November 18, 2004

Reprinted from: Soft•letter BUSINESS INSIGHTS FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS & PUBLISHERS www.softletter.com

One of the perennial problems facing the software industry is finding good product managers. The most common method is the organic approach, which traditionally consists of throwing someone from support, system engineering, or even sales into the job and hoping they take root. While this technique has worked in the past, many companies today find that product management is simply too important a hire to be left to chance. One indication of this is Scott Cook’s recent endowment to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Frustrated by Intuit’s difficulties in finding good product managers, the company founder donated $10 million dollars to the school to create an MBA course with a specialty in product management.

Another response to the issue has been the development of several training programs from companies such as Pragmatic Marketing, Sequent Learning and ZigZag Marketing offering to transform your marketing neophytes into product marketing tigers. But how do you know that you’ve obtained fair value for your training expenditures? For answers, we turned to Therese Padilla, a former product manager at firms such as Symantec and Quarterdeck and founder of the Association of International Product Marketing and Management. The AIPMM is currently the only organization offering a product management certification program independent (cost: $295) of all the commercial offerings available.

“A good course will cover four basic areas of competency: communications and team management; new product development processes, which includes understanding what customers are saying as well as what they’re not; financials (it’s surprising how weak many product managers are in this area, which includes P&L, market sizing, and profitability; and product life cycle management, which requires understanding where a product is positioned in its life cycle. The resources and approaches a product manager brings to marketing and selling a new product at launch are very different when dealing with a mature product in its sixth or seventh major revision.”

“There are two reasons. Most important is to certify knowledge and establish a ‘level set’ around a PMs’ skill level. There are many different methodologies for product development—stage gate, the various agile methodologies, Six Sigma, etc. A good product manager needs to understand how to apply any of these to your company’s internal practices and processes and succeed.

“By definition, product management is a collaborative discipline. I believe PMs are heading down the same path as accountants, who participate in ongoing CE courses to keep their skills current. An effective certification program should test and retest candidates on the entire spectrum of product management methodologies as they grow and evolve.

“The other important reason is to provide a PM with internal credibility. The ‘organic’ method often results in appointing people who have no proven skills to a PM position. This in turns leads to companies putting in place processes that work ‘around’ what is perceived as a ‘planned dysfunction’; few PMs can succeed in such an environment.”