As posted earlier, the Cranky PM’s Kickstarter to write a book (tentative title: Product Management the Cranky Way) has been funded – we’re now at 133% of our original funding goal. The Kickstarter ends in a mere THREE DAYS, so act quickly if you haven’t already.
“Yeah!” thought the Cranky Product Manager, “I’m so happy! They LIKE me, they really, really LIKE me!”
followed by….
“Crap. Now I actually HAVE to write a freakin’ book instead of just FANTASIZING about it.”
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OK, dear readers. The Cranky Product Manager is looking forward to writing this book as her blogging swan song. After this, she’s committing blog suicide and ending this blog. The overall goal here is not to produce the authoritative tome on how to perform every activity in product management. Instead, the Cranky Product Manager wants to provide pragmatic advice about how to cut through the bullshit, get stuff done, and make your products big successes. (Don’t worry, snark will be abundant, as will comics, cranky “best of” tweets, and product haiku).
But she NEEDS YOUR HELP. Please provide some feedback in the comments,.
1. PLEASE VOTE FOR THREE OF THE FOLLOWING TOPICS
TOPIC 1. Be Careful What You Wish For: What is product management, is it for you, and how to break in?
TOPIC 2. A 30-day plan to become a wicked awesome product manager. day-by-day guide (if you are new to PM or just in a new job at a new company)
TOPIC 3. You’re the Hub, here’s how to deal with the spokes. How PMs can better work with other functions in the company. The archetypes you’ll see, their POV about product management, what they want from you, and what you need from them.
A. CodeBoyz and CodeGrrls
B. SalesDroids
C. Marketing Geniuses
D. Executives
E. Customers & Prospects
F. Outside Influencers – analysts, the press, etc.
E: Other insiders: professional services, support, etc.
TOPIC 4. What PMs do all damn day, and how to do it better:
interviewing customers, personas, market validation, requirements, user stories, designing roadmaps, product lifecycle management, beta testing, (WARNING: this might be far too much content for one book), product launces, pricing, product positioning
TOPIC 5. On Agile Product Management
TOPIC 6: Moving up and on. How to advance your career as a PM, how to manage other product managers, and progress your career within or beyond product management.
TOPIC 7: Write-in. What do you want to learn about?
2. PLEASE ANSWER: WHAT ARE THE THREE BIGGEST QUESTIONS YOU HAVE ABOUT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT?
The ones the Cranky Product Manager has been asked most often include 1) How do I get into Product Management?, 2) Do I need an MBA?, and 3) How do I do product pricing? But WHAT ELSE?
3. ANY OTHER ADVICE OR THINGS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE?
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Cranky,
Oh, oh — now you’ve gone and done it! One quick suggestion. Just about anybody could write a book about product management. However, only you can write a book about your personal product management stories — that’s what we all want to read.
There has to be a thread that ties it all together. Some journey of learning that you’ve gone through, some reoccurring theme that has been a part of your career.
Think of the book as being your guide to other product managers. Telling them something like “don’t make the same mistakes that I did”. Do this this way and your strongest asset, your sharp wit, can come to the surface throughout the book.
Please, do not create another product management desk reference — we already have one of those…!
Good luck!
I couldn’t agree more with the above posters. Stay true to yourself and your style. PLEASE include your own experiences. Many of us have already read books on what product management is or could be. I want to hear about you and your stories!!!
To respond directly to your vote question: 1, 3, and 5 are my top 3 curiosities. Specific to Agile, please touch on the pros/cons. I live in a world where everyone seems to agree on the theory, but no one can overcome the practical misuse.
I’m late to the party, but I hope you don’t do a me too.
There are lots of good PM books out there, I’d like to read about your wisdom. I hope you throw in lots of personal stories and what you did, should have done and where you hid the bodies.
I want to walk a mile in your shoes (please make them size 12, from Nike and it’s okay if they smell)
Good luck!
Too bad I didn’t discover you before today! Please please please leave this site up for a while; you are demonstrating absolutely pitch-perfect blog/marketing chops and I want to emulate them (plus I’d like more people to do so.) If you’re still open to suggestions about your book, please write something about Sales Droids. I spent my corporate career selling big IT projects and have to say, the sales people and the product people are on different galaxies, forget planets. Now that I run my own business (consulting on sustainable nonprofit fundraising practices, and selling a trademarked methodology), I’m struggling with my own internal product-management demons.
In corporate, the sales/product divide is getting worse. I have had to intervene between any number of nonprofit clients and their providers of donor database applications and boy, talk about two groups not speaking the same language.
OK, I can hardly wait to buy your book!
So your organization has gone agile. Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, and Scrummasters — who does what?! How do we all play together?
Michelle must work at my company! Do please Cranky Pm cover this question in the book. :-) Also, any update, I know it’s due in February, but I’m sooooo looking forward to it, and excited to be part of it all!
Since you posted this article, I’ve moved jobs (again) and I’m now doing something I love, working on apps for games consoles (not real work my wife assures me – far too much playtesting for her liking and now she has no excuse to exercise the Xbox when the baby arrives).
In recent months as I’ve settled into my role, I’ve pushed for the team to have a physical kanban board we use during standups and as a result, we’ve moved away from Agile and adopted more of a Lean approach.
The one thing we’ve not quite worked out is scheduling.
If it was possible, it would be great to see a thought on moving to Lean (if you think it has benefits over Agile) and managing scheduling (which Agile kind of does in a rough and ready way).
topics 3, 4, 6 although I am late to the game….just found your blog.
Topics 3, 4 & 6 would be awesome!
Other topics: How do I make my opinion matter? Why are Corporate Executives so blind to the needs of development? How do deal with the fact that every customer feels like they’re your only and therefore most important.
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