The Product Management Triad

Another excellent article from Pragmatic Marketing...this one from Steve Johnson with one of the most complete descriptions I've ever seen for the key Product Management roles:

"How many product managers do you need? What are their roles in the company? Is product management a support role for sales or marketing communications or development? I'm often asked to contrast product management, product marketing, program management and other titles in a high-tech company. All are poorly understood and are defined differently everywhere I go. An ideal solution for many companies is the 'product management triad'."

"Some product managers have a natural affinity for working with development, others for sales and marketing communications, and others prefer to work on business issues. Finding these three orientations in one person is an almost impossible task. Instead, perhaps we should find three different people with these skills and have them work as a team."

"Start with a business-oriented senior product manager for product strategy. Make this person a Product Line Manager (PLM) or director. Now add a development-oriented Technical Product Manager (TPM) and a sales-oriented Product Marketing Manager (PMM)...."

Thanks to my friend Brian Massey for sending this link to me (and Steve Johnson for teaching me about the "Blog this" tool).

Who Needs Product Management?

Here is an excerpt from an excellent article by Barbara Nelson of Pragmatic Marketing (click the title link to view the complete article on their website):

"You need product management if you want low-risk, repeatable, market-driven products and services. It is vastly easier to identify market problems and solve them with technology than it is to find buyers for your existing technology."

"Product Management identifies a market problem, quantifies the opportunity to make sure it's big enough to generate profit, and then articulates the problem to the rest of the company. We communicate the market opportunity to the executive team with business rationale for pursuing the opportunity including financial forecasts and risk assessment. We communicate the problem to Development in the form of market requirements; we communicate to Marketing Communications using positioning documents, one for each type of buyer; we support the sales effort by defining a sales process supported by the requisite sales tools so that the customer can choose the right products and options."

"If you don't want to be market-driven, you don't need product management. Some companies will continue to believe that customers don't know their problems. Some companies believe that they have a role in furthering the science and building the next great thing. These companies don't need product management; they only need project management, someone to manage the budgets and schedules. But these companies also need to reexamine their objectives. Science projects cannot be made into products in the short-term. Don't expect revenues if your company is focused on the "R" in Research and Development. Product management can guide you in the "D" in R&D, the development of technology into problem-solving products. "