Forrester’s Grant reviews “Art of Product Management”
Tom Grant is Forrester’s product management analyst. He has a lot to cover. Here are excerpts from his recent review of our latest book, or read the full review on his product management blog.
Rich Mironov’s “The Art Of Product Management” doesn’t aspire to be a detailed reference manual. Instead, it provides quick, vivid snapshots of the challenges that product managers face on a day-to-day basis…
Psychology Before Sociology
Much of Mironov’s advice addresses perhaps the most personal aspects of product management: mentally, how should you approach the job? How do you stay productive? When is it a good idea to get out of management and back into the “individual contributor” role? Here’s a particularly, er, pungent example:
So what is product management? As you’ll see, that’s difficult question to answer briefly. My closest analogy is to parenting…I’ve recapped “Parenting And The Art Of Product Management” thousands of times, and still believe that “we’re not really parents [or product managers] until we’ve gotten some poop on our hands and laughed about it.”
As a parent and product manager, I couldn’t agree more.
Politics Is The Master Science
Beyond these “psychological” questions, Mironov provides a lot of helpful advice about the “sociology” of product management—the core job functions, and the different groups with whom you work. Actually, political science is the better analogy, since Mironov clearly has a lot of experience with the political side of product management. (In fact, one chapter, “Product Management Is Inherently Political,” sets the tone pretty explicitly.) Mironov has plenty of good tips on the fine art of getting things done, such as preventing salespeople from overwhelming the development team with too many special requests.
New Realities Demand New Theories
Mironov also has many good bits of advice on some of the newer challenges product managers face. As an increasing number of development teams adopt Agile development methods, product managers need to change the way they work. The deliverables may change from current requirements documents to user stories. Maintaining a prioritized feature backlog becomes a regular part of the job, instead of a rushed activity right before planning the next release. More ongoing work puts more demands on the PM team, which may require a larger PM team. Software as a service (SaaS), too, changes the way in which product managers work. Product managers bear a special responsibility to tell companies what they’re really getting into when adopting a SaaS model for product delivery.
The Art Of Product Manageement [is] valuable… to understanding product management – a profession full of unexpected twists and turns, but much like parenting, well worth making the commitment.
11 Jan 2009 | Source:
