Behind Every Great Product

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Excerpts from “Behind Every Great Product: The Role of the Product Manager” by Martin Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group:

Behind every great product you will find a good product manager, in the sense we describe here. We have yet to see an exception to this rule.

 

Product ideas can come from any number of sources. Your job as product manager is to evaluate these product ideas and decide which product ideas are worth pursuing, and which are not.

 

The art of product management is to combine a deep understanding of your target customer’s needs and desires with the capabilities of your engineering team and the technologies they have to work with in order to come up with a product definition that is both compelling and achievable.

 

Of the hundreds of possible and even desirable features in the product, which are the few that are actually essential to the success of the product?

 

The owner of the requirements and the person ultimately responsible that those are the right requirements is the product manager.

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“Am I a Success or Failure?” Is Not a Very Useful Question

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To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure.

— Karl Weick

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Sick Day

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A full day of sleep, systematic overdose of cold medicines, and phlegm reduction techniques (like hocking and nose blowing) that tend to be disruptive to people when practiced non-stop in the workplace can really help in battling a tough cold.

It’s also a perfect excuse to close your eyes, curl up in a ball and hide from the world, which is my preferred leisure-time activity anyway . . .

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Gary Carter, 1954-2012

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Gary Carter
Gary Carter (Photo credit: AxsDeny)

Gary Carter obituary: Baseball Hall of Fame catcher dies at 57

— latimes.com

Gary Carter and I went to the same high school — Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, CA.

My freshman yearbook has a picture of a Carter as a senior. Or another way to look at it is that Gary Carter’s senior yearbook has a picture of me as a freshman.

That’s all I have on this.

RIP Gary Carter.

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We Caught a Break at Chili’s Last Night

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English: Chili's Restaurant at Rockwell Mall, ...
Chili's

We got to Chili’s around 8 o’clock last night but it was still very crowded. People were waiting outside.

“How long is the wait?” I asked the hostess.

“About 25 minutes.”

I said to my posse, “I’d rather not wait 25 minutes but I could do it if I had to. What do you guys think?”

My wife said, “Put our name on the list and we’ll talk about it outside.”

“Paul — party of three.” The hostess gave me one of those devices that beep and light up when your table is ready.

At the same time, a gentleman came up to the desk to turn in his device. “We can’t wait anymore,” he said.

“Maybe you could give us his device,” I suggested after he left. “Where was he on the list?”

She went down the list of names. “Second,” she said. “Yeah, I could do that.”

“Thanks.”

My son said later, “You were just joking, right?”

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t think she would do it, but let that be a good lesson for you. If you ask for something, you might get it, but you’re not going to get it if you don’t ask.”

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Here’s a Good Mandate

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Remember, we’re supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who’s going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free.

Here’s a good mandate: Let’s mandate that every time a government official says that the government is going to “help” some category of voter, he or she has to say who they are going to hurt in the same sentence. Because it has to be someone.

— John Cochrane, “The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate”

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Aside

I accidentally jabbed the dog’s allergy injection into my kneecap. Miracle elixir or fatal mistake?

Stay tuned . . .

Love is Fleeting

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I recently bought a collection of short novels by Marguerite Duras from my favorite used book store. Inside the front cover is this inscription:

To M—,

Because her work influences me so much, and you inspire me so much. Please read and think about me!!

Love Always,

G—

P.S. Merry Xmas XOXO

I bought the book for $3.95, so M—- couldn’t have gotten more than a buck, maybe two, for unloading it.

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Crosstown Cup: USC 8, UCLA 3

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At the Crosstown Cup

The Crosstown Cup was on the line Saturday night. The USC and UCLA hockey teams faced off at Anaheim Ice and the Trojans dominated pretty much as I expected.

It was also Senior Night — the last game of the season.

One of the Trojans players is graduating with a doctorate in education, one kid is getting an MBA and two kids are graduating with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering.

As scholar-athletes, they’re pretty darn good scholars.

As athletes . . . let’s say that they were somewhat less good than my kid’s 18-and-under roller team from last season. Speed, puck control, rink awareness — all limited at best.

They were a lot better than UCLA though.

 

The Victory Bell was in attendance. Something I didn’t know is that the Victory Bell is really loud if you’re right next to it. And by “right next to it,” I mean we were 25 feet away and it was deafening.

 

The fake ID market seems to be booming in Southern California. A lot of underage-looking kids were enjoying a beer at the game.

My wife asked one underage-looking couple, “How do you get beer? You don’t look old enough.”

“Um . . . there is a way to do it,” the girl replied, without providing any further details.

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