June 2006

Product managers ain’t got no glory.

Doctors have it good. Lawyers too. Politicians, nurses, advertising executives, chefs, UPS drivers, actors, superheros, waitresses, real estate moguls, reporters, hairdressers, captains of industry, and stay-at-home moms.  They all have the stuff. They’re all seen on TV, in film, featured in books and national magazine articles.

But you almost never see product managers - or product marketers for that matter - featured in the mass media. No wonder the Cranky Product Manager’s own mother has no understanding of what her daughter does for a living.

In fact, the only depiction of a product manager that the Cranky PM can recall was in that glorious homage to the drudgery of the cubicle-infested workplace, the movie Office Space.  The character? Smykowski.

Listen to it here.

:-)  Ah, that clip gives the Cranky PM a chuckle every time.  Because it depicts exactly what Development thinks of Product Management by default, until proven otherwise.  And who hasn’t encountered at least one product manager who should be named Smykowski?

But, alas, the clip is hardly a tool for educating the Cranky PM’s mother on the challenges faced by those unsung heroes, the Software Product Managers.

Has anyone else seen a depiction of Product Management in film or on television?  In popular literature? Or perhaps in sculptures or paintings by the Great Masters? Do tell… the Cranky PM is waiting.

{ 1 comment }

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Hey, QlikTech! The Cranky Product Manager has a bone to pick with you! Instead of delivering a “keynote” presentation at this week’s Software Marketing Perspectives conference, you instead subjected the Cranky PM and her peers to a full-on, in-yer-face pitch for your “business intelligence” software.

While the Cranky PM fully expects any presentation given by a software vendor to be a thinly disguised sales pitch — after all, she plays the same game for her company –  she was offended that, well… YOU FORGOT YOUR frakin’ THIN DISGUISE (see-through and gauzelike as it might typically be)!

At least have the decency to PRETEND you’re offering pearls of wisdom on the ephemeral art of software product management.  After all, the Cranky PM and other attendees actually PAID to attend your talk!

But, QlikTech, even more greviously — and ironically — in front of an audience of software marketers, you broke Software Marketing Rule #1:

Software Marketing Rule #1: Your product pitch/demo should address the specific business problems of the audience.

QlikTech, while you droned on and on about your product and how you implemented a fabulous analytical app for some school system, the Cranky PM was waiting for you to:

1) Show you knew who was in the audience. At one point, your speaker said, “I’m here to talk to I.T.”  Fantastic. But guess what?!? No one in your audience was in I.T.! The Cranky PM and her audience cohorts were software marketers. Also, this might be shocking to you, but you know what else?!? They all work in the software industry, NOT in education. Your success stories did not apply.

2) Describe how your product addresses the challenges the Cranky Product Manager faces day-to-day: Can your software tell her which activities and product features drive leads and sales? Can your software help her appropriately segment the market?

Alas, you never told her. You kept yammering on about school test scores. Pictures of brains (I shit you not. Pictures of brains!)…flashing powerpoint text…a demo… Meanwhile, the Cranky PM became crankier and crankier as she thought about her mile-long to-do list and how you were WASTING her TIME.

You are fortunate, QlikTech, that your audience was so unfailingly polite and let you finish your dreary, irrelevant pitch. But know this: if the Cranky PM wasn’t such a pitiful coward, she would have taken you task right then and there. Instead, though, she’s letting you have it days later in her anonymously published blog. What a crusader for Truth and Justice.

Regardless, after such a crankiness-inducing incident, the Cranky PM requires a drink to soothe her irritable nerves. Cocktail suggestions are most welcome.

{ 0 comments }

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

The Cranky Product Manager is a fictional product management professional at a fictional enterprise software vendor named DysfunctoSoft.  These are her fictional stories.

The Cranky PM has been officially in product management for many years, but before that spent time in the trenches as a developer and professional services slave.  All told, she’s been working in tech for lots of years, at companies ranging from itty-bitty startups to IBM-sized behemoths. 

The Cranky Product Manager’s personality flaws and character failings include a passion for sodium-encrusted food, snarkiness, cynicism, abject driving skills, bluntness, and an absolute inability to tolerate pompous jackasses.

The Cranky Product Manager has decided to fulfill her lifelong ambition of one day referring to herself in the third person. This blog is the product of this misguided goal, when combined with a lust for fame, the antithetical desire for anonymity, and a vast store of cynicism that must be vented in order to preserve her mental health.

===========================

Addendum: Just to make it perfectly clear: this blog is fiction, although “inspired” (as Disney would phrase it) by the true-life experiences of a real software product manager, her colleagues, and her friends. The characters described in this blog are not real people; they are compilations of common software industry personality types that the author has encountered during her career. As they say, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Do not try to figure out who the author of the Cranky Product Manager blog is, because her life is completely different than the Cranky Product Manager’s.  FOR EXAMPLE, the author may not even be a product manager any more. She might no longer even work in software. Perhaps the author is a lot more experienced than her snarky, although naive, fictional alter-ego. Hell, the author might not even be a “SHE” for all you know! 

{ 4 comments }

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...