How to improve your Product Management career and grow in your job

I have recently been interviewing Product Managers about their jobs and writing interview Q&As for those who may be going for a job in Product Management. ( Refer to 'Your Career' for a list of articles). The aim is to provide individuals who want to get into Product Management with ideas, insight, inspiration and encouragement – one common thread that spreads across all the interviews is that everyone had a different role before they entered the world of Product Management.
Brian Lawley gives a webcast entitled “How to accelerate your product management career.” I have given a summary of the 20 odd points that he raises. In the hope that this will also help those who are currently working as product managers and those who want to break into product management.

1. Career goals: where you are honestly have 1/3/5/10 year goals – start with the 10 year goal and work backwards. You need to sit back and do some real thinking about this. 
2. What’s the difference: why do some people advance very rapidly while others move slowly or stagnate – it about the techniques you use and how you manage up.
   How does your boss view you: attitude and productivity: you need to be organised and get on with people – you also need to be a good leader. 
3. Productivity = deliverables: both strategic and tactical - day to day and important high level projects and tasks that are important to the company. Ensure you free up enough time to tackle additional responsibility – therefore the day to day work need to be under control. 
4. Get a mentor: your boss, an executive, senior peer, paid coach - spend an hour a week with your mentor discuss where you’re at and how to rise above issues. 
5. Be the bearer of bad news quickly and propose solutions and timelines. 
6. Keep careful company: network with the right people. Show me your friends and I’ll tell you what type of person you are therefore avoid negative people they will drag you down. 
7. Be an expert: have the relevant information in your head both your discipline (product management) and your market – use google alerts, read books & blogs to stay up-to-date. 
8. Beef up your resume: and build your brand – put in extra time and help others, do volunteer work, get certification, take-up internal opportunities to lead. 
9. Be a solution employee:– manage your boss by giving them a weekly update and get input on areas you need but have recommendations to issues that are raised. 
10. Always give the team the credit: – be humble and give credit to others – however when things go wrong be ready to stand up and take the blame. 
11. Choose right: the boss (gauge this at the interview) choose the right job and company, get into a company and market that is rapidly growing. 
12. Be a good communicator: be concise and always have the correct tone. 
13. Hire only those who can over take you: You are who your team, therefore hire stars and that will reflect on you – your team will push you up, while your mentor will pull you up. 
14. Truly care about people: – you will work with them again – never speak badly about anyone. It will come back on you. 
15. Always be professional:– don’t make issues personal get perspective before communicating –practice listening. We have two ears and one month.
16. The last thing you do: you are always remembered by the last thing you do at a company its the last thing you do that people will remember you by. 
17. If you can’t stay positive then move on: You don’t want to be branded as the a negative person. 
18. Don’t sit on the fence:– be committed to your job or decide to move on. 
19. Build your network: - people are treated as assets – your safety net is your network. 
20. Know what your good at: – hire people to complement your skills – do the things that your good at.
    

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How Product Managers can estimate business value using agile techniques

We recently finished a scrum sprint; during the sprint review the technical team gave a demonstration, to senior business owners, of the newly developed functionality and bug fixes they had done during the sprint. It was noted at the sprint retrospective and subsequent discussions, that followed, that the demonstration gave equal weighting in terms of the time spent demonstrating each user story. However some stories were minor bug fixes while others where major enhancements to the site's home page. The question is how does the technical team know how much time to spend demonstrating each user story?

One way would be to demonstrate the stories in priority order. However this would just give an order for the demo and not a give any indication on how much time should be spent. I believe one way would be to introduce an estimated business value to each story refer to Measuring business value with metrics for more details. The technical team are quite used to using Fibonacci numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ...) to estimate the complexity of a given user story and the product owner and other business stakeholders are accustomed to watching the technical team use the poker cards to vote on the complexity of a given backlog item and then witnessing the team member who gave the highest vote discuss with the team member who gave the lowest vote the reasons why they voted in that particular way. The team then votes again based on the new information they have heard.

A way forward would be for the business stakeholders to go through a similar exercise. The business value would depend on the type of product you are developing. For community website the following could be considered: Search engine optimisation (SEO) value; improvement in usability or user engagement; third party sponsorship generating direct revenue; improvement to backend editorial systems that increase efficiency and through put; automating processes for editorial staff….

Once a business Fibonacci has been given it will be a simple exercise for those demonstrating newly developed functionality and bug fixes to give the correct weighting in terms of time to each user story – thus keeping the review fresh and relevant and ensuring that business stakeholders stay engaged through the session.

However there is a much better reason for estimating business value for each backlog item – it not only helps with setting priorities but can be used to measure the amount of value and therefore ROI for each sprint and ultimately be used to calculate business velocity in a similar way that the scrum master calculates technical velocity for a team or individual. Estiamting business velocity, (refer to Understanding your Velocity for an explanationon on velocity) will also give the product manager and product owner a high level indication on the amount of business value that a team are able to generate for each product roadmap.

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Transition from Web Developer to Product Manager

People often ask the question – How do I to get into Product Management [from being a software engineer, project manager, business analyst etc…]. Patrick Jolley is a case in point of a web developer who recognised an opportunity to move into Product Management and took it.

1. What’s your academic background/training?
I studied Business Information Technology at University. When I started I intended to do the full 4 years and come out with a degree. I soon realised that the life of a student wasn’t for me and left after two years receiving an Higher National Diploma (HND).
2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I’ve worked for Reed Business Information UK (RBI - UK) since I finished University, initially in software support, then software development and then web development.
3. What inspired you to become a product manager?As a developer I always enjoyed getting involved in the requirements gathering, design and specification stages of projects. SEO and especially usability are also areas I am particularly interested in, so it just seemed like the natural progression for my career. That and the fact that I’d had enough of being a developer!
4. How did you make the move from being a developer to becoming a product manager?
The group I was working in was merged with another area of the business. During this time there was a lot of change, I saw my opportunity and took it.
5. What do you like best about your job?
The creativity and innovation aspects of the role are especially enjoyable. It is also very satisfying to deliver something you feel proud of.
6. What do you least like about your job?Every so often things inevitably go wrong and life becomes very hectic!
7. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?By using sites like TechCrunch and eHub. I also really like the ‘Movers and Shakers’ section on Alexa.
8. Describe your Product Management job in one sentence.I’ll use three words instead. Challenging, varied and rewarding.
9. What’s your dream product to manage?
Haven’t got one in particular – although I think I’d really enjoy the challenge of working for a start-up.
10. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?Communication, organisation and market knowledge.
11. What’s the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?
An English to Klingon dictionary. Seriously – I think being able to trust each other is the key.
12. What are the main differences you have found between being a developer and being a product manager?
I can’t be as hands on with the products anymore which can sometimes be tough when things go wrong or aren’t happening as quickly as you’d like.
13.What do you do when you’re not managing products (outside interests)?
I like to travel, play and watch football, cook, eat and sleep.

Related articles:
From R&D Engineer to Product Manager
Moving from Technology to Product Management to increase business skills
From Software Engineer to Product Manager to Founder of SVPG - Interview with Marty Cagan
Moving from Business Analyst to Product Manager to "Online Product Manager"
Transition from Webmaster to Product Manager via Project Management

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How do you demonstrate that you can manage products

Product Management interview question:

Tell me about a project you have run or a product you have managed through its life cycle?

This is an interview question that gives you the opportunity to:
a) Demonstrate that you have a practical experience in the product development process.
b) That you have considered the user by developing a product that utilises technology to solve a problem and therefore meets the customer’s needs.
c) That you are able to lead with-out-authority by matrix managing a cross functional team of multi-disciplined professionals.

When answering this question you also have the opportunity to briefly touch on a previous area/question that you may have felt you didn’t answer too well – however you have to be brief, no detract in any way shape or form from the original question and ensure you don’t give the impression that you are labouring any particular point or trying to get one up on the interviewer. For example if you where previously asked about stakeholder management and you didn’t feel that you gave a full and impressive answer - then touch on your experience on stakeholder management while speaking about a project you have worked on.

A few typical points that you need to bring out are as follows:

• Be sure to outline the role you played at each stage.
• Ensure you highlight that you took the initiative at each key stages.
• Speak about brain storming sessions that you led out in to firm up on requirements and the products feature set and ultimately define the product.
• Your ability to create and manage a product roadmap.
• Be sure to explain how you communicated the vision and project to technical and business stakeholders.
• Show how you led the team and got buy-in at each stage of the product life cycle.
• Speak about your interaction with stakeholders from across the organisation from sales and marketing to engineering and customer support.

It is important that you take the opportunity while answering this question to speak about your domain and knowledge of the technologies you worked with – coupled with your sharp business acumen. Above all don’t be afraid to mention things that went wrong BUT be sure to speak about what you did to put things right and be prepare demonstrate what you learnt from such mistakes.

The interviewer may ask you to speak about a project that went well or not so well. If so be sure clearly demonstrate that you understand why the project went the way it did.
It's possible to spend the whole interview on this one question alone -

Bottom line is that you as the Product Manager are seen to be in fully in touch with the product at every stag ein its life cycle.

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From R&D Engineer to Product Manager

Francois Abbe has had many years experience designing world beating hi tech equipment. He has had the opportunity to travel the globe both as an engineer and product manager representing the products he has designed and (later on in his career) that he product managed.

1. What's your academic background/training?
After graduating in France, I followed a B.Eng in Electronics and
Communication Engineering.

2. What did you do before product management?I worked as a R&D engineer designing niche video signal processing products that’s used in the television broadcast and film industry. I’ve also worked designing lighting equipment and as a DJ.

3. Where did you previously work?I worked for Snell & Wilcox in the UK, as a Product Manager.

4. What inspired you to become a product manager?I recognised that there were often a gap between the high quality niche products that I designed and the needs of the customers. Designing products that did not offer a complete solution became meaningless. Product Management gave me the opportunity to influence the feature set of the products that we marketed I found this much more enjoyable!

5. How did you make the move from being a R&D engineer to becoming a product manager?Snell & Wilcox often used engineers to assist at exhibitions, customer visits, road shows and product training – this exposure gave me a good introduction and a smooth transition into product management.

6. What do you like best about your job?I enjoy interacting with a variety of people in my specific field.

7. What do you least like about your job?
When the product development cycle is too long.

8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
All sorts: chatting, emails, internet...

9. Describe your Product Management job in one sentence.Managing all aspects of the product line and life cycle.

10. What's your dream product to manage?Any product that is used in live broadcast applications.

11. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?Ability to listen, flexibility and vision

12. What's the key attribute you need in order to work with the development
team?Trust

13. What do you do when you're not managing products (outside interests)?Cinema and food

14. What advice would you give some one who wants to become a product manager?
Be passionate and focused!

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Product Management moves into IT/IS departments?

The function and role of product management will become crucial as businesses expand and become more dependent on technology departments to asist them in gaining the competitive advantage.

But what is 'Technical Product Management'?

When asked to describe Product Management in one sentence Marty Cagan said:

"This is the person responsible for discovering and defining a
product that is useful, usable and feasible.”

Jeff Lash concurs by saying that the product manager is the person who:

“Understand customer needs, figure out ways to meet those
needs, work to get those solutions implemented, and provide and communicate
them to the market.”

Traditionally technical Product management is a role that has operated in software and technology companies. However the role is being successfully used in Information Technology/Information services departments (IT/IS dept).

How can 'Technical Product Management' help non technical businesses?

Paul Lancour in his podcast interview IT Product Management: An Art More Than a Science?with chief technologist Manuel Barbero discusses the art of product management in the IT organisation: I’ve listed 7 key points that Manuel brings out:

1. Product Management is a combination of art and science to deliver products and value to a captive, internal, audience. (I’ve heard product managers described as being
   half engineer and half marketing manager hence half art and half science).
2. Structured discipline approach to defining and delivering solutions to an audience – that has not truly embraced in IT.
3. It’s about selling solutions– not something traditionally done by IT management.
4. Be able to define the feature set and understand how it will evolve over time.
5. Know the price points and cost structure.
6. Departments who want to implement product management need to find the right people who understand and appreciate technology and the needs of the businesses end users and
   commercial world.
7. IT/IS dept who embrace product management need a product catalogue to describe the feature set and helps the success of the introduction of product management into IT organisations.

Case in point 'Technical Product Management' in the banking industry
At Wachovia Bank, Tony Bishop and his boss, CIO Susan Certoma, implemented product Management when they began to build a much needed SOA platform for financial services. According to Susan, Wachovia Bank

“…wanted technology to become an advisor to the business,
not an order taker,”

The article states that:

deploying an enterprisewide SOA is not just about developing and deploying
components and services — it’s about changing the DNA and culture of IT to
become more produc tmanagement oriented.While most IT shops talk about meeting the needs of the business, Tony and Susan, talk about SOA as an ongoing process
of product development and evangelism — a methodology for productizing
responsiveness to changing customer needs. “We’ve taken a software vendor
product management model — the product management discipline with its associated life cycle — and instilled that discipline so I can create that horizontal
utility infrastructure,” Bishop explains.

No such thing as a non technical corporate business

As the world of business becomes more reliant on technology the need for individuals to be able to figure out what is needed, advise internal customers, manage, deliver and maintain solutions will become critical. CIOs and CTOs are bound to be heading up teams of product managers to fulfil the gap and therefore assist in driving revenue.

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How to get into Product Management

ProfSvcs has left a comment on my blog post "Moving from Technology to Product Management to increase business skills" ‘asking how someone gets into product management’. The answer became what I would consider too long for a comment so I’ve written this article that I hope will help him and others who what to move into product management. I must stress that this is my opinion based on my own experience and the experience of others I’ve worked with.
Rest assure very few people leave education (college, university…) and walk straight into 'technical product management' (as opposed to 'marketing product management' which is closly related to 'brand management')– we all have had a life before product management and that life (job) helps form the basis of our current role, consider where the following Product Managers have come from:

Bikram Gupta was a developer,
Marty Cagan a software engineer,
Andy Wicks a Business Analyst,
Daniel Leon a web-master and then a project manager,
Paul Young a web developer,
Brunella Russo worked in Account Management/Client Support role,
Jeff Lash worked as an information architecture and user-centered (IA & UCD)design, and
Matt Rowe has a background as a business/ systems analyst.

Two possible routes to landing your 1st Product Mangagement job

Go for an internal transfer from where you are into product management.

Strive to get into product management in your current company. If your company uses product management speak to the person who head up the department. See if you can obtain a job description and critically rank your self against it – also use product management job descriptions from companies that operate in similar industries as your current company. Your analysis should result in you being able to clearly identify areas that you believe (and are able to demonstrate to another person) what you could do straight away (out of the box so to speak) and what are the areas that you would need to improve on. Once you have done that set yourself an action plan (with time scales) and aim to improve your areas of weakness. This may include spending time with engineers and/or with product managers so that you become familiar, on a practical level, with various aspects of the role. Take one of the product managers or engineers out to lunch and talk over these areas with them. You could consider sacrificing a days holiday – arrange to come into work – and spend the day with a product manager or the engineering team or arrange to go on a customer visit with the product manager and attend some of the meeting that s/he chairs. (Note: I'm not saying tha it can all be done in a day - but the journey of a thousands miles must begin with a single step)...
Put the results of your analysis and action plan into a presentation – book a meeting with the Head of Product Management and make a pitch for a job. Remember you must show that you can add value.

Again you could think about raising your desire to move into product management at your annual appraisal. Ask if you could be seconded to Product Management for a period of time.

A lot depends on the culture of your company and the type of managers your dealing with.

Change your approach AND your company in order to get into Product Management.

In my experience it’s easier to change roles in your current company than to try and move into a new role in a different organisation. However you could change your approach from looking inside your company to looking at companies that operate in the same market segment or offer similar products. If you can proof that you have solid domain knowledge coupled with the understanding and skills of a product manager then they would be sure to want to speak to you. The covering letter that accompanies your resume (CV) should highlight that you have the skills that they are looking for. It will be tuff so you will have to do twice as much work as anyone else applying for the job. Study the company you’re applying to and the product ranges they offer along with competing products and companies. Be prepared to answer any question they may through at you and be able to ask them questions that demonstrate that you have done your homework and thought through the issues.

Finnally you need to be constantly reading and studying.
You need to immerse yourself with good reading material I would personally recommend the following:
How to be a good product manager
Silicon Valley Product group
Listern to the Webinas on Product maagement View

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Product Managers need to reduce and handle stress

What type of situations cause you stress?
How do you handle stress?
Stress can be a killer and every Product Manager and Project Mangers would have experienced during the course of their career. I was asked the question “How do you handle stress?” when I was being interviewed for a Product Mangers job at my current company and I have made it a point to ask the question of every Product Manager that I interview. Here are the reasons why.
It’s important that a product manager recognises the symptoms of stress learn how to cope with stress and have in place successful techniques for managing stress and be able to manage projects and/or product development in such a way as to reduce stress.
There are no real template answers to these questions – the key thing is to have strategies in place to deal with stress demonstrate that you recognise and are able to deal with it. Let’s face it, starting a new job can be stressful, the product and project managers job are ones where you lead with out authority often in a matrix management framework. Therefore you’re likely to have a lot of responsibility for delivery but very little if any direct reports or authority over the people you need to motivate to get the job done. No line manger what to hire someone and then see then burn out because the workplace and/or job was too stressful for them.

Read the following blog psots
What do Product Managers do? What is expected of them? And how not to become overwhelmed?
How Product Managers can successfully ride the storms of a commercial life.
What Your Leader Expects of You
for tips on how to manage stakeholders and product development in such a way to reduce stress.

Remember we are all human beings - admit that you do get stressed` and trun what some may see as a negative into a postive by demonstarting ways you 've handled stress in the past and therefore showing that you can handle it if you where hired for the job in question.

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Interview answers to questions regarding demands on development resource

How would handle a senior business stakeholder that demands more than you can deliver with in a certain timeframe?

If you have had experience in managing projects and products using scrum (or some other agile management frame work) then this would be your opportunity to demonstrate that you understand the benefits of scrum to manage stakeholders at all levels (see - Part #6 How Everyone Can Get Involved in Agile). Other methodologies you’ve worked with could be used to aid in you demonstrating your ability to manage development teams and business stakeholders.
Your answer to the interviewer could include some of the following Do’s and Don’ts:

• Do not be intimidated,
• Do not make commitments or promises before you have had the opportunity to analyse and estimate the request.
• Do not be afraid to escalate to your line manager - see Being up front during an interview .
• Do ask for time to review the question.
• Do include other stakeholders – perhaps in a workshop to scope and confirm the work that needs to be done.
• Do give a timeframe when you will report back your findings with options.
• Do ensure that the technical team are fully involved in discussions before you make a proposal.

Things to be considered when you give feedback to the business stakeholder:

• Breaking what was being demanded into bite size chunks and estimating each chunk in order to give feedback on how much resource would be required to meet the deadline. refer to: How d' you eat an elephant
• Explaining what could be achieved with the current resource within a required timeframe.
• Referring to the technical team’s currents commitments and giving the option for less important tasks to be substituted for what is currently being asked.
• Suggesting that if we hired X amount of contract resource then we could possible meet the required deadlines.
• If the request seemed large – then time might be required to do research with the aim of estimating the amount of additional effort required to meet the request.
• If the request seemed small – then consider offering overtime so to meet the deadline.

Remember it's your logical thought pattern that your answer will be judged on.
See other Interview Questions for Product Managers

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Moving from Technology to Product Management to increase business skills

Bikram Gupta has been been in Product Management for over 3 years he has worked in various markets and technologies such as: Telecom/Wireless, Data Networking, and Security domains. Bikram describes himself as a “knowledge worker” at heart; he’s passionate about exploring different lateral business roles outside the sales funnel. Bikram used to authors a blog entitle "Thoughts on Product Management"

#1. What’s your academic background/training?
Started working in IT with a Mechanical engineering graduation course. I obtained further knowledge in computer architecture, system programming, and Internet technologies through work experience and reading. Product Management skills were obtained through a combination job experience and reading.

#2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
I worked in various roles in R&D; in development and QA, both hands on and as a project leader.

#3. What companies have you worked for?
Currently with McAfee, and prior to that worked in Lucent and IP Unity Glenayre.

#4. What inspired you to become a product manager?
I wanted to be an independent business professional. Having Technology & programming skills were not enough. I firmly believe that sound business skills can be obtained by working in various lateral product management roles – so I decided to switch to product management.

#5. How did you make the move from being a developer to becoming a product manager?
I suppose it was a combination of good luck and the interviewer being able to see the potential with in me, I would like to think that she saw that I had good systems thinking skills that could be applied and adapted to the product management role.

#6. What do you like best about your job?
Being able to take business decisions and being accountable for them.

#7. What do you least like about your job?
When I find myself questioning the fundamentals of how things are getting along and not having all the power or authority to make the necessary changes.

#8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
I am an avid reader and I have a background of working in various domains.

#9. Describe your Product Management job in one sentence?
Defining the right product(s), ensuring it is build right and position it right.

#10. What’s your dream product to manage?
An open standard based personal assistant, which can be your second brain.

#11. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?
Cross-functional communication (and I would emphasis listening skills), reading the market correctly and then quantifying it coupled with good domain/technology knowledge.

#12. What’s the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?
Good relationship and mutual admiration.

#13. What do you do when you’re not managing products (outside interests)?
Spend time with family, and then read, read, read....and then read some more.

#14. What advice would you give some one who wants to become a product manager?
It’s a passion. It’s your love for the product, people and company and so obviously you want to do is what’s best for all these. It should be simple so keep it simple.

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Product Strategy of Microsoft, Yahoo, and FAST - BUT war declared on Google

By the time you read this blog post the announcement that Microsoft has put in a $44b bid for yahoo will be yesterday’s news. But have you taken a minute to think what this takeover means for the Group Product managers of MSN and Microsoft, the Product Strategist at Yahoo. It goes with out saying that... this bid is either a strategic step aimed to ensure that Microsoft has a long term future in the internet world and the ability to deliver world class search technology as part of their product offering. In the first half of January Microsoft decide to purchase FAST the search technology. Bill on Business comments that:

Microsoft has laid its cards on the table early in 2008 with its $1.2 billion cash acquisition of the Norwegian enterprise search player FAST. What does this say about Microsoft's intentions, and what implications might be in store for the content community?

One can imagine that the Product Strategist have put the integration of FAST on Sharepoint’s product roadmap as part of its search knowledge management product offering. Couple that with the what Microsoft will get when they acquire Yahoo and I believe we have an outright declaration of digital-war on google. ChannelWeb Network reports that:

With out a shadow of a doubt these are exciting times for those in the digital arena – such competition can only spark aggressive innovation for dominance and market share. Given the choice which camp would you like to be product manger in: Yahoo, Microsoft or Google?

With dominance over the IT industry and Internet at
stake, top executives at Google and Microsoft have been at each other's throats over the past several years. Google has attempted to take on Microsoft's dominance in productivity software by launching Google Docs; Microsoft, in turn, is developing Office Live Workspace and its own search, mapping and online advertising businesses. The proposal to take over Yahoo is its boldest move to date against Google.

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