Product Management Journal

What do you do if your development team can't finish the product? This is not a question that anyone wants to have to answer, but it happens. The last time I ran into this, I had taken over a new product whose development team was spinning its wheels and unable to make meaningful progress. Each iteration of the product raised new problems that seemed to slow things down further. Something had to be done, quickly. In this case, the product was in the design/prototype stage. Early-stage paralysis can be caused by several different problems: - The team doesn't understand the customer need/problem well enough - The functional requirements or design aren't clear enough, or - The team lacks sufficient design experience/talent (it's usually more tactful to call it "experience") First, make sure that the PM information is sufficient, clear, and prioritized. Go over it with the team until you're certain it's understood. Talk about the Vision too. If the team...

Product managers have plenty of responsibility, but they often have very little authority. Rarely does anyone report to them - engineering, product design and marketing are usually in separate organizations, or have different managers. So how does a PM influence product decisions? Persuasion. Persuasion isn't just a matter of being nice to people and saying please and thank you, though that doesn't hurt. It's an art that's built on several skills that can be cultivated. Articulation Information is the product manager's best friend. Data from customer research, market analysis, sales, product support, and finance is key to shaping smart policies, and then persuading others that they make sense. Opinions may make for good conversations, but facts persuade. Persuasive data comes in all shapes and sizes. Certainly a quantitative survey can provide a solid foundation for a recommendation, but so can an informal conversation with a customer if it is set in a context that...