The product management cycle

Monday: “The plan is A! We’ll market it at A!”

Tuesday: “Actually, I was thinking B. A is stupid. Who would want to do that?”

Wednesday: “Goddamnit, we need to be working towards C. Why does no-one see that?”

Thursday: “Maybe A was right …”

Friday: “This team sucks.”

Hint: pick a direction and run. And make sure – just as your tech team does – that your management team has measurable metrics for success.


Posted

in

by

Comments

2 responses to “The product management cycle”

  1. Stephen Downes Avatar

    So true… *sigh*

  2. Marcus Povey Avatar

    Very true, but tricky.

    Management teams must deal with two issues that make this sort of performance measuring hard:

    1) Their goals are a lot harder to quantify and metrics harder to define.. do you go for projects delivered on time? Well, that’s really testing their staff not them, plus makes no attempt to quantify how staff feel working under them.

    2) The higher up the food chain you go the fewer people there are who can monitor them. If your management team has a cabinet style decision making and group responsibility culture you could undertake periodic peer reviews – providing your team was mature enough to handle it.

    It is often the case however that problems occur precisely because you don’t have this sort of culture and instead have one or two aggressive types who lead by barking orders rather than earning respect.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *