David Lee Todd, Unknown Product Manager



	David Lee Todd, Unknown Product Manager People who love sausages and software should never watch either being made

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Wednesday March 15, 2006

Product management is a two-way street

We've been going through a time-honored SeeBeyond ritual this week: Apostles Training. We bring in fifty or so of our top field engineers, and train them on a beta version of our next release. This all takes place at the local Embassy Suites, and it's sort of like a fun boot camp. We combine formal presentations from product managers, like me, with hands-on exercises.

But the benefit isn't just for the field guys. They are a vociferous bunch. A couple of them (no names, but they know who they are) give rather pointed comments about every 60 seconds, on average, and the rest at somewhat longer intervals. For us, the product managers, this feedback is invaluable. We get good feedback from customers, but it's always colored by their particular business problems. With field engineers, you get people who really put the product through its paces, and who aren't shy about saying what they like and don't like. I have been astonished, on occasion, when a really smart engineer makes an obvious (to me) mistake on one of my own products. The fault isn't his: it's mine. When you live with a product, you get in the habit of pushing the right buttons in the right order. When something that's obvious to me isn't obvious to an intelligent new user, the reason is usually a design flaw.

Posted by davidleetodd ( Mar 15 2006, 08:31:05 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]