Great PM’s
There is a great post at a Product Management blog that I have on my roll. I to enjoyed Good to Great, and thought it was an excellent business book.
The leadership of a PM is important, but ultimately, it’s their accountability to customers. How well are they listening and acting on what customers are telling them? I’m a firm believer that each decision made by Product Management must be supported by some level of data saying, "yes, customers are asking us to do this, and therefore it’s in the better interest of the organization."
Unfortunately, this can’t always be the case by a factor of 100%. Sometimes, in order to innovate, customer behaviors and patterns must be closely monitored to see where things are headed. Rick Segal writes a lot about looking around the corner, and PM’s should take that into account.
No, it is not always easy to get development, sales, marketing, and services on board. But if it was, PM’s wouldn’t be as helpful as they are. Showing everyone what you think, or taking an old / proven element and re-vamping it using cutting-edge ideas and technology may not be what prospects are looking for, but only because they don’t know it exists yet.
So, am I a fan of making decisions based on hard facts? Yes. But I’m also a fan of looking around the corner, and taking those customer needs and re-vamping them to make things easier and more useful using technology that may not be popular now, but allows a firm to separate themselves from the rest of the pack — and make an impact on how business is done.
