Certifications for Product Managers… and more

I recently found the great resource page made by Blackblot called the “Blackblot Product Management Industry Resources“. The page list organization delivering specialized trainings or certifications for PMs as well as product planning software and books.

So yes, Blackbot is doing the promotion of their method and toolkit (Product Manager’s Toolkit™ -PMTK- methodology) but not only, there are also listing the competition (such as Pragmatic Marketing). [As a side note, I'd like to say something about Blackblot certificate you can see on the left - I do understand the whole thing about concept and everything... but.. really a black dripping point? It's nice to show you do have a sense of humor... but I'm not buying this, sorry.]

Something to note while looking at this page. Did you notice? Certifications are only based in the USA or UK. And I’m right away jumping to conclusion: not a surprise. Marketing is already difficult to understand and apply in its full scope in Europe and specially in latin countries… PM certification is altogether another step as most companies are still having a hard time to figure out they might be needing a “somewhat project manager” to help delivering training, documents and the like in time with product shipment. And this is really a source of frustration. A year ago I had the opportunity to meet with several French startups at various stage of their early development (9 month to 3 years).

These early periods are always exciting to me… of course there is so much to do… but each single step forward has a huge impact for the company. This is exhilarating … almost like a drug… identify the gap, dig and diagnose, propose solutions and implement… and bang! result is measurable right away. A PM / PMM dream

So, I was telling you about my meetings with these French startups. They were looking for a something technical marketing to help them solve a specific problem. In most case, they were lead by a manager having a sales background having direct contact with the head of development. No head of marketing, only marketing operational. After meeting with them, I was highly disappointed, not only by my findings – to name a few:

• the sales manager was afraid of loosing his control on the product – as if managing the versions and evolutions would prevent him from getting key new features required to sign important deals (afraid of not being in this sponsor role illustrated here on the side)

• in fact they were “only” needing for someone to produce documents to help them sell – they could manage the rest directly with the development

• there were always running after a very wide target market – unable to explain the key product difference (non-technical) their product was having on their customer business

• most were trapped in the grey area of wanting to build a channel while keeping the good margins for them by selling direct.

but also by the fact they were trapped in this state, perceiving the issue they were trying to fix as a stand alone problem, unrelated to their lack of strategic or marketing vision. So I did my best to rise questions, help clarify goals, issues… but too many questions lead to distrust and fear of loss of control. And to tell the truth, I was not interested in the do-the-doc-only part of the job. Frustrating to know you can help, to be a natural team player and to face people that cannot understand you are not the least interested in being the next big guy in their company.

Luckily not all startups are like that… the surviver figure out there know how to use all hands available and not to be afraid of marketing

It’s all about leadership…

A short post to relay a post by OnProductManagement.net tittled Why do we undermined ourselves? Great question. Saeed is doing a great job at underlining the words that tell about this in PM and PMM specialists texts – such as being the glue and the gap filer in the company organization. I cannot say I’ve never filled that way.

Saeed is also right in the fact we as part of marketing should be actively leading and showing the way, that PM are an important part of an organization towards a better business. Now, the fact that Saeed is not saying is that many companies, many sales and development organization do not see it like this and tend to save money by under staffing their PM and PMM teams. So yes… we have to help companies do a big change and understand PM and PMM are productive and that money spent in their salary has a significant impact on the business.

What is product management?

The folks of Brainmates posted a very interesting presentation that is supposed to summarize their thoughs concerning Product Management (link to Brainmates post: “What is product management?“).

Well, I’m saying above this is supposed to summarize talks they had with clients, collegues and friends… I’m not saying this is not really the case but.. to me this presentation is a great summary of what Product Management should be. The high end of it, in charge of product strategy, having regular meetings with customers, having the time to think ahead and a complete team of people to work on the daily product follow up.

So either Brainmates is just making a nice job at selling us the nice story of PM as the great consultant they are indeed, or most product managers are dreaming of the perfect PM job. Or maybe… the two combines.

Still…. this is a great overview… and I recommend having a glimpse of their Ressources page also – always helpful to see how others are doing.

Long time not seen

A short post today… but it took me a while to think about it It’s been a long time since I last posted and… here  is the reason why.
I took a new job at the end of last year and was initially legitimately caught up into the initial integration / learning your product / learning your people stage. My intent was not to stop blogging. But after a period I faced two things: I found it difficult to blog about the new space I was working on while sill being in the learning curb (yeah, the perfectionist in me…), and may be more important I found it difficult to blog about my daily work life. This got me to think a lot. I mean so many other are doing it naturally, why can’t I? I this a cultural issue? Is this related to me only? A good part of it is privacy concern… part of it is cultural for sure…

The fact is that I do not like to expose my difficulties at work – either they are momentary (and I’m a quick learner) or they are structural… And exposing them won’t do me any good. Ok so now? I am still working at trying to use my work experience to fuel my blog… Blogging is a great tool to help the learning curve, open to other subjects, take a step back etc.  So stay tuned… I’ll be back

A local Product Marketing?

Yesterday evening I was talking with a friend – she is a sales in a well-known corporate data management software editor -no name right . This company is doing well, R&D is based in the states, they have sales office all around Europe and sell to large accounts with a lot of custom service.

To my surprise my friend was telling me that Europe teams had been asking for years for a Product Marketing (PM) to be based in Europe without any success. Seems the unofficial reason was this request was considered as a risk for the US based PM team – risk to loose their control over the product – hiring a subcontractor to localize the product material was good enough. They must be kidding, no? And what about these risks:

• loosing contact with European customers by not collecting needs and evolution requests and thus opening a highway for smarter competition,
• not taking in account the cultural specifics of European countries to fine tune sales messaging,
• not building a caring relationship with chosen customers for beta testing,
• not having a local resource to train your sales team and work with direct marketing.
• …

Ok maybe this is just a communication problem: French have a tendency to take one English word for another in business: like using Product Manager instead of Product Marketing Manager. Here is the difference:

• Product Manager: deals with product features and works with R&D -collecting, writing market requirements, following competition, driving road-maps. In short, the product manager deals with inbound tasks associated with the product development.
• Product Marketing Manager: deals with the marketing, that is preparing the tools for the teams in charge of selling of the product. This includes many outbound tasks like writing market requirement documents, data-sheets, preparing PPTs, training sales team and also pricing and supporting local direct marketing teams.

Note:  check Wikipedia for an interesting comparison of the two profiles in high-tech companies.

My October best list

Here is a selection of posts and tools I’ve liked in October.

On  Social Media tools:

• on Twitter: read TWEET IDEAS: 13 Things to Do on Twitter Besides Tweet and liked FileSharing and the Twitter Buziness Card exchange service. To be fair, I’m curious to check on the Twitter Spymaster game… but very reluctant to use my Twitter to do it
• On Google Wave:
  • I liked the “What’s all the fuzz about Google Wave?” video – two reasons, 1st the design and drawing technique used -nice work similar to the Google Story video – and 2nd for its content,
  • I read the Oreilly intro to Google Wave and wondered about usability. Curious to try it. My invite is still… on the road .
• on Facebook: French blog ConseilsenMarketing (Marketing Advice) published a huge post “A professional use of Facebook” [FR] -  listing 15 use for FB in business, +30 FB applications and also safety advices and an analyze of the good and the bad about FB .
• on blogging: I liked Beth’s post “7 Tips for Measuring the Success of your Blog” – not just listing tools, explaining.
• I was surprised to read that  French magazine Liberation started a social network mixing SMS & Twitter, [FR] – I’m very curious and looking forward for a way to try it.
• I enjoyed this post by Altitude Branding: Social Media Time Management: 9 Guiding Principles | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding,

On Product Management:

• I liked the How to section of the Brainmates web site.
• Enjoyed finding an Alltop section dedicated to Product Management – I’m not yet done going through it.

On other subjets:

• Read “Gartner’s 2009 top 10 strategic technologies” – a year after it’s publication. The Iphone apps effect is missing IMO.
• Learned about “5 major limitations to the use of social networks inside French corporations” with Ceciiil’s great post [FR]
• And liked Fred Cavazza’s post questioning about our future: “Will conversations replace messages?” [FR]

Tools I’ve tried:

• Remember the Milk with it’s Gmail integration – nice TODO list
• HootSuite a web based Twitter client offering multiple account, custom search and Tweet later option. In addition to TweetDeck and useful when you are on the go without your computer.
• and stopped using:
  • TweetAdder – tool to automatize followup, send nice message, schedule tweets and much more. Limited to one Tweeter account in demo, no way to have several messages in different languages and… too much automatizing kill the connection.

Feel free to add yours in comments

#FollowFriday, #MusicMonday: Any more coming?

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I’ve found a new hashtag on Twitter: #MusicMonday or #MM – The idea is copy of the #FollowFriday or #FF, share music or band you like on mondays. If you are wondering what about #woofwednesday? Well have fun here

Here is a cool site referencing Twitter hastags:  wthashtag.com with cool usage graphics for each term – check http://wthashtag.com/Musicmonday.

Interested in knowing more?

• #FollowFriday:  “How it works” & “The Anatomy of a trend” posts by Mashable.
• Who are the top FollowFriday Twittos, check TopFollowFriday.
• Checks tendancies for #FF here on Wthashtag - +60 000 tweets on October the 30th!!
• There is even an automatic tool for you to send #FF:  Autoff.com – but to tell the truth, it can be helpful to get facts -who you’ve been RT the most- but the whole idea behind #FF is quality and you should explain why you like someone posts, not just send lists and lists.

How to survive Social Media: my toolbox

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Social Media tools ARE time consuming. This post list the tools I’m using to organize my Social Media activity and lists others sources and articles talking about time saving methods when using SM tools.
This is an open toolbox: feel free to add more content in comments.

Tools

• Google RSS reader: used to subscribe to blogs and organize these subscriptions in folders. I will not explain how I organize them in more details. When you are subscribed to a fast growing list of 297 blogs, Google RSS reader is not very convenient to read so much content.  Google Reader has an interesting option to share a post you’ve read – John Jantshch has published a cool post “A Twitter sharing time saving tip” on how to combine this with TwitterFeed in order to publish automatically blog posts you like to Twitter.
• Feedly: outstanding tool to read -even subscribe- your Google RSS reader content. Display is very natural in a news paper like style that allow fast reading, quick hiding or zoom, easy forward -to mail, to Twitter, to FaceBook (FB)- easy bookmarking -to Delicious and more-. Once you opened in a browser, you get a small toolbard, located at the bottom-right of your screen very convenient to forward links while you are browsing other pages.
• TweetDeck: to organize tweetos by groups -I find it more convenient than Twitter lists-, follow direct mentions, follow on other specific words -brands, company, etc.- everything I want to follow on the long run. I read it from time to time.
  Tweetdeck supports multiple Twitter account and can also post your message to FB or post the same content to Twitter and FB.

• An alternate choice for TweetDeck, HooSuite – it’s an online tool, for some reason search are easier than in TweetDeck, you prepare tweets to be sent at a later time and from multiple accounts.

• For other searches, day long or just to check, I’m using an online tools Tweettabs – no user creation, fast to start. Once the search terms are tuned, you can use Tweetalert to automatize and receive tweets emails -check webworkerdaily’s blog post “Tweetalert-google-alerts-on-twitter” for a how to guide.
• Twittertim: when I’ve been off for most of the day I use Twittertim to get in touch fast and see the links tweeted by friends and friends friends. An easy way to get an idea on what’s hot in my sphere.
• Delicious.com: to organize my bookmarks as well as share them via Twitter -you can do both at the same time.
• bit.ly – default tool to shorten URLs in Twitter tools like TweetDeck. Once you’ve created your own account you can easily follow stats -how many read and clicks- on links you’ve sent.

Links to related articles

• If you are interested in building a routine, check this great post by Amber Naslund”Social Media Time Management: 9 guiding principles“.
• All right, you have to blog, post on FB and Twitter as part of your daily work routine – but do not overdo it and do not forget what’s personal – check 10-tips-for-managing-social-media-burnout.

How to analyze tweets and RT on YOUR content

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Jennifer Van Grove reports on a interesting tool TweetMeme Analytics to follow tweets on your content and how they spread – check here her post “TweetMeme Analytics Show You How Retweets Spread on Twitter”.

Based on her test, one can follow retweets and measure the influence of the ‘retweeters’ – see pic below.

I have started a 30 days trial today… let’s see how this works

Introduction to Mashups in 10 questions (with answers)

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I wanted to get a clearer understanding about Mashup and came by in 9 questions with a better view of this fast growing niche market.

• What are mashups?
  • Something that combine existing pieces to build a new item. The word is used in many contexts such as music, painting, etc. In IT, mashups are also called Web applications hybrids: the whole idea is to combine existing apps or services to quickly build new services without reinventing the wheel.

• Where can they be found?
  • Mashups are available on the net, as web sites of web services or inside enterprises. Entreprise Mashups Applications are faster to build and test compared to traditional design because they integrate existing and proven services inside the enterprise. Using Mashup Platforms provide even faster results as for some applications, the design process can be driven directly by the end-user – check the “Executive Guide to Mashups in the Enterprise” by Dion Hinchcliffe for JackBe, one of the player in this field.

• What are they used for?
  • Web Mashups: as a good sample is better than a long description, here are a few samples available on the Web:
    • coffeeseeker.com combines GoogleMaps with brands or end user entry to locate the nearest coffee shop,
    • Pixelpipe let you upload/publish multimedia content to many social platforms in one click,
    • a.placebetween.us that help find a place to meet with your friends.
  • Enterprise Mashups: Readwriteweb reports that Forrester identifies “three distinct flavors”. Here is an abstract of this article:
    • Presentation layer mashup. This is the most simple variety. Presentation layer mashups present content from disparate sources together in a unified view. A start page like Netvibes would be an example.“
    • Data mashup. More complex than presentation layer mashups, data mashups “combine, manipulate, and tie together disparate data sources to present a unified view.” An example would be Twittervision.
    • Process mashup. Says Forrester: “The most complex of the three, process mashups allow users to mashup not just data sources but also business processes themselves, customizing process design and invoking business logic across multiple applications.”

• What about this market?
  • In a recent report Business Insights sizes current and future enterprise mashup market:
    • “The enterprise mashup market was worth around $161m in 2008, and is forecasted to grow to $1.74bn by 2013“. This market “will benefit from the increasing prevalence of software incorporating SOA. Worth $1.4bn in 2008, the SOA platform market will grow to $2.77bn in 2014“.
    • Earlier last year, Forrester analysts were foreseeing this market to reach $700 million by 2013. No doubt this niche market is heating and growing fast.
    • Gartner also listed it as one of the top 10 technologies to watch over for 2009 as reported by CMS Wire in late 2008: “Gartner believes that in 2009 enterprises may be taking mashups from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 levels“.

• What are the players in the Enterprise Mashup market?
  • Key players are IBM (Mashup Center), Serena (Business Mashup), JackBe (Presto), Harmonia (LiquidApps), Convertigo (C-EMS Mashup Composer), Kapow Technologies, Xignite (Splice), Tibco (Spotfire), Lixto Software (Lixto Enterprise Mashup), …

• Any consortium?
  • As in any niche market: each player is offering his proprietary solution and his vision. From a customer point of view, it means  that there is no easy migration from one platform to the other: no doubt this is slowing enterprise mashup adoption.
  • A few days ago JackBe co-announced the Open Mashup Alliance (OMA) with Adobe, HP,  Capgemini, Intel, …, in a effort to establish an open language for mashup portability.
    Gartner’s analysts are pointing at the weak spot of the initiative:
    • “OMA is led by JackBe, whose future depends on enterprise adoption of mashups… The alliance does not include the “megavendors” — IBM, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. While membership of at least one megavendor in a standards body does not guarantee success, the lack of megavendor support all but guarantees failure.“
• Is there a connection to SOA and web Services?
  • Mashups take advantage of Web Services and from an SOA initiative. Furthermore, it found a natural fit in the SOA as it offers non-developers the tools they need to enrich business processes.
• What is Google doing in this field?
  • They had until mid August a Google Mashup Editor (Labs). The tool allowed to create mashups with Google services. Google has pushed it’s GME developer community to switch to App Engine.
  • If GME was an initiative targeting developers, Google Wave announced last June has muchbigger ambitions: I would describe it as the collaborative tool to rule them all – Well, more seriously, it’s at the same time a mail, an IM a collaborative platform to work at documents, a blog publishing tool, it has APIs for extension and is described as a platform to integrate mashups -see pic below-. Big G is trying to shape the way we work and to give it more structure. No doubt we’ll see in a nearby future how people and enterprises will react. – The pic on the side is taken from Dion Hinchcliffe’s articles “The enterprise implications of Google Wave“, a must read.
• What is Microsoft doing in this field?
  • No surprise there, Entreprise Mashup are addressed by Sharepoint.
  • And on the Web side, MS is was proposing Popfly -Popfly discontinuation was announced for end of August 2009 on a Microsoft blog. To quote Don Campbell -click on the pic to view his blog post – a “fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications.” Focus is was on communities – Live is not far. No doubt MS is preparing something new.
• Where to read about mashup?
  • Programmable Web is a one stop source for news on mashups, a directory for APIs and Internet Mashups.
  • SOA’s magazine dossier on Mashups: Enterprise Mashups Part I and Part II.
  • Work in progress at the “IEEE First International Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects of Mashups“.
  • IBM’s view with the “Mashup business scenario and patterns“.
  • Wikipedia’s page on Mashups.
  • “The 10 Top challenges facing enterprise mashups” written by Hinchcliffe in 2007 – still highly acurate
  • MashupAwards.com – Web Mashups have awards too – yes competition is everything

Let me know if you found this useful and do not hesitate to keep the ball rolling by adding links or comments.
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Edited 7th of oct.: - Tibco added to the players
Edited 8th of oct.: - Popfly discontinuation + link to MS blog added
- Mention of Gartner's top 10 technologies to watch over for 2009
- Lixto Software added to the players