This is not the Field of Dreams and you’re not Kevin Costner. If you build it, the users will not come – unless they have a strong motivation to do so.
I always used to think that I needed to have that one BIG IDEA to change the world before starting my own company. Turns out I couldn’t be further from the truth.
Contrary to what you may think, most of product management is actually selling. You are continually selling new product concepts, ideas for improvement as well as pitches for projects. What you may not realise is that what most people think is selling isn’t actually selling.
Do you spend more time writing documents about your product than actually managing it?
Many companies with some kind of product management function become all caught up in the process, drowning themselves in increasing numbers of documents. These rapidly become overwhelming to manage, contain duplicated detail and ultimately obscure the real objective of product management, namely to create successful products.
As a product manager, how do you know you’re doing your job well? This article outlines the problem with traditional metrics for product managers and offers some better alternatives for measuring success: communication, ideas, roadmapping, launch and end-of-life.