers that take leads, qualify them, align value proposition with customer pain points, enable a…

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Won’t Get Fooled Again – A Story of Productization

Won’t Get Fooled Again – A Story of Productization   Once upon a time, I was part of an organization that was selling application performance management tools. Our company was the leading provider of that market category and the product was clearly one of the top technologies in play. Being part of the competitive and…

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Evolution of Application Management

It is rare to look back upon technology trends over 10 years, especially in the enterprise management software space. If you were a Gartner or Forrester analyst, this would be part of your job, but for the general practitioner, understanding the larger macro trends in IT management help balance all the Twitter traffic on the…

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When & How to Listen to your Board of Directors on Product Plans

Jointly blogged by Laurent Gharda & Wayne Greene Laurent is the CEO and founder of LinMin Much is discussed in the Product Manager blog space around listening to your customers and driving your product direction to the most valuable features and capabilities for your customers. Sounds like eating cheesy nachos and a ballpark frank smothered…

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Misty Place for the Clear Future of Services… (Part 3 of 3)

Emerging Science of Services – RADMA Conference 2006 – Lake District, UK By Guest Blogger – Kemal A. Delic As we sensed that the end of the splendid Camelot days was approaching, we tried to envision a very distant future in which services will represent the major part of the economy (+75%).  Thus, we thought…

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Once Upon a Time we Thought Analytically… (Part 2 of a 3)

By Guest Blogger Kemal A. Delic Looking back into the recent history of IT industry developments, one can easily observe the domination of hosting platforms—representing an intricate infrastructural entity combining technological systems and a clever business model. The most important feature of the dominant, global platforms is the ability to scale smoothly. You provide the…

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