Here are 10 things that make the Cranky Product Manager so frakin’ ANNOYED that she’s getting one of those bite plate things. You know, to keep her from grinding her teeth into small nubs while she sleeps. No doubt, the mouth plate will drive her husband WILD.
Here they are, listed in no particular order (and these are by no means the “top 10 of all time,” but are just for today):
- Endless arguments about the worth of product planning via a top-down process versus a bottom-up process.
- EVERYONE claiming they are strategic. Will NO ONE ever acknowledge that their job or abilities are primarily tactical?
- Insincere CEOs who ask the Cranky Product Manager about her Cranky Kid, but cut her off four words into her answer.
- Developers who think the Cranky Product Manager is some kind of user interface expert.
- Developers who ask for the ROI of each and every aspect of a feature. Example: What’s the ROI of the user being able to save his work? Honestly, how are you supposed to do this? And is it even worth it?
- Engineering managers who think that delivering 50% of a feature should result in 50% of the revenue. Usually, a half-baked feature is worse than no feature at all!
- CEOs who move entire release schedules by 6 months or more during quarterly earnings announcements.
- Product Marketing weenies who are too “visionary” and “big picture” to bother trying to use the product – even though it is targeted at business users (not tech people).
- Customers who demand you support operating systems and platforms so old that you can’t obtain them anymore.
- Maintaining the frakin’ Supported Platforms List. ARGH. Is anything more thankless or tedious?
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I too have given in to the need for the bite plate. (Though I had never considered all its uses.)
As to #5, the ROI question from engineers who actually don’t know what ROI means or stands for, I give them all the same answer.
“Happy to help. What number do you need in order to get started? Because I can whip that up for you in a few minutes. Do you want $1 million or $10 million of incremental revenue? Trust me, I can give you any number you want.“
#6 — please don’t use “literally” here unless the product is a cake. Maybe the feature “is literally half complete”, but let’s not drag culinary skills into it.
Sorry to be pedantic but PMs are multi-disciplinary and good writing skills are important.
Regarding #10, it seems like a pretty straight-forward pareto exercise. At a couple of jobs, the supported platform discussion went like this…
Get 5 of the more outspoken field weenies together on a conf call. Assuming they exist in your company. Have the conference call on a Friday afternoon so they are motivated to be concise and to the point. If you don’t have field weenies, it’s time for a customer event in Kauai (in 2009? right).
The support list goes like this.
1. Windows XP Pro SP2/SP3 and Windows Vista (Business/Enterprise editions) SP1 are in and will be tested thoroughly (MSIE)
2. Mac OS X Leopard will be in and tested (Firefox)
Boom, I’m at 90% already and we can go for Happy Hour at Pedros. No? The engineers swear that if I don’t include Linux (Safari) they will do it anyway and present it to the CEO at the most inopportune moment. So, which Linux(es) do we support? I have an open mind, but I also know that “supporting” 10 Linux distros is out of the question. By supporting RH/Fedora, SLED/OpenSuse, and Ubuntu I’ve covered 85% of the 10% that Linux represents. Will the product run on Gentoo? Sure it will, but the question is not “running”, it’s “supporting”. If the NE sales region wants support outside this the 3 I’ve mentioned, they need to prove to me (i.e. guaranteed revenue) that it’s worth our time and that we will lose that revenue otherwise.
Alright, we’re done. Time to write it up and get signatures.
As we gather the last approval signature on the MRD before going to the CMO, the VP of Sales and the CEO descend upon you and the lead engineer, informing you both that they have a multi-million dollar sale hinging on support for Solaris 9 (Safari).
It’s at that point you ponder if a career in automotive sales might be more rewarding.
Sad (but true)
Great comments and a fabulous post. Particularly #5. I hate when engineering puts their MBA hat on and asks for ROI’s.
As for #10, my life in hardware land is slightly different. We sell a system (high resolution, 3D surface imaging solution) and currently are running on XP. Unfortunately, we are running to the end of availability of XP boxes to use as controllers (still some uncertainty as to when Hell (oops, I mean Dell) cuts us off.) Thus we MUST make a computing platform change. The natural decision is to go with Vista (.Net, 64 bit (and trust me we NEED 64bit data handling), all the other dubious goodness).
Our NA Service director pitches a fit, claiming that NONE of our customers want Vista even on their premises as a controller for a quarter million dollar piece of analytical equipment. He bitches to our group VP, and raises visibility up and down both the field and operations food chain.
I am instructed to have a meeting with him to discuss how to go forward. I get there and ask him where we should go, Sun/Solaris, Mac/OS-X, Linux, or some real time unix, since he was so adamant that Vista wasn’t going to work. Finally, he backed off, but I still have to battle the shit storm he created.
I just wish people who have no business in setting priority would just STFU and let the rest of us get on with the business at hand…
#7b CEO’s who add features to “our next release” during conference keynotes
Cranky,
Did you ever consider switching careers? :-)
I have a friend who moved from software product management to analyst relations. Now, instead of engineers, he gets to deal with analysts. I know you have the hate out for Gartner and Forrester, but consider it getting revenge. Now they’ll have to deal with an informed AR person who understands products and technology — something many of them claim, but few can support .
You’ll get an expense account, get to fly to exotic places, schmooze with the big shots and the only sprints you’ll have to deal with are between gates at the airport terminal. What could be better?
Saeed
P.S. Your #10 has been my bane in several companies. Mix OSs, databases, app servers, hardware architectures and hypervisors and see if anyone can make sense of it.
“A customer is running our app on an LPAR on AIX, but has the repository on Oracle virtualized in ESX and needs to front it with JBOSS on Debian. Do we support that?”
#2 and #9 are my favorites, but just for today. Some other favorites are
* Everyone and their mother wants to review the MRD (or whatever requirements doc format you use), but no one provides ANY feedback
* Endlessly arguing about which defects to fix instead of just fixing them
* Adding new requirements for so long that a 5-month release cycle turns into an 18-month release cycle
This also says it well: http://businessguysonbusinesstrips.com/?p=73
I love this post! It’s helpful to know that other PMs struggle with the same things I face.
Another thing:
* Developers who make rogue design decisions based on a user profile *they* have defined, and not one defined by marketing or the PM.
I have done #10 as a junior member of a PM team a long time ago. Clearly it was part of their plan to haze me.
It always led to #9, which meant Big Gorilla Customer Demanded support for Opera or Netscape.
That is why they pay us the big bucks. Repeat.
Saeed, are you offering the Cranky Product Manager a job in Analyst Relations?
CPM, when I run a public software company, I certainly will. Until then, I can only offer you potential remedies to your current situation.
Saeed
My answer to #5:
“I’ll answer that just as soon as you calculate our company’s ROI for employing you. Please back-up your answer with hard numbers from sales. And, given these difficult economic times, I hope it’s a positive number.”
And, yep, did #10 and hated the hellz out of it. Especially when the “Dysfunctosoft” I worked for at the time had a database app for tracking that stuff, and it was designed back when the company mainly had client-server products while we had 3-tier web architecture. Took a painfully long time for the little troll who managed that app to *finally* accomodate 3-tier products.
A more recent company I worked at had really bizarrely written platform support lists – things categorized in ways that just didn’t make sense. I submitted rewrites for my products to the content publishing team for the company website, and lo-and-behold they mangled them before putting them online. When I confronted them about it, it turns out they really had no idea what the content meant, but they were adamant that they need to format everything in the same layout “that we’ve always used”. So, visually, they liked their rewrites better than mine because it looked more like the content for the other products that way.
*sigh*
I know it’s awfully nerdy, but kinda makes me wish I worked in a company run by Klingons so head-smacks and stare-downs would be acceptable. And who doesn’t like to wear all-leather business attire?… OK, I’m digressing…
#2: I know a person that say he’s in charge of tactical marketing. He’s the only guy I know who ever used the word tactical to describe something that he is doing.
#9: We still have a customer or two that just MUST have our products tested on Windows 95. Go figure.
Is it just me or does anyone else want to see the celebrity deathmatch episode with CPM vs Saeed? CPM, you probably want to remove the bite plate for that.
#2 I agree, there is a big difference between doing something strategic or tactical. The same problem occurs when we try to define the Unique Value Proposition of a Software Product. Very often we refer it as Unique Sales Points. Again, Strategy versus Tactic.
I am passing on this list to our software developers in Hermosillo… so perhaps they can give their point of view too.
#8 – I hate doing someone else’s job, but this is better than viewing the carnage an uninformed marketeer can do to a product. Providing their cheat sheet and product data info eliminates this and gets a few dinners in return.
# 9 used to be annoying until virtual platforms came into wider usage. Now it is only a mild nit intermittently.
@John,
The deathmatch has been defined. See http://onproductmanagement.net/2009/01/17/saeed-vs-cranky-pm-fight/ for more details.
Saeed
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