Comments on: Translation of The Cranky Product Manager

By: Henrik Kenani Dahlgren

Henrik Kenani Dahlgren — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:05:07 +0000

Great post!

I posted them on our board for Product Managers and none of them found it funny, they claimed that it was product marketers who said that. My favourite one I use is the one:

We don’t have that feature but we have a lot of customers that have developed work arrounds for that problem….

actually:

Everyone one else has identified the problem and solved it,… everyone but us. Now we will never get anyone to pay for the development.

By: short and sweet

short and sweet — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:35:16 +0000

[...] This product will help you increase your ROI and decrease your TCO = I have no freaking clue what the REAL business benefits of my product are, and I’m too lazy to figure it out. Source: Cranky Product Manager [...]

By: short and sweet

short and sweet — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:35:16 +0000

By: Daniel Kuperman

Daniel Kuperman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:03:05 +0000

Mustafa, if we take the route of the “internal stuff” we say we will end up with an endless list… a couple of the typical ones are:

What we tell sales: “This new release has greatly improved our ability to do X, Y, and Z. It also brings a new ABC feature which we’re the only ones in the market that can offer.”

What we mean: “The new release is a minor improvement over the previous one and I’m not wasting my time explaining something that you cannot technically understand. Just lower the price as you always do and hope the customer doesn’t ask tough questions”.

Or the classic:
What we say to the CEO: “The new release was finally shipped yesterday, which is only a minor delay. The development team really did a great job at tackling some unforeseen bugs and was able to wrap it up pretty quickly.”

What we mean: “This project was completely underestimated and we’re lucky it was released so soon. Of course, we had to skip QA and so now we should pray for it not to blow up unexpectedly.”

By: Mustafa

Mustafa — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:58:00 +0000

And don’t forget the internal stuff that we tell Engineering:

What we say: “This is good engineering and it’ll make it all consistent. Let me take this to our top clients and see if it would have a nagative impact on their systems”

What we mean: “This is not a feature the clients will benefit from but let me ask them anyway if this would break legacy. I will get back to you in 2 years”

By: Cranky PM

Cranky PM — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:45:06 +0000

Oooh, like your additions, Daniel! Especially the first one – been there, done that!

By: Geoffrey Anderson

Geoffrey Anderson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:26:27 +0000

Classic, and the adders are great too.

The third one down is the best. I used to live that in my life in Hardware. People always thought that for a bargain price, we could build them one off’s that would make Raytheon’s budget masters puke. Riiiiiggghhhhttttt.

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:44:50 +0000

This is hilarious. I lived the ‘it’s planned for xx.x release’ scenario – it’s so pitiful that major corporations can’t commit features so customers can plan. Or rather – it’s so crazy that customers think their suppliers should be able to plan ahead!

By: Daniel Kuperman

Daniel Kuperman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:29:36 +0000

Here’s one more:

What we say: “I was not aware of this bug but will take it back to our development team so we can fully analyze it and come up with a fix”

What we mean: “Yes, you are the hundredth person to bring this up within the past 5 days and we have no freakin clue how to fix it”

And, how about this one:
What we say: “Yes, you are not the only one to request this feature and we have already made plans to add it to our roadmap”

What we mean: “You are no genius, other people have already asked for it. What took you so long to figure it out this is missing?”

Nice post!

By: jim

jim — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:06:21 +0000

The last one can more generically be “Ignore me. I’m a robot/Gartner consultant.”