Splinter Cell: Practical Purists’ Launch Product Management Grid
There had been rumors of the new grid online for months, but heretics are always blogging on something to create page views and interest in their content, but now it appears to be true. After reviewing the new grid which was formally launched in the latest Pragmatic Marketer, it appears that clearly the designated hitter cleavage is just a small rift compared to the recent changes in the Pragmatic Marketing framework which many of us have considered the alpha and omega of product management thought.
The Pragmatic Marketing “blocks” have historically provided product managers an opportunity to find meaning in their otherwise chaotic career paths through the easy ability to translate the blocks to activities. Over time as it has evolved it still left some PM’s wanting for a more pragmatic view on how to do their job, prove their value and effectively build a case that they were adding value equal to or greater than their salary. The evolution of the grid has continued to stretch product managers and challenge them to deliver increased visibility, recognition and leadership, but this has come at a cost to the product manager – more work and more accountability.
While, the previous recent grid provided common language and activities which most executives could understand, the latest one lacks a real connection to tasks and after all we need to look busy. I mean any one or two blocks could be someone’s whole gig. The recent recalibration of the blocks has also introduced some lofty concepts and abstracted metaphorical blocks which will further challenge Product Manager, Product Marketing and Strategy folks in effectively communicating their value to the business. Here is the intro, which justifies creating the latest revision:
Periodically—and very carefully—we update the Pragmatic Marketing Framework™ to align with current practices for marketing technology solutions. Having trained more than 60,000 product management and marketing professionals, some of these changes are the result of our training efforts and some the evolution of the product management discipline in 21st century technology businesses. Over time some things become more important, some less.
Hey, there is nothing more important than making it easy, I mean we just got our executives to sorta buy into the old grid for the most part and now we have to sell the new one – nope, not I and the band of loyalist who prefer activity over results!
Where’s My Checklist!
The new grid removes the opportunity to check off task like a robot and provide a clean set of deliverables which can be effectively ignored by the organization and allow 90% of us to still get the portion of our bonus which is tied to execution/task management even when we miss our revenue targets in a down economy, not to mention keep our jobs.
Many of us long for the old days when the unqualified executive team spent weeks developing a strategy based on instinct and market annecdocts that we just mindlessly executed via a release schedule and set of collateral. While those days are long gone and due in part to the original grid, we need a little more of a 1-to-1 relationship of boxes to deliverables. The new grid kinda assumes we are all product management professionals and you know what they say about assuming. The realignment of the grid ultimately makes it more difficult for former Project Managers, SE’s and Support personnel to pursue a larger base salary with minimal risk.
If I were to boil it down it now appears that thinking is central to the leveraging grid successfully and that is just not necessary from my standpoint and the other Practical Purists. I mean sales doesn’t need to think, so why should PM?
Where’s the Math?
The former Quantitative analysis column gave every product manager the air of being smart – developing models, doing analysis and providing a set of deliverables which, by way of the column name – looked important. Now it’s strategy – great, another fuzzy set of activities which can easily be dismissed by development and finance. While overall the Purist do not want to re-instate this column, since numbers are hard to spin at times and even harder to get other times, the total removal causes concern amongst many in the movement.
While we are on the strategy column, why isn’t competitive landscape strategic on the top of the chart? Don’t competitors define the market? While not every competitor is equal or every approach to the market the same, the majority of technology markets are essentially displacement markets, so defining the market you pursue is in many ways determined by the competitors in the market and the core requirements to displace a given set of competitors, right?
Sorry, I’m going to stop thinking now, since it goes against the core tenant of practical purism.
Translating the Abstract to A Manageable Workload and Minimal Expectations
In an effort to better understand how to plan, executive and improve on what you do as a product manager, the Practical Purist believe that everything should be more literal and less allegorical. More of a keep it simple approach that requires less thinking and imagination is the best approach in this market and harkens back to grids of yore. The basic principle of the practical grid is to eliminate interpretation and creativity, as these often result in organizational change and raised expectations which if you don’t deliver on the expectations it could cause issues. The other issue with a conceptual or broad set of deliverables is an out of whack work life balance, the requirement to continue to improve and ongoing/transparent prioritization.
The Practical Purist approach not only attempts to clarify the blocks in a more linear fashion, but also provide insight into the types of deliverables, interactions and task which should be focused on in more common terms. In the end, in these tough economic times and a really crappy job market is better to evangelize with less ambiguity a process for effective product management.
(removing my tongue from my cheek now)
Related articles by Zemanta
- The hidden secrets of market research (entrepreneur.venturebeat.com)
- The Big Shift in economic structure and why knowledge flows are becoming a fundamentally important business driver (myventurepad.com)
- Moore’s Law beats customer feedback (entrepreneur.venturebeat.com)
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment