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Product Management Haiku, Redux

by The Cranky Product Manager on January 21, 2011

in The PM Profession

This post is sponsored by Quantum Whisper. The Cranky PM loves them because 1) they pay her, and 2) they are maestros of the agile product management tango.

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In their spare time, the Product Management Crankerati just LOVE writing haikus.

Check it: here (Pivotal PM), and here (previous Cranky PM post), and here (Product Management Meets Pop Culture), and here (Tyner Blain), and here (On Product Management), and here (Spatially Relevant).

The fun just never ends.

Anyway, here's some brand, spankin' new haiku from the Cranky PM.  From her sleep-deprived, addled brain. (Too many products to manage, too many kids to parent - at home and at work.)

As always, submit your own Product Management Haiku in the comments!


Feemium product
has too many great features.
No one upgrades. Crap.

CTO sees the
bright shiny object du jour.
Development stops.

Virtual dev teams.
Half of meetings are now spent
debugging A/V.

Agile dev process
moves bottleneck from Dev to
Product Management.

Product Manager
who cannot use his product
should be fired. Now.

The new Architect
always demands rewrite of
every line of code.

Hey, Support Martyr,
some enhancement requests won’t
get done ever! Chill!

Sales Droids always bitch.
Unless they can do no work,
but still collect checks.

The Agile stand-up
should be 10 minutes, not hours.
My feet really hurt.

{ 30 comments }

FINAL CHAPTER (part 6): World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview

by The Cranky Product Manager on December 21, 2010

in The PM Profession,Your Career

Quantum Whisper was kind enough to supply the Cranky PM with expensive lattes this month.  They are a wicked awesome company that links customer feedback to your backlog.  Crank-tastic!

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At LONG LAST, the World's Most Generic Product Management Interview wraps up.

The Cranky Product Manager will just say that creating these videos is a lot more tedious than you might expect. Especially since she is a lousy speller and the xtranormal thing lacks spell check. She is really sick of those monotone voices! So this will be the VERY LAST CARTOON for a while.

(And if you received this post via email or your RSS reader and cannot see the embedded video/cartoon, view it here.)
 

Check it, Part 6, THE FINAL CHAPTER!

And if you haven't seen the previous videos, find them here.

PARTS 1 &  2 - The interview dress code.  The first slew of generic questions.

PART 3 - Even more generic questions.  Round manholes, anyone?

PART 4 - Questions that require you be a much better PM than the hiring manager.

PART 5 - Do you have any questions for me?

PART 6 - The Final Chapter - What are the next steps?

( And don't forget to buy your colleagues holiday gifts.  How 'bout some Cranky PM mugs? )

Also in The World's Most Generic PM Interview

  1. Cranky Cartoons: The Generic Product Management Interview (parts 1 & 2)
  2. CRANKY CARTOONS: THE GENERIC PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTERVIEW (PART 3)
  3. Part 4: The World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
  4. Part 5: World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
  5. FINAL CHAPTER (part 6): World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
<< Previous in series |

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Part 5: World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview

by The Cranky Product Manager on December 20, 2010

in The PM Profession,Your Career

This hideously cranky post is sponsored by Quantum Whisper, a wicked awesome company that links customer feedback to your backlog.  Can you say OMFG!

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Ack, almost done.  At long last, our glum product management applicant gets to ask a question of his cranky interviewer.

(And if you received this post via email or your RSS reader and cannot see the embedded video/cartoon, view it here.)
 

Check it, Part 5:

And if you haven't seen the previous videos, find them here.

PARTS 1 &  2 - The interview dress code.  The first slew of generic questions.

PART 3 - Even more generic questions.  Round manholes, anyone?

PART 4 - Questions that require you be a much better PM than the hiring manager.

( And don't forget to buy your colleagues holiday gifts.  How 'bout some Cranky PM mugs? )

Also in The World's Most Generic PM Interview

  1. Cranky Cartoons: The Generic Product Management Interview (parts 1 & 2)
  2. CRANKY CARTOONS: THE GENERIC PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTERVIEW (PART 3)
  3. Part 4: The World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
  4. Part 5: World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
  5. FINAL CHAPTER (part 6): World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
<< Previous in series | | Next in series >>

{ 6 comments }

Part 4: The World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview

by The Cranky Product Manager on December 17, 2010

in The PM Profession,Your Career

This crankylicious post is sponsored by Quantum Whisper, a wicked awesome company that supports agile product management. Check'em out!

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Oy, the Cranky Product Manager is out of steam on this video thing.   Just a few more parts of The World's Most Generic Product Management Interview video.  Here you go.  (And if you received this post via email or your RSS reader and cannot see the embedded video/cartoon, click HERE

Part 4:

Parts 5 & 6 are almost done and will be posted shortly, before Christmas. Promise.

And if you haven' t already seen parts one through three, here you go...

PARTS 1 &  2

PART 3

( And don't forget to buy your colleagues some Cranky Product Manager Christmas mugs! www.cafepress.com/crankypm )

Also in The World's Most Generic PM Interview

  1. Cranky Cartoons: The Generic Product Management Interview (parts 1 & 2)
  2. CRANKY CARTOONS: THE GENERIC PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTERVIEW (PART 3)
  3. Part 4: The World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
  4. Part 5: World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
  5. FINAL CHAPTER (part 6): World’s Most Generic Product Management Interview
<< Previous in series | | Next in series >>

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Harvester Research and Analyst 2.0

by The Cranky Product Manager on August 13, 2010

in Analysts

Oh goodness.  The Cranky Product Manager realizes that this April Fool's send-up of technology analysts has been creeping around the Internet for well over a year.  But, alas, this is the first time she saw it.

Please read.  Very funny stuff. It's about Harvester Research's launch of ForceSales.com, the industry's first Analyst-as-a-Service (Aaas) offering.

The Cranky Product Manager especially likes the Harvester frameworks: the Harvester Fave, the Harvester Magic Kingdom , and the Harvester Market Dream Cycle.  

 

 

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Cranky Tweets for the Week Ending 3/4/2010

by The Cranky Product Manager on March 4, 2010

in Cranky Tweets

  1. Note 2 CEO: Don’t use #prodmgmt as a dumping ground for ur incompetent buddies that sales/mktg/support/dev tried to fire.
  2. @Jim_Holland – ?!?!?!??!?! wow. The crankypm is against demo-pimposity for PMs, but seriously LEARN TO USE YOUR EFFING PRODUCT.
  3. The CPM is SHOCKED & HORRIFIED by the sheer number of product managers she’s met who can’t use their own products. DISGRACEFUL.
  4. The Cranky Product Manager has found her cyberspace twin: @TheRealSWMBO – Separated at birth?
  5. #prodmgmt rule of thumb #2: don’t let that pompous bearded tech lead near the customer. He’ll tell them they r too stupid to be a cust.
  6. Cranky #ProdMgmt Rule of Thumb #1: If u want customers to upgrade from free to pay-for version, the pay-for version had better be better!
  7. The CrankyPM is pretty sure the entire Bible was written faster than #prodmktg takes to write a 2-page brochure.
  8. Once again, @crankypm is spending a night writing own 2-pg brochure cuz ProdMktg claims it would take them 12(!) wks. #prodmgmt
  9. Hey, don’t be a “take-take-taker” all the frakin’ time! Volunteer at PCAMP SV &GIVE for a change. http://tinyurl.com/yzdo593 #prodmgmt

  10. @pras26 – On PDMA in general, the Cranky PM is not familiar. They have a nice scholarly journal abt prod dev. That’s abt all she knows.
  11. @pras26 – dont’ know if NPDP from PDMA is fluff, but it is definitely not well known. See my survey: http://tinyurl.com/8y2ug7
  12. The Worst Positioning Stmt is trumped AGAIN! http://crankypm.com/2010/02/prototype-worst-positioning-statement/#comment-4140. #prodmgmt

{ 4 comments }

Power Post: Quickie Observations on Life in the Software Industry

by The Cranky Product Manager on January 22, 2010

in The PM Profession

The Cranky Product Manager has been neglectful of this here blog, once again. Good thing she’s not being paid to do it or anything, or else she’d be so totally fired.

Anyway, to break through the Huge Writer’s Block that has been in her way for the last 7 weeks or so, the Cranky PM is taking on a Big Ass Writing Challenge! To write an entire blog post in a mere 5 minutes! She’s calling it — wait for it — POWER POSTING! (you can tell she’s in software marketing because she thinks her completely boring, uncreative title is totally wicked awesome).

So here we go. And just a warning, it probably won’t be funny because the Cranky PM ain’t no Chris Rock — she usually thinks of her jokes about an hour too late.

THINGS THE CRANKY PM HAS OBSERVED ABOUT THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

1. As annoying as those Sales Droids can be, they sure are fun to party with! And there’s nothing like having a conversation with someone who can actually, well, CONVERSE. Not to say your average developer can’t, but well, your average developer can’t. Unless it is about design patterns or Star Trek. And speaking of Star Trek, OMFG isn’t the new James T. Kirk, actor Chris Pine, just HOT? Yum.

2. Ever notice that at the Big All-Hands Company Meetings, that the Product Managers always ask WAY more than their share of the questions?

3. The Cranky PM has yet to meet a tech writer who can write a decent white paper. Didn’t these people ever try to convince their mothers to let them stay out late with the rest of those hard-partying High School Math-letes? (Or was that just the Cranky PM?) Is writing PERSUASIVELY really that hard?

4. Even though DysfunctoSoft is supposedly “Agile”, the Process Hawks still require about 2 man-weeks of documentation with N levels of sign offs, just to add a single check-box to a page in the UI.

5. If you’re a software company that actually ships working product to paying customers, don’t acquire a start-up whose founders are some professor and/or a collection of former grad students. They’ll never actually ship anything (they have no idea how to), and within one year all those brilliant minds you acquired will be out the door, looking for work at another academic-oriented outfit that never ships anything.

6. Marketing Weenies: please don’t post copies of press releases to the company “blog” and claim you’re doing “Social Media.”  Please.

OK, five minutes are up.  Later.

 

{ 17 comments }

The Enlightened Stupid Marketer (a marvelous video)

by The Cranky Product Manager on June 3, 2009

in Marketing

Thanks to Midlakewinter for the link to this very-funny-but-in-an-uncomfortable-kind-of-way video, entitled the Enlightened Stupid Marketer.

It’s especially uncomfortable if you play it for your marketing weenie husband… in response to his declaring that product functionality is irrelevant to product success.  And as a crabby-ass beeyotch and an extremely insecure individual, the Cranky Product Manager took this wrong-headed statement as a personal attack on her career choice.  So, she decided to poke him where it hurts, the extremely mature individual that she is.

WATCH THAT VIDEO, MARKETING WEENIE HUSBAND.  WATCH!

Enjoy!

{ 5 comments }

Return of the Product Management Haiku (now with extra fun)

April 23, 2009

Remember this?  The Product Management Haikus (originally inspired by Pivotal PM)? The Cranky PM is inspired to once again dust off her quill pen and write some more poetry.  Poetry that no one but you folks would possibly understand. If you are similarly inspired, post your own haiku in the comments!  If yours makes the [...]

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Guest Post: The Cranky Engineer Responds to a PRD

April 1, 2009

Today we have a super-duper-uber-fantastic guest post from the Cranky Engineer, aka DGentry of codingrelic.geekhold.com. Check out his blog.  It’s WICKED AWESOME. Also, you might recall that DGenery was the BIG WINNER of the Cranky Product Manager’s caption contest for the “7 Types of Engineers.” He won a fancy pants coffee mug.  AND HE LOVES [...]

Read the full article →

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