Product Management roles

by ezs | Dec 7, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

For the last few months I’ve been focussed on a slightly different role – Outbound Product Management for Novell ZENworks and now for the entire Identity and Access Management product lines.

One challenge is defining and naming the team roles.

There are many nomeclatures in use for defining inbound and outbound roles – Product Management, Product Marketing, Program Management, Pre-sales support – lots of names and roles.

There is an interesting article on Marketing Professionals here – lots of detail on some of the roles. It’s a little inflexible and really focused on the smaller development organisation. Pragmatic Marketing have always been active in selling training on defining these roles and mentoring people through the process; they have a good article here and a nice visual of the process:

My own view is that in a larger, more mature organisation – such as Novell – there is a place for another role; the outbound product manager. This role encompasses:

• evangelist
• subject matter expert
• knowledge transfer
• competitive expert
• conduit of requirements to engineering and inbound product management
• etc

Befuddling Tivo

by ezs | Dec 6, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

Everytime family come and visit they befuddle the Tivo.

What do I mean?

I mean that two weeks of [insert favoured family viewing] really confuses our preferences. Instead of Pingu, Thomas, foreign language films and BBC crime dramas – we end up with US cop shows, WWII documentaries, romantic comedies and the weather channel.

Snow, I15, Gin and Cranberry

by ezs | Dec 6, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

First real winter storm of the year.

I was working in Provo at strategy meetings until late; I didn’t leave the office until 6pm.

I-15 was a nightmare. My usual thirty minute commute took almost two hours. Several inches of freezing snow on the freeway and the usual bad Utah driving.

Got home, cleared some snow and settled in. No tonic; so had to resort to gin and cranberry juice. Quite palatable actually.