I read this article by Google group product manager Kenneth Norton of what he asks product managers when he is hiring. I found it fascinating and am basing this months topic on the principles inside it.

Would you be looking for the same characteristics in a product manager that Kenneth is looking for?  Kenneth’s background is an engineering one, so does his approach lean to much to this bias?  And if this set of questions defines what a product manager is, do we feel this captures us well?

Lots more questions to pose than I have included here – It will be interesting to hear from those who have recently gone through the process themselves and those who ask the questions.

Where will we be?  Bull and Bear from 6pm.

We’ve updated the public google calendar for April & May meetups due to the Anzac weekend in April.

The new dates are Thursday May 2nd & May 30th.

Our next session is March 21st.

Just hearing about this so it’s a bit of a late notice but:

Key Results of the 2012 Dutch [Product Innovation] Competitive Performance Assessment Study.

Friday Jan 18th 1-2pm

Who: Professor H.J. Hultink (Erik Jan). Professor of New Product Marketing. Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Where: School of Economics, Finance and Marketing. RMIT University. Level 11, Room 10, Building 80, 445 Swanston Street (80.11.10).

This seminar examines the performance of Dutch companies, their innovation practices, and their associated innovation performance. The lessons emanating from these findings are presented and implications for Australian innovators discussed.

Brief Bio:

Erik Jan Hultink is a Professor of New Product Marketing at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. His research focuses on launch and branding strategies for new products. He has published on these topics in such journals as the Journal of the Academy in Marketing Science, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He was ranked number six in the list of the World’s Top Innovation Management Scholars, and selected as the most productive European researcher publishing in the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He is co-founder and board member of the Dutch chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). He regularly consults companies on the topic of new product launch, and frequently appears on the Dutch television and radio commenting on the success and failure chances of new products.

Hope everyone had an awesome break!!

If you were at our end of the year drinks, you might have heard about the January topic being planned.  I think we may have persuaded Chris to kick off the year after a few drinks were had 🙂

Please join us Thursday the 24th for a drink, a chat and Chris Dahl on the importance of taking a break:

Why Product Managers need regular escapes from the daily grind

Whilst the Product Manager role wears multiple hats, it’s critical that it has a primary focus on the future direction of the product (i.e. new opportunities, innovative feature competition doesn’t have).

This can prove to be a challenge for Product Managers when you have the daily grind of e-mail, customer requests & calls, and prioritisation. It’s important for us to recognise these distractions, and ensure we don’t let them inhibit innovative and high-value product development.

Location confirmed as Bull & Bear on Flinders Lane

RSVP now!

Make sure you come out to the last Product Anonymous of the year on Thursday 22nd of November to meet some fellow product folk, people interested in product mgmt & creating products.

We’ll be at the Carlton Hotel up on the roof – provided it’s good weather – or inside if the weather isn’t great.

We’re looking for people interested in talking or leading discussions at next year’s monthly meetings. Contact usat @product_anon or info@ our domain.

Did you miss camp?  Or want to relive it all?  Either way, Nat has posted a great summary of the day over on the Product Camp Melbourne site.

Don’t forget to contribute to the Day in the Life of a Product Manager infographic by answering 6 quick questions. We didn’t have the chance to get to some of the ‘numbers’ questions during that session so please contribute now.   We’ll publish the infographic here & on the camp site.

Thanks again to the camp sponsors PageUp People & Brainmates & migoals.  It was an awesome day & we’re looking forward to the next one!

This month’s session is on the topic of how you manage your customers.  We talk about them all the time, but I was reminded by a question put to me by a friend in a start-up about the changing stages of customer engagement.  Whether you’re in a pilot phase of a product, a start-up, a cash cow or legacy product, what are some of the things that hold true across each of these stages of interaction?  What differs?  And either way, how well are we all doing at that??

To get yourselves a little mentally pre-prepared here are a few of the structured questions that will be proposed to the group:

1. Do you find this easy or hard?  What are your tips?  What are you obstacles?
2. What changes with the scale/number of customers?
3. How do you move a customer from VIP status to just like everyone else?
4. How does the feedback fit into your product dev/release cycle?
5. What have you seen others do well that you would like to do as well?
6. How do you give updates back to your customers?  At the time? Via release notes Other?

Any comments or thoughts, if you can’t make it feel free to add here! Location will be the Bull and Bear Tavern on Flinders lane.

See you there!

We’re going to play a game at the next Product Anonymous meeting (Thursday Aug 30th).   No, no… no angry birds! No Fruit Ninja! Not even WOW.   😉

We’re going to get hands on & play a game that you can use with clients/users to help understand and prioritise your market’s needs.   Whether you’ve played one of the Innovation Games before or not,  it doesn’t matter.   The beauty of the game is particpants just need to show up!

So join us on Thursday Aug 30th & have a new tool in your toolkit for Friday that makes prioritising fun (Yes, I know that doesn’t sound fun but it can be!)

NEW LOCATION:  We’ll be meeting at the Mail Exchange Hotel at the corner of Bourke & Spencer St.  We needed a bit of space for this month’s topic so we have one of the rooms off the restaurant.   At the bottom of the escalator, go left towards the restaurant & then left again towards the screened off areas.

We’ll be there from 6pm onwards with the talk starting at 6:30.  RSVP here (it’s free.  we just want to make sure we have enough space for the game).

Hashtag #prod_anon

Last Saturday, Brainmates hosted Product Camp Sydney. This is the 5th Product Camps I’ve attended & as always it’s a great day.

For those who haven’t been to a product camp before, it’s a full day of conversation around the topics we product managers deal with every day. The big difference from any other day though is instead of being deep into the detail of defining that feature or creating a position statement, it’s focused on best practice, thinking about the role at a higher level, sharing experiences & picking up a few new tips! If you haven’t been to a camp before, I highly recommend it!

The Brainmates crew did a great job both in organising this year’s session & pulling together the notes on their blog. You can read a wrap-up on their blog. They’ve also added notes on 2 of the sessions:

• Launch Planning
• Engaging Sales

Melbourne folks – make sure you mark Oct 20th in your calendar as that’s the next product camp down here.