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divine rules for product managers

Divine Rules for Product Managers #3: On Helping the Press with Product Reviews

by The Cranky Product Manager on January 5, 2009

in Divine Rules for Product Managers,Marketing

If a member of the press wants to review a product, the Product Marketing Manager shall assist by providing an Evaluation Guide.

If thou does this according to THE SOFTWARE LORD’S wishes, the trade magazine just might run an article extolling to the world the virtues of your product.

Keeping in mind the lower-than-expected IQ and extreme sloth of certain members of the press, the Evaluation Guide should be written as if for your computer illiterate grandmother. 

Said Evaluation Guide shall have a screenshot for each and every step, including installation. 

Each step shall describe exactly what to type, what button to push, and why each step is being performed. The steps shall leave no room for misinterpretation.  The reader must not be required to think at all.

Marketing messages and competitive comparisons shall be interspersed throughout the Evaluation Guide, in hope that the member of the press will directly quote your ritually pure text.

 Read more Divine Rules for Product Managers.

Have the Software Gods been speaking to you as well?  Have any additional Divine Rules for Product Managers you wish to share?  Share them in this post comments.  The Cranky Product Manager will feature the best Divine Rules as posts on this blog, with appropriate link-backs to the destination of your choosing….

Also in Divine Rules of Product Management

  1. Divine Rules for Product Managers #1: Prepping for Engineering Meetings
  2. Divine Rules for Product Managers #2: On Dealing With Unreasonable Customer Demands
  3. Divine Rules for Product Managers #3: On Helping the Press with Product Reviews
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Divine Rules for Product Managers #1: Prepping for Engineering Meetings

by The Cranky Product Manager on December 29, 2008

in Development,Divine Rules for Product Managers

The Cranky Product Manager had a religious experience recently, where the gods of enterprise software came to her in a vision and presented her with the Laws of Product Management. Being gods, they instructed her to share these sacred Laws with y’all. 

The Cranky Product Manager shall post each Law in a separate post. Eventually, when several Laws are posted, you can view them all together via the Divine Rules for Product Managers category.

Law #1: On preparing for potentially contentious meetings with Engineering

If thou plans to meet with the Engineering team, where thou suspects the Engineers will disagree with the recommended priorities for product development, then thou shall endeavor to informally meet with each member of the team individually beforehand. 

Over burritos or sushi, thou shall endeavor to convince each Engineer of your point of view, describing the use cases and the research thou has done to arrive at the recommendations.  Thou shalt be charming and nice and personable and actually listen for a change.

If the time allotted for lunch is too short to convince the Engineer, thou shall continue the conversation over beers after work.  An official “meeting” is to be avoided.

Again, it is emphasized that thou shalt meet with everyone on the team individually, from the mightiest architect to the meekest junior engineer.

If thou does this according to THE SOFTWARE LORD’S wishes, the big meeting with the Engineering team will go smoothly and everyone will leave with common agreement as to the features and priorities of the next release.

Also in Divine Rules of Product Management

  1. Divine Rules for Product Managers #1: Prepping for Engineering Meetings
  2. Divine Rules for Product Managers #2: On Dealing With Unreasonable Customer Demands
  3. Divine Rules for Product Managers #3: On Helping the Press with Product Reviews
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