From Chemistry to Clouds

Announcing the GA of Career Coaching

Take a look at my new offering. Those who worked with me over the years received this service as part of the normal work environment. The area of coaching is something of great interest for me and was one of the reasons for me to write my book on Product Management. After a few people…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Engineering Should be PM’s Best Friend

By Wayne Greene and Laurent Gharda Product Managers are a unique class, a veritable professional unicorn. Responsible for creating business value out of the ether, they must create value as it relates to a “whole product”. They can bridge the business and the technical, forge links between architects, and be the ones who go to…

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…

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…

Secrets of the Partner Series – Technology Partners – Part 2 – Changes in Direction

In this second blog of the Technology Partner Series, Justin Griffin and I will discuss the second chapter in our partner program and how being agile in your program is key to responding to success (and failure) as you scale. In our first blog, we discussed the need for the technology partner program, working with…

Secrets of the Partner Series – Channel Partners – Part 3 – Recipe for a Successful Channel

Secrets of the Partner Series – Channel Partners – Part 3 – Recipe for a Successful Channel In this final blog of the Channel Partner Series, Bill Petro and I detail our kitchen-tested recipe for a successful channel. Make sure you refresh yourself first with our first two blogs, Part 1 and Part 2. Recipe…

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…