Global Product Management Talk

Elizabeth Quintanilla, Marketing Gunslinger, spoke about how much fun PCamp Austin, how to nurture a vibrant product management community between pcamps, logistics, marketing and mentoring volunteers. Different flavors and experiences of other PCamps were discussed. As a former Rocket Scientist, Elizabeth helped navigate spacecraft on their journey from Earth to Mars and as a systems engineer managed the requirements to transition to move navigational software from one code base to another.  However, her personal journey brought her back to Texas where she completed her MBA and was a product professional at IBM.  In 2009, Elizabeth became an active member of ProductCamp Austin and has been an active Marketing Gunslinger since. Elizabeth says, “I am thrilled to join the Global Product Management Community on this twitter chat! I have seen various thought leaders and active community members bounce ideas, share best practices and more importantly - grow the community around product management and product marketing.  Looking forward to this twitter chat!” Resources: http://bit.ly/w2K771

Veronica Figarella, Product Management Professional, Leads Discussion About Effectively Managing Multiple Products Today’s businesses are faced with reacting to the increased speed to market for new products, delivering shareholder value for existing products and allocating relevant resources, including people and money, to current and future projects. As a result, product portfolio managers are faced with legacy problems of too many projects underway and determining which, if any, are worthwhile.  They must alleviate issues of limited resources spread too thin and across too many projects, projects taking too long to get to market and a pipeline full of too many low value projects. Product portfolio management is about resource allocation to achieve corporate product and innovation objectives. Companies without effective product portfolio management are doomed.  This discussion will identify some tools and experiences to improve the demanding task of managing multiple products.  Resources: http://bit.ly/vmAFcC

Overcoming Limited Resources and Unrealistic Expectations to Ensure Product Success W. Alejandro Polanco, Head of Product Strategies,  Arise Virtual Solutions, Inc Led the Global Product Management Talk Twitter Discussion About Ensuring Product Success Despite Challenges on November 21, 2011   Ironically, we had technical difficulties and were not able to broadcast audio commentary during the event. Cindy F. Solomon and W. Alejandro Polanco revisit the tweets and content discussed to satisfy the expectation for a new podcast weekly to accompany the transcript of tweets!    Resources: http://bit.ly/uHi87L

In this premiere episode of The Global Product Management Talk "Tools of the Trade" series, Catherine Constantinides, Social Media Marketer and Derek Gold, Vice President of Product Marketing discuss the valuable features of OneDesk for product managers and more, at more than just software organizations. Cindy F. Solomon asks questions about OneDesk while reviewing the website during the conversation. The full extent of product features http://www.onedesk.com/product/ as well as the excellent content about the product and the attractive UI available on the company website are mentioned. Tools of the Trade http://bit.ly/shdFb8

  Bill Galfano,  President And Co-Founder, MileMarker, believes that everyone who manages the development of a product--and who has customers--has a product roadmap. However, the formality and the maturity of the roadmap can differ wildly from organization to organization. Bill Galfano is joined by Cindy F. Solomon with co-host Roger Cauvin in responding to the twitter discussion about how others view the value of a roadmap, its role in managing the evolution of a product, and its role in communicating to executives, teams, and customers. Resources: http://bit.ly/tleW2j  

In today's globalized environment we are all expected to be global Product Managers working with people from very different beliefs about work. India and the US are almost exactly opposite in their business preferences. These preferences show up when organizing a meeting, inside virtual environments like wiki's, deadlines being missed, product deliverables being wrong, and low levels of team retention. Brandi Moore, Founder of IndiaThink and the first American focused on building global business relationships between India and the US, will join us to discuss the challenges product managers face and offer perspectives on how culture may be at the root of many business problems. Resources: 

The Best Product Person (TBPP) is the leading international award honoring excellence in Product Management. Established in 2010, TBPP is awarded annually in association with The Product Guy (http://tpgblog.com) and The Product Group (http://meetup.com/theproductgroup).  Nominations close: November 29th, 2011 http://bit.ly/qSHl0B “I love meeting with product people and am excited about the opportunity to discuss many of these product issues we all care about with the Global Product Management Talk community. I can't wait to provide everyone with the latest on the search for The Best Product Person of 2011 and share how you can participate,” says Jeremy Horn. Resources: http://bit.ly/sV8zsp                

Jason Hardy-Smith, Vice President of Product Management at Brightidea, Identifies Best Practices For Sourcing New Product Ideas And Managing Innovation.   “Collaboration and intellectual exchange between product managers across industries is inspiring and accelerates productivity. I am excited to connect with the Global Product Management Talk community and discuss innovative product development,” says Jason Hardy-Smith. Resources: http://bit.ly/qk0AwU                

Robert Kelly, PMP Managing Partner, Kelly Project Solutions says, "There tends to be a lot of debate on the roles & responsibilities of the Project Manager vs. the Product Manager. In this twitter talk, we would like to gain a better understanding of how these roles can more effectively work together to bring to market high quality products. "I am honored to join the Global Product Management Community on this upcoming twitter chat! This is a tremendous opportunity for thought leaders in the space to come together and really bounce ideas off of one another, gain insight, and grow their own understanding on a number of topics in product management. I am very excited and looking forward to it."  Follow @rkelly976 and @kellysolutions Resources: http://pack.li/3y          

Saeed Khan, Product Management Expert, Leads Twitter Chat On Essential Knowledge and Skills for Product Management Success.  There are few if any formal education programs for technology product management. There are some university courses and well known short training classes that give an introduction to the topic. But given the breadth of skills (business, technical, organizational, etc.) needed by technology product managers, and the laments we hear from people working in the field, what is really needed to fill the gap? This discussion will identify the essential skills, knowledge, tools, etc. that can help lead a technology product manager to success. "This is my second time leading the discussion with the Global Product Management talk community," commented Saeed.  “I enjoy participating in this talk regularly and view it as an educational event for product managers to share their knowledge and experience.” http://pack.li/3x  

  Value Co-Creation not only describes a business management trend of jointly creating products, the term also refers to a change in orientation towards quantifying the customer experience.  Value co-creation is a movement  towards recognizing the perceived value experienced by the customer throughout all interactions with the product, brand and service. Product managers recognize that the value of the customer experience is much more than mere financial transactions.  This discussion will uncover how value co-creation can be applied to the successful development of products and services.    For the past year, Dr. Briones has been creating a next-generation framework for innovation management based on a spiral approach. The basis for the framework is the different management approaches for disruptive or new-market innovation vs. incremental innovation combined with a controlled iterative approach to the discovery process. This framework has been presented at numerous conferences and webinars to great reviews.   "As a frequent participant in the Global Product Management Talk, as well as other Twitter chats, such as #innochat, I look forward to the participants’ experience in applying value co-creation to the product management process," commented Dr. Briones. Resources: http://pack.li/3u 

If you are developing web or mobile applications, data privacy and security are front and center, particularly in 2011. Washington, DC, both the White House and Congress, is extremely interested in doing "something" about protecting the privacy of consumers. In May alone there were 3 hearings in Congress on privacy, data breaches, and mobile geolocation. Shaun Dakin, MBA is a social media expert who specializes in brand building, management and marketing, and issues surrounding public/ private information. He started a non-profit, The National Political Do Not Contact Registry, in 2007 to fight for voter’s privacy rights and to fight against those evil political robocalls.  In the space of a year he took the organization from a start-up to over 200,000 members and he became the spokesperson for voter privacy throughout the nation.   During that time he testified in the US Senate, was on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, XM Radio, NBC, CBC, and ABC.  He is most proud of helping to introduce the Robocall Privacy Act with Senator Feinstein. Twitter: @ShaunDakin @PrivacyCamp @IsCool   Hosts: Cindy F. Solomon @cindyfsolomon w /Adrrienne Tan @brainmates   http://www.prodmgmttalk.com @prodmgmttalk

Questions for discussion: http://on.fb.me/pCl98V   In the B2B world, companies frequently invest time on market research to develop the product vision, and then sequester the product owner in the tactical development work during the entire "version 1" construction phase.  In contrast, agile started in the custom software world, where products being built for a specific customer often involved a customer representative in the form of the "product owner" to provide direct input as the product is being developed.     John Peltier has served as Product Owner on three development projects with varying organizational structures, and has amassed an unenviable collection of bumps and bruises along the way. John's experience has led to a unique viewpoint on how Product Managers can harness Scrum to deliver better products. Twitter @johnpeltier http://johnpeltier.com  http://www.prodmgmttalk.com @prodmgmttalk Today's hosts: Cindy F. Solomon @cindyfsolomon and Roger Cauvin, Product Strategist @rcauvin http://blog.cauvin.org  

John Peltier is a frequent participant in the product management community on Twitter, and as an organizer of ProductCamps.  He's participated on the organizing committee of four ProductCamp  unconferences in Austin and two in Atlanta.  This past weekend, he presented a session at ProductCamp Atlanta entitled "Personas in Design and Strategy". http://bit.ly/qMnlB8   John says, "I’m excited to contribute more, in a different way, to the product management and ProductCamp communities!" Follow @johnpeltier http://johnpeltier.com Host: Cindy F. Solomon @cindyfsolomon of Global Product Management Talk @prodmgmttalk 

New product ideas can come from many places. A customer may request a specific solution to address a business challenge. A competitor may introduce a new game-changing concept that needs to be answered. New regulations may cause a need for which there is no solution yet. An executive may have a pet idea that they’ve fallen in love with and want to bring to life. An observed overall market trend may point to an emerging need. These ideas should all result in the development of business cases. The responsibility of creating the business case usually falls on the shoulders of the product manager. Whether the idea is the brainchild of the product manager or not, it’s the product manager who must make the case. If the product fails, it’s often the product manager who takes the blame. Therefore, product managers need to be the voice of reason when a not-so-great idea introduced by an influential person in the company doesn’t look like it’s going to fly with the target market as conceived. "This discussion assumes that the audience is familiar with business cases. It's about steering the direction of the company and business cases are one of the tools to do that. Another is a clear vision of the future in the form of a good product roadmap," states Greg White. Greg White Co-founded ProductCamp SoCal, an "unconference" educational and networking event for local product management and marketing professsionals.  Greg also founded  Orange County Product Managers, a rapidly-growing professional organization that facilitates the exchange of ideas, resources and contacts between product management and product marketing professionals in Orange County, California. Follow @GregWhiteOC @prodmgmttalk http://www.prodmgmttalk.com