Everyone's Blog Posts - Cambridge Product Management Network

New Product, New Company, New Market, New Culture: Exciting and Exhausting...

2015-06-18T15:56:54.000Z

I recently joined Cambridge Intelligence as their new - and first - Product Manager. I was then quickly dispatched to the big InfoSec show in London to talk about and present my newly acquired product.

Here the link to the blog I wrote about this experience ...Blog on KeyLines site

You might also have attended the CPM meeting in March where Joe Parry (CI CEO) talked about when a startup should hire a PM - well, here I am....

Success measures in product development

2015-03-25T00:02:31.000Z

Good blog post on measures of success of product developments...

http://parcusgroup.com/blog/success-measures-in-product-development

Charting Your Product Management Career

2014-06-27T21:42:33.000Z

Recently, I created a blog post on Linkedin with some advice for product managers on how to evaluate their current level of experience, and how to chart a path forward.

CLICK HERE to look at the complete post or paste this into your browser

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140610233823-2001782-charting-your-product-management-career?trk=mp-reader-card

If you're not familiar with my books, Please take a look at The Product Manager's Desk Reference

and The Product Manager's Survival Guide

Product Mangement Annual Survey - the results are in

2014-03-04T18:26:08.000Z

We've just completed our latest product management and product marketing survey.

The focus is on product management and product marketing in the Telecoms, IT and Software industries. We look at role, salaries, day-to-day activities and the issues product managers face.

In Jan 2014, 326 people from 231 companies completed the survey - why not take a look at

http://www.productfocus.com/survey.php

Ian Lunn

Product Focus

How to Expand and Diversify: How Microsoft Started and Grew

2013-03-20T17:10:32.000Z

The Best Ways to Expand and Diversify

When a business wants to expand, it basically has two options: to expand its customer base or to extend its product range. It can do both, but this is risky – there are always risks in moving into a new market. The way to deal with these is to avoid moving too far from your base. One of the two best ways to expand is to find customers who are in some ways similar to your present ones and to sell your existing products or services to them. The other best way is to develop fairly similar products or services and to sell them to your existing customers. In other words, either extend your products or customers into fields that are related to the status quo. Attempting both at the same time will significantly increase the risk and hence the chance of failure. Also, coming up with an unrelated product or selling to unrelated customers is a high risk. Launching an unrelated product to unrelated customers is a recipe for disaster.

If you want to expand beyond a single step to a related product or customer, the technique is to move in small steps. You could start selling to related customers. You need to build up a presence selling to these new customers, and understand their needs and the way they work. When you have done that, you can extend to customers who are related to the new ones. Or you can sell related products or services to these new customers. Similarly, if you launch a related product to your present customers, they will trust you and will be patient while you iron out any problems. You can then move to the next stage.

The young Microsoft seems to have excelled at this approach.

The Microsoft Approach

Humble beginnings

Microsoft started by selling small software products to members of computer clubs. This was very much a niche market, and it was easy for Microsoft to become a significant supplier – a big fish in a small pond. Their basic interpreter quickly became the standard in this market.

Extending to related customers: hardware makers

As the early micro computer world grew (the term personal computer came later), small hardware companies (like Apple) emerged and sold their goods to members of the computer clubs. Microsoft started selling Basic through these. The Microsoft team would have learned about OEM contracts and dealing through third parties. This was a case of selling the same product to related customers.

Related customers: small business computers

Then more serious hardware makers like Cromenco and North Start emerged. These companies started selling computers to business users. Apple launched the Apple 2, which was sold to the general public. Microsoft sold Basic to these companies. In particular, it ported Basic to the CP/M operating system. That allowed the company access to almost all the new hardware makers.

IBM

What happened next was that IBM launched the PC. IBM had found that it needed to follow the existing small software industry and went looking for software to run on the PC. It was inevitable they would find Microsoft, and Microsoft found itself with the mighty IBM as a customer.

IBM could hardly be considered a similar customer to the members of computer clubs, yet by taking three steps and building up, Microsoft successfully sold to them.

DOS: related product

It is not entirely clear how Microsoft snatched the IBM operating system from CP/M but it did. IBM obviously needed an operating system, by this time, Microsoft was working with them. Microsoft did a deal with a Seattle software house, bought an operating system called QDOS and sold it to IBM. QDOS was still a related product – PC software had to be pretty simple in those days – which Microsoft sold to an existing customer.

Development services

It can be assumed that IBM needed QDOS to be adapted to IBM’s requirement and Microsoft was awarded contracts for this.

After this, Microsoft entered into various arrangements with IBM to develop operating systems which lead through DOS, OS/2 and Windows.

And the rest is history.

3 Secrets to Bill Gates' Extraordinary Success (inc.com)

Discovering Start-Ups 2012

2012-11-25T14:55:29.000Z

Link to my blog

New Year’s product resolutions

2012-01-04T11:48:30.000Z

As the start of the year we look forward to making New Year’s resolutions for the changes we will make this year. Our personal aims may be to spend more time at the gym, spend more time with the family or both.

I wonder what resolutions will be top of the list for the product managers in 2012. I feel that this year with the economic outlook still uncertain that prioritization will become a key topic as product managers everywhere try to maximize the benefit to clients and ensure that products are delivering against market expectations.

I always like this time of the year for looking back but more importantly to look forward at the new opportunities which will be explored and realized.

The hot sectors in Product Management

2011-05-19T12:00:00.000Z

Intelligent People in their state-of-the-industry Q1 report highlight the following hot sectors for Product Management:

Media & Travel
Digital Marketing in Media (especially CRM and email marketing)
Social Media Marketing
Online retail optimisation experience (specifically transaction conversion)

For more, see their outlook report.

How to hire a Product Manager

2011-03-09T20:40:36.000Z

Comrades,

As some of you may know, I have been particularly unimpressed by the level of understanding in the UK about Product Management from those that don't practice it. And Cambridge, with all its potential, really needs to understand the union of technology and business / market requirements. This is the primary reason why I joined and continue to contribute to this network.

After a particularly frustrating call with a recruiter last week, I set aside some time to write 'How to hire a Product Manager'. Its purpose is to raise the game for everyone involved, by providing:

a quick summary of PM
an explanation of the Pragmatic Marketing Framework
links to standard job descriptions
List of other PM networks that exist in the UK
etc, etc.

Comments welcome - either here on the Network or on my blog.

And do share this link to as many people as possible who remain 'fogged' on PM and how it can help their organisation.

Arthur (the Evalgelist!)

PS Don't forget this month's session (Thursday 24th March) on 'What a Product Manager does in the first day / week / month'. To kick off this interactive session, I will summarise some of the points in this article, so you may consider this background reading / homework!

Re-publish your blog posts here!

2010-09-03T08:17:08.000Z

If you blog elsewhere, on topics that you think are of interest to this network, then you're now able to also publish these posts here. Ning have added a metaweblog API. You can find out more about this at:

http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/add-blog-posts-to-ning

Does Cambridge Understand PMs?

2010-01-15T14:11:05.000Z

On Wednesday evening (13 January 2010) I attended Cambridge Wireless' Business SIG meeting(www.cambridgewireless.co.uk).

Big topic of discussion that evening was the importance of Product Managers to ventures. About half the room seemed to agree, but the other half didn't know that Product Managers do marketing (or even what a PM does). It came as a bit of a surprise to them that marketing wasn't just about brochures and adverts.
[Those new to PM: Marketing = know your customer/end user/consumer]

It was even suggested that any venture ought to recruit a Product Manager as hire number 3, 4 or 5! Pretty important I'd say.

So if any of you are in doubt, then chin up. And look out for new opportunities to ply your trade!