#gopolariis

[gopolariis-blog]

What does a Product Manager role at Cisco look like?

I was a PdM at Cisco from 1998 through 2006. I was lead PdM for Cisco CallManager (Cisco’s software IP PBX) from 1996 (pre-Cisco) through mid-2004. Then product managed lots of Cisco/Linksys routers, switches, phones and software from 2004 through 2006.

Let me get something off my chest first… Contrary to views held by some, Cisco’s products must be interoperable. So, they must use standards-based protocols and data structures to interact with non-Cisco products. Customers demand that. None of the thousands of customers I dealt with would accept a Cisco product that could not interoperate with the non-Cisco products in their own infrastructure. That said, if a product was developed to deliver capabilities only described by standards, then the product would be below average. All good product and service vendors will go beyond the standards to deliver capabilities their customers require.

Now, to answer your question…. A technical product manager at Cisco (or any other telecom equipment vendor) is responsible for translating, categorizing and prioritizing individual customer needs into product requirements. Many times, customers will tell you what they “want”… the best technical product managers will be able to discern what the individual needs, then coagulate multiple similar needs into one or more product requirements… these requirements expressed in a way that the product engineers can understand and can scope the requirement. Technical product managers at Cisco live their lives in meetings… with customers, engineers, executives, account managers, sales engineers, customer support engineers, etc. Once they’ve assimilated a list of requirements for the product, they have to “sell” the concept, then help drive the accomplishment of the project to completion.

A marketing product manager is responsible for translating the existing capabilities of a product into messages that will optimize the profitability of the product over its lifetime. They’re responsible for the very large amount of customer/sales-facing material that describes their product and makes the case why their product is better than similar products built by other vendors.

From : Dave Corley, Twenty years experience as lead product manager at 8 startups and 2 megacorps

[gopolariis-blog]

What skills should I learn to become a product manager at LinkedIn?

1. I would strongly suggest not aiming for a big well known company. Working for Facebook, Google etc often looks like the best possible move but often other companies provide more freedom, better conditions etc.

Also, from a product point of view, LinkedIn is an example of how to create a mess of a once great solution. It’s now in a position where it only exists because of it’s acquired user base and is ripe to be disrupted, as in there is a chance that someone could do it better. The problem is that there are many startups trying and many fail. It is much like trying to make a better Facebook - you need to create something exceptional for a niche audience that can then grow out.

I would start by reading ‘Inspire’ by Marty Cagan and also read books like ‘The Inmates are running the Asylum’ by Alan Cooper. LinkedIn needs to relearn user experience!

From Stewart Dean, Songwriter, bassist, thinker and humaniser of technology.

2. It really depends where you are starting from.Lets say you have a non cs degree and currently have about 3 years of work experience in something non related to product management.So what are your options:Got back to college there a program management programs that are great. If you pick the right program it might be as easy has an internship.Get a CAPM to add to credentials and get a practice somewhere then apply after one or two years.School of life project management program. You will basically want to grab a job in a tech companies that allows lateral moves. Once you are there find a program manager mentor and edge little by little to a program manager position. Once you get in that company do it for one or two years then apply back to linked in.All of these can be done easier if you network with linkedin people on a consistent basis so you are made aware of openings and suggested / skip the hr key word matching part.

From Alfredo Alvarez, Software developer that has one dream left to accomplish.

[gopolariis-blog]

How does Airbnb hire product managers?

1. I was at that event and wrote up some notes in a blog post. The key bit on Joe's presentation is below:Joe Zadeh from AirBnB spoke about the hiring process at his company. Forgive the fuzzy resolution but it’s the nut of his talk which explained that all PMs that are interviewed are invited in to present on a topic given to candidates in advance. This allows them to evaluate all the candidate along a baseline for a number of things simultaneously,Can they communicate effectively?What’s their design skill like? Do they understand spacing, fonts, color, use of graphics?Are they nervous presenting? How do they respond to questions, pressure?Did they have a fresh approach? Are they an original thinker?If the interview is for a Product Manager, they may make it about a specific problem they are trying to solve. When they were looking into adding a payments processor in South America, they asked prospects to speak that topic. By the end of the interviews, they had not only a good sense of who knew what, they also got six different approaches to integrating payments processors.

From Ian Kennedy, was PM at mybloglog.com and factiva.com

[gopolariis-blog]

What is Twitter's approach to product development and product management?

1. I was really curious about Facebook's product development process, especially early on in their growth. Wrote up this blog post on that topic in Jan 2011: http://framethink.wordpress.com/... I'm sure their PD process has evolved since then, especially now that they've gone public and probably require more visibility/predictability in roadmaps... Anyone else have more recent insights into FB's development cycle?

From Yee Lee, PM at PayPal, Slide, Skype, Google, Facebook

2. Twitter's approach is heavily based on customer feedback.  They started with the product of tweeting and sold it into a international trademark. Heavy use of the hashtag and and advertising sold the product better than any manager could ever do.  A good product combined with a clever way of marketing it was the real key behind the success of the tweet.

From Mike Simpson, Christian nerd who particularly enjoys superheroes and Lord of the Rings

[gopolariis-blog]

What does a Product Manager at Facebook do?

What is their role? How is it different from engineers? What's the structure/hierarchy like?

At a high level, a PM is responsible for their team working on the highest leverage projects and making sure the product that launches is awesome on usability and functionality.  I was a Product Manager on the Pages team at Facebook for 1.5 years, so I got to be on a number of projects from start to finish.  While I was there, the Pages team grew from 4 to 36 engineers and from 1 to 4 PM's.  It's a great role, which I highly recommend, although it's not a fit for everyone.

What this actually entails varies widely based on a few variables:

PM Role varies between groups within FB: PM's on Site Integrity have pretty different roles than PM's on Timeline or on Growth.  For instance, PM's on Site Integrity are trying to remove fake users and motivate appropriate use of FB. They do this by building and monitoring robust internal systems that track and identify undesirable behavior.  PM's on Growth are trying to get as many people on FB as possible and get them to be as active as possible. They do this by running lots of small experiments to see what pays off. Some PM's need to be more design focused, while others need to be more data driven.  If you're a PM on the ads team, for instance, you need to have a deep knowledge of the digital ads world.

PM role varies with the stage of the project: at the very beginning, it's not clear what should be worked on and why.  For instance, should Pages use the Timeline design or go with some other design?  Is Post Scheduling more important or new Post Targeting options?  This up-front definition is super important since doing it badly means a lot of wasted time later.  Once a project is defined, things turn more to project management.  What's the timeline for release, what other teams need to be coordinated with, etc.  Then the role turns more into Quality Assurance and launch.  What's an acceptable state for the product to launch in?  When/how does this launch?

PM role involves interfacing with the many other roles: the main roles on a product team at Facebook are engineers, an engineering manager, a product manager, a designer, a product marketing manager, a product specialist, and an analyst. If you're a PM on a team that's missing one of these roles, or is understaffed in the role, then you end up picking up the slack.  PM's routinely have to make designs, write code, pull data, recruit new people to the team (including making acquisitions), and test the product.  Whatever it takes to get an awesome product out the door.  Here's what each of the other main roles does (and therefore what a PM would need to do if this role is missing):Engineer: build it.  This is the role that all of Facebook revolves around, and the company is undoubtedly lead by engineering.  The company keeps its quality bar incredibly high, and engineers at Facebook are awesome.Engineering manager: responsible for resource allocation (who works on what), recruiting more engineers, keeping the team happy, and keeping the code clean.   Describing this role deserves its own post, as it involves a lot else as well.  Eng managers and PM's work very closely together.  As a PM, you have to get along with eng managers really well or you're not going to do well (http://bit.ly/U9Q2H7).  Designer: when I first joined Facebook, one of the engineering managers jokingly said: "in the end, we're all just pawns in a game of designers."  After more experience, I found this to be somewhat true although it's ultimately a good thing.  The design team keeps consistency across Facebook, and to a large degree keeps the company in check.  A PM might be able to say, "we're going in this general direction," but a designer decides what it looks like and how it works.  This is also, though, a collaborative process.

Product Marketing Manager: this role is the official liaison to the rest of Facebook and the outside world.  They will go off to do market research ahead of deciding which product direction to go in (inbound marketing) and they also take care of all product launch marketing (outbound marketing).  They regularly meet with clients (at least on the Pages and Ads teams) and spend a lot of time talking with Sales.  PM's and PMM's work closely together to figure out what should be built and how the market reacts to new launches.Product Specialist: this is a nebulous role that's still evolving, but at least on the Pages team it was a crucial one.  Although Facebook doesn't have an official Quality Assurance department, this is as close as it comes.  The Product Specialist managers and triages all inbound bugs, and when products are nearing launch they take care of all the testing.  As the title implies, this person is expected to know everything about the current state of the product they are on.  They make sure nothing important falls between the cracks.Analyst: when we'd get too carried away in debates in meetings, one of the eng managers would often remark: "warning: we are entering a data-free zone."  The meaning was that without grounding our arguments in data, we're just talking about opinions.  The analysts at FB are crucial for keeping everyone grounded in actual numbers.  How well/badly are we doing?  What should be our measure of success?  How do we tell if something is broken?  Analysts play a huge role at Facebook, which will continue to be true as the company grows larger.If the feature is engineering-led: engineers at Facebook move quickly and are empowered to work on what they care about, so there are a lot of projects going on at any given time.  As a PM, you're responsible for making sure everything that's launching actually makes sense and works together. Subsequently, as a PM you often have a lot of different projects going on at any given time (although your involvement in each varies widely).

Deciding where you spend your time is critical, since there aren't enough hours in a day to be involved in everything. It's also sometimes necessary to alter or stop a project if it doesn't make sense in the larger product context (this happened fairly regularly to Pages since it's so visible).

More important features require a review process: for smaller projects, you don't need to review with anyone other than the engineers and designer you're working with.  PM's have a good amount of authority for most things.  Larger projects mostly get reviewed with Zuck, although sometimes it'll just be with the head of your product devision.  Zuck is still really involved, though, and reviews an impressive number of the projects going on.  In addition to setting the overall vision for Facebook, he does a good job making sure projects across different areas make sense with each other.  Given the size of the company, it's tough for any individual PM to be aware of everything going on.

Written by Russ Heddleston, Product Manager, Pages

[gopolariis-blog]

What is the role of a Product Manager at Google?

Title aside, what are the responsibilities and deliverables of a PM at Google.  Where do they fit in the organization?

1. The current official job description is out here:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/jo...

The summary I use when people ask me about the role is

you're responsible for getting "success" defined for your product

and then responsible for getting your team there.

The expectation is that besides that tingling "product spidey-sense" you have the fuzzy ability to get things done without formal authority but through influence, enthusiasm and because its the right thing to do. You need to think big, but break that down into a discrete set of product requirements, go-to-market plans, marketing tactics, business conversations etc.

Building and shipping products is a team sport so there is always a cross-functional team (i.e. BD, marketing, Sales, Operations etc.) working together but recruiting and staffing-up that team and then being the glue that holds it together is part of the day-to-day with the role as well.

Most PMs at Google have a technical background and work very closely with the engineers on their team.

From Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager at Google

[gopolariis-blog]

What does a Microsoft Product Manager do?

1. Microsoft has Program Managers, more akin to what Marty Cagan or Ben Horowitz would call a Product Manager, but they also have Product Managers. I have heard the Product Managers described as Product Marketing, but they also have a Product Marketing function

What are the core responsibilities of these groups? Where are the lines drawn?

If you think of it as a spectrum, left to right, from internal to external, there are four roles at Microsoft.  Program Managers are the left-most, and spend most of their time with engineering.  Product Managers are a newish introduction, and it overlaps with Program Management, but do more strategic market requirements stuff.  Product Planners are longer-term product strategists and can be seen as the closest to CEO of the product *over time*.  Right most are the Marketing Managers, who are in charge of outbound communication. If I'm wrong on some details, I apologize; I'm doing this from memory from talking to the Microsoft people when they came to recruit us Michigan Ross MBAs last year. 

From Sachin Agarwal, Founder, Braid (braidhq.com) - simple projects in Gmail, Gcal, and Google Apps

2. The best answer to this question is given by none other than Microsoft's very own Steven Sinofski. I would highly recommend reading the very detailed blog post he wrote below about what a Product Manager at Microsoft does. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techtalk... I used to work as a Program manager at Microsoft and can tell you that the above blog post is very accurate and is very much aligned with what other companies describe as a "product manager" - although perhaps a very technical product manager. From experience and having interacted with some product managers at Microsoft, it seems what folks in that position do is mostly market research and marketing-like activities. At times, maybe even some strategic planning, but that does not hold much weight unless it aligns closely with the plans of program managers at the company. In the end of the day, it is Microsoft's Program Managers who define product features & what the next release would be like. Program managers also manage the product release & the overall release schedule & deal with feature prioritization, implementation & cutting to meet the product schedule. They are also the folks who work closely with developers & testers as well as other teams within the company to get things done. Very similar to product managers in other companies.

From Krassi Hristova, World Traveler | Senior Technical Program Manager

3. The best answer to this question is given by none other than Microsoft's very own Steven Sinofski. I would highly recommend reading the very detailed blog post he wrote below about what a Product Manager at Microsoft does. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techtalk... I used to work as a Program manager at Microsoft and can tell you that the above blog post is very accurate and is very much aligned with what other companies describe as a "product manager" - although perhaps a very technical product manager. From experience and having interacted with some product managers at Microsoft, it seems what folks in that position do is mostly market research and marketing-like activities. At times, maybe even some strategic planning, but that does not hold much weight unless it aligns closely with the plans of program managers at the company. In the end of the day, it is Microsoft's Program Managers who define product features & what the next release would be like. Program managers also manage the product release & the overall release schedule & deal with feature prioritization, implementation & cutting to meet the product schedule. They are also the folks who work closely with developers & testers as well as other teams within the company to get things done. Very similar to product managers in other companies.

From : Krassi Hristova, World Traveler | Senior Technical Program Manager

[gopolariis-blog]

What does a Product Manager role at Cisco look like?

Written by Dave Corley

Twenty years experience as lead product manager at 8 startups and 2 megacorps478 Views

I was a PdM at Cisco from 1998 through 2006. I was lead PdM for Cisco CallManager (Cisco’s software IP PBX) from 1996 (pre-Cisco) through mid-2004. Then product managed lots of Cisco/Linksys routers, switches, phones and software from 2004 through 2006.

Let me get something off my chest first… Contrary to views held by some, Cisco’s products must be interoperable. So, they must use standards-based protocols and data structures to interact with non-Cisco products. Customers demand that. None of the thousands of customers I dealt with would accept a Cisco product that could not interoperate with the non-Cisco products in their own infrastructure. That said, if a product was developed to deliver capabilities only described by standards, then the product would be below average. All good product and service vendors will go beyond the standards to deliver capabilities their customers require.

Now, to answer your question…. A technical product manager at Cisco (or any other telecom equipment vendor) is responsible for translating, categorizing and prioritizing individual customer needs into product requirements. Many times, customers will tell you what they “want”… the best technical product managers will be able to discern what the individual needs, then coagulate multiple similar needs into one or more product requirements… these requirements expressed in a way that the product engineers can understand and can scope the requirement. Technical product managers at Cisco live their lives in meetings… with customers, engineers, executives, account managers, sales engineers, customer support engineers, etc. Once they’ve assimilated a list of requirements for the product, they have to “sell” the concept, then help drive the accomplishment of the project to completion.

A marketing product manager is responsible for translating the existing capabilities of a product into messages that will optimize the profitability of the product over its lifetime. They’re responsible for the very large amount of customer/sales-facing material that describes their product and makes the case why their product is better than similar products built by other vendors.