Check it out and let me know what you think!

Go and check it out and let me know what you think!

You really want to simply get a sense of where other folks in your space are at. To do that, there are a number of things you’ll want to create and deliver – but it all starts out with picking the companies with which you are competing.

This really demands input from a management team, or senior folks. You want to make sure you get a good cross-section of companies in your space to evaluate and look at – and most important, gather some solid business intelligence on.

I always give the advice that picking too many will only lead to analysis paralysis. Take 3-5 companies, run your analysis, and monitor them on an ongoing basis. Don’t try to track everyone – this will only end-up causing you problems even if it seems doable.

If you are managing B2B products, try to get some input on who you are losing deals to / winning deals over from your Sales team. They should have a good sense of the names that keep coming up over and over. Make sure you at least check out those companies to validate, and ensure they are in fact matched pretty closely to you strategically.

Get buy-in on the competitive list from your management team to make sure you are on the right track, and then start to layout how you will analyze them.

Typically, the items I keep coming back to are:

• Feature breakdowns
• Rough SWOT analysis
• Positioning
• Pricing
• Marketing / sales tactics and tools

I step through each one of these items in more detail throughout a series of posts and provide some templates for you to use as well. In the meantime, get working to identify who your competitors are, and why!

I have decided to leave PlanetEye.

In candid discussions with the CEO, it became clear the company is going to benefit from the ability to quickly transact – in essence, move from sales directly to development for quick, successful client implementations.

The product is definitely ready to support this approach, and as such, organizational needs have changed. The company needs to be able to rapidly execute on opportunities they are clearly positioned to win. As such, Jonah (the CEO) has given me a fantastic opportunity to pursue the next step in my career.

I’ve had a great time working with the talented and fast-moving team. We’ve built a great product in PlanetEye.com, and I wish them nothing by continued success.

I have a few things in front of me, but am taking some time to figure out what it is I really want to do. Of course, I’m definitely open to ideas, so drop me a line: abullied@gmail.com.

I’m working on a balanced scorecard post, as I think all organizations can benefit from the concepts that surround it. Look for that later in the week.

In the mean time, a big thanks to David Locke and all of the fantastic questions / comments / participation! It was a lot of fun!

Of course, this is such a large topic, I’ll only be covering some of the fundamentals / basics – and try to get in as much chatter about how this impacts organizations of different sizes – from large, global enterprises to small 10 person start-ups.

It will all be done using the has tag #SAfPM, so be sure to join in if you have the time!

But it was fun, nonetheless. Check out how it went.

For those that have not read up on stage-gates, you can check out the Wikipedia entry for a detailed explanation.

David Locke did a great job and asked some awesome questions!

Now, by “life easier” I’m talking about your start-up or product management life. I don’t know how to give relationship, parenting, or other types of advice. Well, I mean I could – but that might not end-up too well for those that follow it.

So fill me in and help me out – and I’ll be able to get past this small case of writer’s blog and start writing again!

The camp is being held in New York City (duh!) on July 18th. I’m definitely planning attend, given I’m helping to organize it with a whole set of super smart, really great folks.

If you are in the area, you should definitely think of attending. And if you are attending and want to run a session or volunteer, you can indicate that on when you sign-up.

This event will also see the kick-off of the New York Product Management Association as well, which is really exciting.

I’ll be blogging with updates on the event intermittently as we lead-up to things.