Customer Reviews

Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques, Tips and Strategies for Product Management & Product Marketing

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought several books on Product Management to help my team improve our product planning process. After trying to read this book I decided to toss it in the trash rather than to share it with my team.

I was a successful software/technology product manager prior to moving up the ranks. I found this book confusing at best. It does not provide a comprehensive overview for beginners and is not deep enough for experienced product maangers.

This is also very poorly written. I think this book written and published to advertise the author's consulting business. It desparately needs help from a professional writer/editor.

The problem today is that anyone can publish a book in support of their business. There are no quality standards for these books other than reader reviews.

The few product marketing and product management books on the market today all seem like cookie cutters of each other. The problem these books have is very little attachment to reality -- either by being written by university types who couldn't launch a successful product if their lives depended on it, or worse, by giving you concepts so basic that when you finish the book down you slam it down and say, "Well, duh!"

Here in the Silicon Valley I've been hearing for years that my most favored product manager, Brian Lawley, was going to write a book. I caught wind that it had been released and checked it out immediately.

It was as good as I had hoped, in Expert Product Management Mr. Lawley walks you through what he calls "the four most critical elements" to assuring product success: product roadmaps, beta programs, product launches and review programs. Always backing up his theory with real-world samples, more than once I found myself thinking, "okay, NOW I get why this is so important."

The book is short and to the point, at 80 pages you can jam through it, highlighter in hand, in just a couple of hours; but I can already see that it's going to change the product management products situations my consultancy will be involved in for a l-o-n-g time to come.

And here's the great thing: you don't have to take my word for it. The 280 Group's Web site has the book for FREE electronic download (Amazon frowns on me puttin the URL here -- but you know what Google is, right?). Just do what I did, try before you buy and if you don't like it you haven't wasted anything but a few million electrons and a couple of minutes of your time. But hey, if you're serious about product marketing, you'll follow me right back here and buy it. (You might want to anyway because once you do you you're eligible for a $30 discount on the Professional Version of the 280 Group PM Office.)

Thanks for reading.

I believe this book can be useful but I find that it is somewhat a misnomer to call it "Advanced Techniques, Tips and Strategies". There's not much terribly advanced about this book. It really appears to be trying to be a PM handbook, but lacks the comprehensiveness to be so. Instead, I'd recommend the PDMA Handbook of New Product Development (expensive but well worth it) and grabbing the package of templates etc for this book from the 280group website.

By no means a complete waste... just not what I was looking for from something claiming to provide me advanced techniques and tips.

Those new to product management often spend most of their time on a few areas -- researching market needs, developing business cases, writing requirements, monitoring development projects. Though these are indeed crucial aspects of the product manager role, there are many other responsibilities that often get overlooked. Not surprisingly, these are the areas for which there are often fewer resources available, so product managers may feel as if they have to "go it alone."

Luckily, Expert Product Management succinctly covers four crucial areas which can improve a product's success. Brian Lawley provides clear, practical advice on Product Roadmaps, Beta Programs, Product Launches, and Review Programs -- the value of any one of these sections alone can justify the reasonable price.

Each section begins with an explanation of the concept and its importance, then covers examples of different approaches and best practices. The writing style makes it easy to read from cover-to-cover and also easy to refer to as a reference. Don't let the size fool you
-- at under 100 pages, this can easily be read on a short plane ride
-- yet there is sufficient depth to the information contained within to make it practical and actionable.

The chapter on Product Roadmaps is especially comprehensive and useful. Brian describes six different types of roadmaps -- even experienced product managers will likely discover one they were not aware of here -- and presents an easy-to-follow eight step process for creating your own roadmap. Similar level of detail is provided in the other sections -- enough information that the reader can use it as a guide to implementing on the job, though not so much to make it laborious to read or hard to locate later for answers to specific questions.

If there is any flaw in the book, it is that the design of the book itself does not do enough to support the high-quality content. The text and graphics are clear and easy to read, yet a more compelling design could have enhanced the text even further. This is a minor quibble, though, since it is still a very useful resource regardless.

As the name implies, this book may not be the best complete introduction to those new to product management, though that is clearly not its intent. For experienced product managers who have mastered the basics and are looking to take their job to the next level, Expert Product Management is a highly recommended guide which can help already good product managers to better plan, create, and launch a successful new product.

Jeff Lash
Author, How To Be a Good Product Manager [...]

Expert Product Management is an excellent guide to managing the more complex, but critical aspects of product management such as roadmapping and product launches. The book provides an invaluable professional validation for experienced product managers and it is a critical learning tool for new PMs.

Alyssa Dver, Certified Product Manager
Author of "Software Product Management Essentials"
Product management consultant, coach & lecturer

This is a good tactical book which focuses on a few key areas of product management and product marketing: product roadmaps, beta programs, product launches, and review programs. If you need to perform one of these important functions, then read this concise but detail rich book and follow-up by checking out all the additional resources on the author's ([...]) website.

Lawley first discusses roadmaps including the different types (market & strategy, technology, platform, visionary/trends, etc.) and the eight step process for building a roadmap. He then details the logistics behind running a successful beta program and then a successful product launch. Finally he talks about how to get (hopefully favorable) reviews for your new product.

"Expert Product Management" is a detailed primer for these essential product management / product marketing activities. Lawley also presents topics I haven't seen in similar books such as using a variety of roadmap formats and how to create a buzz about your product with product reviews.

This was very disappointing and not what I expected. Spend your money on something else. Not much substance.There are better books on product management.

If you are planning to launch a new product in the near future, this book is an invaluable resource. It takes you through all the steps necessary to create a successful beta program and product launch, and then helps you ensure your product gets the best reviews possible. It is a terrific resource for professionals new to product management. Experienced product managers can also gain new insights and best practices.

The book is a good book on dashboards, but it needs to be expanded to show how to build dashboards. I like to think of this book as merely a started book or a "meta-data" book on dashboards that flies at "100000 feet". The author needs to take the topic down to "5000 feet" -> making it a hard cover book and include a CD-ROM of Excel examples, models, etc.

Great, but not fantastic.

Marketing of your product is easily the most important part of its success - it has been the telling of success and failure all too many times. "Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques, Tips & Strategies for Product Management, & Product Marketing" is here to teach people with new products how to make it as successful as humanly possible. Enhanced with countless charts and graphs throughout and packed cover to cover with invaluable information, "Expert Product Management: Advanced Techniques, Tips, & Strategies for Product Management, & Product Marketing" is highly recommended for anyone in charge of a product's success for community library business shelves.