If you want to get into Product Management - then ask a good Product Manager.

Many ask the question “How do I get into Product Management” well here are a few links to Q&As, on the topic, on Jeff Lash’s new website ‘Ask a Good Product Manager’


How can a software engineer become a product manager?
View my answer to this question - hopefully it will help not just the asker but many more software engineers who want to make the transition from software engineering to product management.

How can I become a product management consultant?
After being a product manager for a number of years you may want to change career and become a product management consultant. Read how Adrienne Tan of brainmates answers this question.

How can I become a product manager without any experience?
Saeed Khan of On Product Management shares his views on how to get into product management.

You can also read more of my thoughts on how to get into product management at:
How to get into Product Management

And read how other got into Product Management at:
How others have moved into Product Management

Read More

How do Product Managers Keep up with Technology?

In general Product Management and/or Technical Product Management is about orientating between business and markets trends and needs and
being able utilise technology to define product features and enhancements. Marty Cagan, in his article Are You Technical Enough? States that:
"When I interview product management candidates, I’m looking hard at these two points. The candidate must convince me that they are capable of understanding and applying new technology, and of earning the respect of the engineering team."

As such keeping up with new and emerging technologies and learning about technologies that could be new to you is not only a challenge but critical to being a good and well respected Product Manager. Marty in the same article gives a few tips on how to stay technically savvy or should I say technologically savvy.

"There are many ways to do this. Books, articles, blogs, extension courses, experiment with the technologies or write software on your own, spend more time with your engineers, ask them about the technology topics they are exploring and tag along."

'Technical Product Manager' or 'Technology Product Manager'

In my book we should be careful not to get being technical mixed up with being able to apply technology to solve a problem – semantics one might say – let me explain – I view being technical as being the role of the Developer, Engineer or the Architect the person who is able to dig deep into the code, design the solution be it hardware, software, firmware or a combination of all three – they are also the people who are able to maintain the product, figure out work arounds (e.g. when chip sets all of a sudden go obsolete and purchasing are unable to source any more or a release of a new online feature causes performance issues not experienced in UAT or system test environments). The Product Manager needs to be able to have an appreciation for these issues but is not the person to offer up a detailed solution.

Things Product Managers do to keep up with Technology

Here’s how a few Product Managers that I have interviewed keep themselves updated with new technologies:

From Marketing to Product Management: Ivan Chalif says that he
"...typically let my Engineers bring new technologies to me, but I keep my eye open for new UI features and capabilities in other products that I think might be useful for my users. I also subscribe to a number of usability- and technology-oriented RSS feeds."

Transition from Web Developer to Product Manager: Patrick Jolley said "By using sites like TechCrunch and eHub. I also really like the ‘Movers and Shakers’ section on Alexa."

Interview with a Director of Product Management: Paul Young says that he tries "... to read a lot. I make heavy use of Google Reader to keep up with RSS feeds from favorite tech sites like Engadget. I also regularly read the other Product Management blogs that I link from my site, Product Beautiful. I am always amazed and humbled by the great thoughts and posts that other Product Management bloggers are creating."

Interview with an Ex AOL Product Manager: Brunella said "By reading a lot on the Internet and getting the latest hints through friends and colleagues in the field."

Interview with Jeff Lash: Author of How to be a Good Product Manager "... I try to read as many blogs as I can manage, read general consumer and business magazines, and learn from colleagues. I try to use as many new web sites as possible -- I always sign up for the "notify me when this service is available" email notifications, since there's too many to remember. As much as I try to stay ahead of the curve, though, I can't keep track of everything. My feeling is that if something is really going to be important, I don't need to be the first to find out about it, since I'll probably hear about it soon enough if enough people are talking about it."

From Technical Support to Product Management Mark Barns states "Mostly through working closely with in house development teams on Product Requirement and Software Requirement Specs. Continuous customer engagement, Trade Shows and Standards bodies attendance also help."

Tony Bradley in his article: Keeping up with Tehnology gives this advice:
"New technologies and improved technologies are emerging all the time. It can be daunting to try to keep up with them all. Remember to focus on keeping your business needs in mind and finding the technology that helps solve them rather than keeping up with technology just for the sake of keeping up with technology."

How do you keep up with technology? – Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.

Read More

Product Manager adopting web2.0 agile software development

In the world of web development online product managers have two choices big bang (probably using waterfall) Vs incremental redesign (and empower product development) of the websites their responsible for. The world of online moves at such a fast pace that by the time you carry out your research, then work with an analyst to document your findings in the form user requirements and then design and build your website (or online product) and then launch/re-launch it, the original research is in danger of being out of date or put another way superseded by some new online fad. This means that you’re in danger of being in decline before you’ve had the opportunity to experience growth and maturity. In my opinion a combination of adopting agile software development (such as Scrum) along with web 2.0 technologies and mindset (i.e. perpetual beta) coupled with taking a brave decision to develop a new home page whilst leaving the rest of the site as is and then asking for user feedback via your web site has got to be the way to go. The most recent site to do this is the BBC.co.uk.

Opting for incremental raises a few questions for the online product manager.

#1.Will changing and releasing just the home page of a site confuse the users?
#2.Will internal stakeholders adopt the perpetual beta approach?
#3.What do you do if the users make suggestions that go against your company culture for your online product?

I’d value your feedback on this subject.

Read More

Interview question on under performing

What would you do if your boss called you to a meeting and informed you that your team has been complaining about your lack of leadership and management?
You would or course be surprised even shocked because you would have put things in place to ensure that you where leading and managing the team well. Once you express that you would be surprised you could then:
1. Ask if their where any particular examples.
2. List the things you would have in place to ensure that individually and collectively the team felt they where managed and led. Such as:
a. Regular team meetings – where everyone has the opportunity to give feedback and where you have the opportunity.
b. Regular one to one sessions – where you have a chance to get close to your team members.
c. Periodic review of work done – with out micromanaging your team.
d. Yearly formal appraisals where tasks are set followed through with formal quarterly reviews.
The above demonstrates to the interviewer how you would manage your team so that such a situation would not occur.
However if such a complaint surfaced and your line manage agreed with the complaint then you could suggest you work with your line manager to put an action plan together in order to get things back on track.

Read More

From Technical Support to Product Management

Mark Barnes has extensive experience in facing customers, initially as a customer support engineer and then later in his career as a product manager. Continue reading to learn more about his transition and views about product management.

1. What’s your academic background/training?
BEng in Electronics Engineering from Sussex University.
Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing from Chartered Institute of Marketing.
2. What did you do before you where a product manager?
Field Service > Customer Support > Sales Support > Product Management
3. Where did you work prior to your current position?
Prior to current position at Tektronix I worked for Adherent Systems Ltd, (Digital Broadcast Test and Measurement) as a Product Manager. Adherent was acquired by Tektronix (General T&M) who in turn have been recently been acquired by Danaher (global portfolio of companies) - now my current employer. Prior to Adherent I worked for Radamec Broadcast Systems Ltd as a Customer Support Engineer, Sales Support Engineer and Product Manager. Prior to that I worked in the Oil and Gas exploration industry for Baker Hughes Inteq (aka Exlog) as a Field Service engineer.
4. What inspired you to become a product manager?
The desire to improve the products I was working with. In previous (support) roles I was always dealing with the results of other peoples product development decisions. I felt I could do better and had ideas about how to improve products and services so decided I should put my money where my mouth is and take on that responsibility in a product management role.
5. How did you make the move from being a Support Engineer to becoming a product manager?
During time spent in customer support role I found I gravitated towards sales activities, demo's, trade shows etc. This led me to realise that I needed to be in a position where I could more effectively influence product direction and when a Product Management opportunity in the same company came up, I took it.
6. What do you like best about your job?Getting to the bottom of customers problems and developing solutions that make those people and their companies more successful.
7. What do you least like about your job?
Overcoming the challenges of large company 'inertia' needed to execute with velocity.
8. How do you keep up with the latest technologies?Mostly through working closely with in house development teams on Product Requirement and Software Requirement Specs. Continuous customer engagement, Trade Shows and Standards bodies attendance also help.
9. Describe your Product Management job in one sentence.
Solving customers problems profitably.
10. What’s your dream product to manage?
Great question - something that I am passionate about, is strongly differentiated and targeted at a clearly defined niche segment.
11. How would you describe managing product development before you/your company adopted agile?We don't tend to use agile in teh hardware world. My current company uses a gating process common to many hardware technology companies product introduction processes. A product is researched, defined and business case justified before the main thrust of development commences. Some amount of de-risking by the development team may take place before the project gets the green light.
12. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?#Insight into customer needs, current and future.
#Ability to communicate effectively across functions, and at all levels, of the organisation.
#Leadership qualities - necessary to motivate cross-functional teams to deliver outstanding products that deliver value to all stakeholders.
13. What’s the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?
Credibility in the eyes of the developers - I have seen others fail because of this.
14. What do you do when you’re not managing products (outside interests)?
Young family occupies most time. Also motorcycles.
15. What advice would you give some one who wants to become a product manager?
Product Management can be very rewarding because you control, and are accountable for, the product or service in question. However the Product Manager must be truly passionate about the Product or Service to maximise the rewards. If you do not feel a connection to the Product or Service in question then don't take the position - find one that you care about.

Read More

Interview Question: How Do Product Managers Handle Success?

The interviewer poses the folloing question:
"You, and your team, were involved in a successful launch of a new product that exceeded business expectations during its first phase - what would you do?"

First I would Celebrate [with the team of course] and then….

Follow Brian Lawley’s advice which is stay humble and give credit to the team.

Following that it would be critical to analyse all the activities that led to the success launch of the product. State that as the product manager I'd have the over view of all activities but the analyse will be designed to get into the detail.

Were standard processes and procedures followed? – If they where then that’s fine, if not find out what was done differently and then suggest that the particular process might be improved in the light of the current success.

How was the interaction between the various stakeholders? Did the requirements change? What methodology did the development use: Scrum, DSDM, Waterfall (probably not!). Were there code reviews, was there pair-programming for those real in-depth tricky aspects of the code base.

How was the marketing tasks carried out? – What budget was spent on promoting the product via to launch compared to other product launches? How was the sales team trained?

Round up your answer by stating that you would document the feedback – coupled with your own observations and recommendations and then work towards embedding the improvements into the 'departments and company culture' so that the next phase and next product launch will be even more successful. Finally state that you would share and discuss your finding with your colleagues via case-study on the departmental blog and/or team meeting, thus functioning around CMMI level 2 to 3.

Read More

Where do you see your product in two years time?

Looking into the future and knowing what the competition, the market and your product will be like is probably one of the most challenging tasks that any product manager has to undertake. This can be a tricky question to answer at a job interview. “Where do you see product x in y years time”? How a product manager answers this question gives the interviewer an insight as to how much of a visionary they are and whether or not they keep a keen eye on technology as it progresses. Here are two mini case study answers to such as question.

I carried out a few interviews over the last couple of days and asked the candidates “How do they see the web in a few years time.” A few interesting thoughts came up. One person drew an analogy between the way television has evolved over the past few years: from two analog channels in black and white to 100s of digital channels via cable & satellite. Like wise the number of web pages will continue to increase therefore competition for viewer-eye-balls will increase as well. The candidate went on to say that as TV has become an integral part of everyday life the web will become even more embedded in the lives of business professionals. We will become more reliant on information to do our jobs and that information will be provided via the types of on-line products and services that we ['we' being the company they were hoping to join] produce – our [being 'us' working together] challenge is to package the information in an easy, digestible and appealing way so that users keep on coming back for more. The subtle use of we and our came over quite well.

The other candidate focused on enabling technologies like ajax and silverlight to enhance the user experience and discussed the merits of web 2.0: social networks and web services to give users a more personalised experience – he quoted the BBCs and new home page i-google as an example of being able to move widgets around a webpage and mix and match a combination of widgets to give you the all the information you want in the format you want. Thay stressed that going forward many more websites would adopt and roll out such features- untill they become almost standard. They also mentioned how mobile device will probably change and copy the UI of apples i-phone.

Whilst neither candidate came up with the next killer app or suggested something total new or innovative, however they both demonstrated that they had at least thought through the general direction of on-line products and were able to demonstrate how and why future changes might be brought about.

Read More

How others have moved into Product Management

How do I become a product manager? There is no one right answer to this question however one thing we do know is that very few if any people enter the realms of technical product management immediately. I have interviewed a number of Product Managers who have shared their background, experiences, likes, dislikes and given tips on how to succeed.


1. From Marketing to Product Management
Ivan Chalif studied psychology and counselling at university as opposed to business studies or technology – however he is a successful technical product manager. Read how Ivan made the various transitions in his career that eventually resulted in him becoming a product manager. Read From Marketing to Product Management for more details.

2. From Web Developer to Product Manager
Patrick was a web developer who produced online products for the travel industry. Patrick took an interest in the business operated become acquainted with the key business stakeholders and eventually made the transition into product managers for the travel products the business went through a restructure. refer to Patrick's interview for more details: Transition from Web Developer to Product Manager

3. From Hardware R&D Engineer to Product Management
Francois Abbe had a strong technical background and worked for an engineer led company. As a result the engineers were used in many client facing activities. This gave Francois the opportunity to perform many of the product management roles while being an engineer. This helped make the smooth transition to product manage many of the products that he worked on as an engineer.Read From R&D Engineer to Product Manager for more information

4. From Mechanical Engineering to Software Product Management
Bikram Gupta has an academic background in Mechanical engineering – he used his engineering degree to get into IT. Bikram has a wide technical background and has read his way into Product Management Follow the link to read Bikram's interview

Moving from Technology to Product Management to increase business skills

5. The man that did all the roles before entering Product Management
Marty Cagan has worked for several hi tech Silicon Valley companies. He has a wide range of experience in many technical roles including Product Management. Marty is a founder of Silicon Valley Product Group a consultation firm that helps companies with all aspects of the product life cycle read the the interview by going to the following link From Software Engineer to Product Manager to Founder of SVPG - Interview with Marty Cagan

6. From Business Analyst to Product Management
Andy started his career as a Business Analyst - the opportunity arose for him to temporary manage a few products. He took up the challenge, impressed his employer and then got promoted. He has since moved onto a new product management role and market sector Andy's interview can be found at Moving from Business Analyst to Product Manager to "Online Product Manager"

7. From Webmaster to Product Management
Daniel worked for a publisher as a webmaster. When his company went through a restructure he applied for a job as a project manager in the IS department. This gave him exposure to Product management and it was just a matter of time before he moved through the ranks and now managers a strong portfolio of online products for the aerospace industry Danile's interview can be found at the following link: Transition from Webmaster to Product Manager via Project Management

8. From Web Applications Programmer to Product Management
Paul Young started life studying Radio-Television-Film at University but quickly moved into web applications programming which eventually led into Product management. Paul is currently a Director of Product Management. Read Interview with a Director of Product Management for more details.

9.From Account Management to Product ManagementBrunella Russo was an Account Management for a Financial Company. She moved into Product Management at AOL. Read Interview with an Ex AOL Product Manager

10. From User Experience Designer to Product Management
Jeff Lash has a strong background in User Experience Designer and has practiced information architecture. Jeff now works as the Product Director for MD Consult, a leading web site providing clinical reference information for physicians and medical professionals.Interview with Jeff Lash: Author of How to be a Good Product Manager

11. The man who read himself into Product Management.
Matt Rowe is one of those Product Managers who is self taught and self read. Matt was a Business Analyst (BA) prior to becoming a Product Manager. As a BA he ran several small projects – this coupled with his BA experience put him in good stead to become a product manager. Interview with a Product Manager

12. from Customer Support Engineer to Product Management
Mark Barnes found him self having to face customers in order to fix and install problems with equipment they had purchased - now he talks to customers with the aim of producing products that will provide them with solutions. Read From Technical Support to Product Management for more information.

Related articles:
How to improve your Product Management career and grow in your job
Interview Questions for Product Managers
How to get into Product Management

Read More

From Marketing to Product Management

Ivan Chalif is author of th eblog The Productologist. He is also a founding member of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA). In addition to creating the original logo, and managing the website and forums, Ivan was instrumental in organizing early SVPMA events and establishing the organization’s charter.


1.What’s your academic background/training?
Both my undergraduate and graduate degrees are in Psychology and Counseling. While getting my undergraduate degree, my focus was on working with individuals with severe psychological disorders like Multiple Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia (which by the way, is not the same as MPD, even though they are commonly used interchangeably by the media), Bi-Polar disorder, and Depression. My graduate school work centered on working with young gifted students with behavioral problems. Learning to communicate effectively with both of these populations has gone a long way in contributing to my success as a Product Manager.

2.What did you do before you where a product manager?
Before I settled into Product Management, I worked in a variety of Marketing roles, including competitive intelligence, marketing generalist, webmaster, and application prototyper.

3.Where did you work before you worked for StrongMail Systems?The past few years, I have worked at Email Service Providers like Acxiom Digital and ValueClick. Before that, I was Director of Marketing at a small online agency and before that I worked in the library automation industry.

4.What inspired you to become a product manager?To be honest, I fell into Product Management. It combines many of the business functions that I enjoy (and some I don’t) and it was only through trying out other Marketing roles that I found out what Product Management actually was and started to get more interested in moving into that type of position. I am passionate about the user experience and in many organizations that starts with Product Management.

5.How did you make the move from being in Marketing to becoming a product manager?
I moved into Product Management through a hybrid role that combined Web Producer and Product Management functions.

6. What do you like best about your job?
The part of Product Management that I like the most is solving problems. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not working on solving a problem for a customer, prospect or internal user. It may be as simple as addressing a customer question or as complex as creating a brand new workflow for users, but it’s the challenge of overcoming the constant onslaught of problems that I find most stimulating.

7.What do you least like about your job?Meetings.

8.How do you keep up with the latest technologies?
I typically let my Engineers bring new technologies to me, but I keep my eye open for new UI features and capabilities in other products that I think might be useful for my users. I also subscribe to a number of usability- and technology-oriented RSS feeds.

9.Describe your Product Management job in one sentence.
Balancing spinning plates on a drinking straw while walking a tightrope as fast as you can with an itch on your nose.

10.What’s your dream product to manage?
In an ideal world, I would love to be the Product Manager of a motorcycle. I’ve been a fan of motorbikes since my youth and with “standard” bikes in particular. My two favorite bikes are the 1984-86 Honda CB700s and the 1986-87 Yamaha Fazer.

11.How would you describe managing product development before you/your company adopted agile?
Most of the companies that I have worked at have used a traditional or modified waterfall development process. There was one company where we used an iterative development process, but that was more a function of lack of development planning versus actually following an agile method. I am not convinced that an agile development process is ideal for every type of product, so I am not driving a change to that from our current process, but I would be interested in working with a development team that uses the agile methodology to see how it works first hand.

12. What would be the top three attributes you need to do your job?
a. The ability to make decisions quickly and effectively.
b. Being able to communicate with both internal and external stakeholders.
c. Comfort with a rapidly changing environment.

13. What’s the key attribute you need in order to work with the development team?The patience to see your plan through to the end. There is a constant tug-of-war between Product Management and Engineering. Product Managers want more features in less time; Engineers want fewer features in more time. There are compromises along the way on both sides, but don’t sacrifice key elements of the product plan because they are difficult or haven’t been done before. Stand up for your ideas, your product and your users. That’s what it means to be a Product Manager.

14. What do you do when you’re not managing products (outside interests)?
Besides spending as much time with my family as possible, I try to fit in a variety of physical and mental activities including, soccer (futbol for the rest of the world ), running, snowboarding, reading hard science fiction and political satire, and occasionally blogging.

16. What advice would you give some one who wants to become a product manager.
Product Management is a broad practice that is, at best, loosely defined. If you are thinking about becoming a Product Manager, try some adjunct roles first. Sales, Corporate Marketing, Support, and Professional Services (or Engineering, if you are technically-inclined) will all give you a good background and the skills necessary to be a successful Product Manager. If you are a new Product Manager, it’s easy to get sucked into doing things that aren’t really product-related. Stay focused on addressing the needs of your users and understanding your market. The rest will fall into place.

Read More