Enterprise Product Management

Most product managers are driven to achieve excellence in their craft. Many, however, get stuck in what I call “product consultant” mode and cannot break out of it. Many product managers never get to launch a product, let alone own one. They go from planning one product to the next, foregoing the opportunity to establish fundamental Read more »

Not surprisingly, when you’re looking for customer validation for B2B products, there simply aren’t as many datapoints to draw from in enterprise product management as there are for consumer products. Therefore, every interaction counts and your enterprise sales force becomes one of your closest allies when gathering requirements and validating product assumptions. The following are Read more »

There are lots of resources to help startups through their first product launch (if you haven’t found them yet, try looking here). But what if you don’t work for a startup? Is the process different if you’re a product manager in an established organisation, where products have already been launched? The answer is yes…and no! Read more »

Over the years I’ve worked alongside a number of enterprise product managers in many companies. Those who have stood out to me as particularly customer-centric have had two qualities in common. The first quality is about laying foundations and the second is about finishing touches. I’m a product manager at Adobe, a company with a long product management tradition and which has produced Read more »

I’ve worked for more than a decade in product management with Fortune 500 companies and startups, and I realize I’m seeing a scary pattern.  Product managers are only hired after the innovation or startup teams get concepts or funding approved.  This means that product managers are thrust into developing a product or service concept they Read more »

I love building enterprise systems, because you get to work with your customers/users every day and literally see their lives change as you release new features. In my case, at Zalando, these are systems for fashion buying, supply chain management, inventory management and procure-to-pay processes (e.g. paying our suppliers for merchandise we bought from them). Read more »

Observations of a B2C startup product manager working in enterprise. I once heard an anecdote about a very young child being told a story about a very old man. The child was asked to imagine what this octogenarian would look like. And the child said that as he was very, very old he must be very, very tall… To this Read more »

In the course of a storied career that started at Netscape, and includes co-founding Adaptive Path and Luxr, consulting for Fortune 500 companies as well as the White House, Janice Fraser has focused on how to handle this “newness”. In this awesome talk at Mind the Product San Francisco, she shares how to tackle change and really drive growth in large organisations. Read more »