Software Product Management Essentials [Paperback]

Alyssa Dver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2003

In an economy where efficiency and delivery are key, Software Product Management Essentials is required reading for any software product manager. Software Product Management Essentials is a hands-on guide to help new product managers sift through the numerous tasks and responsibilities involved in this pinnacle job. The book is loaded with tips and example best practices to help even experienced product managers optimize their time and effectiveness. The book focuses on the unique challenges of being a Product Manager in a small to mid-sized software company. It provides a framework for the role of the Product Manager in an environment where there are few resources available to help in tackling the many things needed for a quality, on-time delivery of software. Whether you are already a Product Manager or considering a new career in product management, Software Product Management Essentials details a day-in-the-life experience of a PM with both the glory and challenges one faces in this role. Engineers, marketing personnel, quality assurance teams, technical writers, and anyone involved in the product delivery process will find this book extremely useful right away in optimizing the day-to-day interactions across a smaller software organization.

Emphasizing that code is only part of the overall software product, Software Product Management Essentials stresses the importance of championing a product. Critical topics covered in the book include the product delivery process, beta testing, launching a software product, and software pricing. An entire chapter is dedicated to the issues of expanding the business internationally and the issues a Product Manager must consider before and during expansion. Numerous templates are provided to fast track the Product Manager's work including a sample non-disclosure agreement, product delivery checklist, and beta test agreement and summary.

Editorial Reviews

Review

... the use of practical tools provides an essential head start for the on-time delivery of quality software products. -- Boston Product Management Association

...essential reading for any new product manager with international responsibilities. -- The Localization Industry Standards Association

For experienced product managers, Dver offers some very interesting perspectives on processes that they might not have thought through completely. -- Association of International Product Marketing and Management

From the Inside Flap

This book provides the new product manager several dozen tools and charts that they need to get them started. For experienced product managers, Dver offers some very interesting perspectives on processes that they might not have thought through completely. The style of the book is written as a good mentor, providing do's and don't within the context of each task definition. If you only have room for a few professional books, Software Product Management Essentials would be one to have on the shelf.
--Therese Padilla, Co-founder
Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM)

Product management professionals spend many years refining their craft and sharpening the tools of their trade. Software Product Management Essentials' emphasis on the importance of understanding key processes and the use of practical tools provides an essential head start for the on-time delivery of quality software products.
--Michael J. Salerno, President
Boston Product Management Association

Software Product Management Essentials is unique in its focus on survival techniques for product managers at small- to mid-sized companies. As an added bonus, Alyssa Dver has not been afraid to demystify what it takes to be a successful international product manager. It is essential reading for any new product manager with international responsibilities.
--Rebecca Ray, Global Business Editor
The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA)

A solid treatise on product management techniques and practices, the majority of which are applicable well beyond just software product management. This is a good reference book for product managers in any type of business to read and keep on their bookshelves.
--Bill Ausura, NPDP, President of the NY/NJ Chapter
Product Development and Management Association
Former Director of Product Management and Product Marketing Practices, Lucent Technologies

The perfect primer for the newbie, the required reference resource for the pro -- if you're a product manager, you must have this book.
--Cliff Conneighton, Chairman
Marketing Roundtable
Author, Venture Management Handbook

This book gets right to the point in helping product managers of smaller software companies understand what they need to do, when they need to do it, and how, to get their jobs done. It also lays the foundation for their professional development as they enable their companies to achieve marketplace success.
--Steven Haines, Founder and President
Sequent Learning Networks

The job of product management often appears overwhelming. Alyssa Dver's book helps the new product manager know where to begin and gives specific tools to make the new product manager productive quickly. Designed for small to mid-sized companies, Dver introduces the broad scope of product management in an easily readable format. The book also provides the most commonly used templates so that readers will not have to "reinvent the wheel." Software Product Management Essentials is filled with practical advice from an author who has clearly succeeded in the job.
--Steve Johnson
Pragmatic Marketing

This book very nicely bridges the gap between the important principles of product management and the very essential day-to-day tasks that practicing software product managers must accomplish.
--Shimon Shmueli, President
Washington DC Chapter of PDMA

In a crucial business and technical area such as Product Management, it is imperative that there are quality resources such as the book, Software Product Management Essentials. The book is an easy to read, hands-on look at the activities involved in being a successful product manager. Readers will truly appreciate the wisdom in the book to help make them efficient and effective. This is a must-read for any software product manager, new and old, who wants to ensure that they are doing the best possible job.
--Jacques Murphy, Editor
Product Management Challenges newsletter

While there are few things as uncommon as common sense, one of those is insight. Dver's work delivers both. Steeped in insight that can only be gained from the fire of front-line experience, Software Product Management Essentials belongs on the desk of everyone whose success depends on delivering software products with quality, efficiency and effectiveness.
--Peter Fingar, Author
The Death of 'E' and the Birth of the Real New Economy

Alyssa Dver's new book, Software Product Management Essentials, is a long-overdue compendium on one of the most important and misunderstood functions within any technology company. When JTBN adds Special Interest Groups (SIGs) this should be required reading for everyone regardless of functional area. Colleges should take note and offer a course based on this.
--Barbara Finer
Founder HTMP, Executive Committee
Jewish Technology Business Network

Having been a CEO for many years at small and mid-sized software companies, I wish I could have provided to all my Product Managers such a source of information. Software Product Management Essentials provides an excellent set of processes, templates, and insights into the many aspects of product management. It will be a life saver for new Product Managers and even veteran Product Managers will find many helpful hints to make them more productive and effective.
--Marco A. Emrich, CEO & President
SEDONA Corporation

Dver makes it abundantly clear to her target readers that the path to market leadership begins with product management. The book gives product managers a great perspective on the persona, skills, and bandwidth required to keep the product management function in a leadership position within the organization.
--John Mansour, President
ZIGZAG Marketing

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: Meghan Kiffer Pr (April 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0929652010
• ISBN-13: 978-0929652016
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #815,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for software product managers, November 1, 2004

By 

Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Software Product Management Essentials (Paperback)

I read this book while it was still in galley form and once I'd finished it, immediately began to recommend it to my friends in the software industry industy who are involved in product management.

Essentials begins with a useful overview of the role product management plays in the software development, sales and marketing process. The role of a product manager is to serve as a communications "hub" for a publisher's software, coordinating the different and frequently conflicting wishes, needs and priorities of development, sales, marketing and customers.

While product management is one of the most enjoyable and exciting positions within the firmament of software marketing positions, it can also be a wearying and frustrating job. One of the hoariest observations in the software industry is that product managers have "all the responsibility and none of the authority." To succeed as a product manager it helps to have the reflexes of a juggler (to help keep multiple balls in the air), the proboscis of a basset hound (to help sniff out the political winds), and the hide of rhinoceros (to help deflect the flight of poison darts that will be coming your way).

After its look at the role of product management in software, the book moves onto discussing frameworks for managing the process. Software Product Management Essentials is particularly enamored of the Base Level Integration Planning (BLIP) methodology. BLIP is a time-based system that begins with:

"...A schedule for each development cycle or Base Level (BL), and then builds a practical set of features and development work into the schedule, rather than the other way around. In software engineering, this approach is called "time boxing." By using the BLIP process, your company can maintain fleet-footedness and flexibility while ensuring functionality to keep ahead of the market. The BLIP process is flexible enough to allow you to focus on one of the development attributes (quality, functionality or time) as much or as little as desired for each release cycle."

BLIP is favorably contrasted with the traditional method of product development, which often consist of a product manager walking into a meeting with the development group, presenting a list of desired features, and then threatening, blackmailing, and eventually sobbing piteously until he or she gets buy-in from the programmers. Or the methodology, which consists of the development group ignoring marketing while they build the next version of the product they think is cool and which may or may not correspond with the desires and needs of the buyers of said products. Or the system in which the sales group promises that software will soon have the ability to product anti-gravity waves on demand if the customer will sign the PO today.

A word about some of the sillier reviews I've read here. No one with any experience in the industry would regard reading this book as a waste time (except maybe some disappointed developers who are accustomed to buying books by the pound.) Software Product Management Essentials is a compact, pithy book. It gets to the point, provides up to-date-info on current industry techniques and approaches and is one of a small handful of books which focuses specifically on the issues facing software PMs, not product managment in general.

A very valuable tool for those of us in the software industry.

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Should be called Software Product Management Topics, August 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Software Product Management Essentials (Paperback)

I was excited to get this book after reading the initial glowing reviews on Amazon (apparently from friends of the author). As mentioned elsewhere, there are good books covering Product Management in general, but few covering Software Product Management. This short book does provide an overview of what the software product manager should think about that is specific to the software industry, and provides some practical advice useful for the new product manager, but doesn't go into much depth on any one topic, which would greatly benefit the more experienced product manager who must piece together bits of wisdom from disparate sources (such as Kotler on Marketing, Product Management (lehmann and winer), Crossing the Chasm, etc.) in order to do more than get up to speed on fundamentals of the job.

The author mentions that the 4 P's of marketing are: Product, Place (distribution), Pricing, and Positioning (usually called Promotion). However, she doesn't go into depth on any one of the P's nor does she try to explain how to integrate them. The deepest section is on product development but there are much better books on this one subject alone. Similarly, readers needing more information and advice on pricing should read other books such as The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing. However, I really liked how Dver included the S-curve as a 4th C of pricing (Customers, Cost, Competition, and now Change). Unfortunately, positioning is only covered in a few paragraphs! Distribution is also glossed over.

Perhaps this lack of substance reflects the adolescent state of the industry, with its overemphasis on Product above all the other P's (perhaps this made sense in the hypergrowth stage as firms quickly leaped to the Next Big Thing but not in a maturing industry), and lack of integration between the P's in most firms. By contrast, think about consumer brand management (where product management originated) for a moment: does P&G only emphasize one P or do they do a good job integrating all 4 when bringing a product to market? Considering who Redmond hires as new product managers, no wonder Microsoft is the only firm in this industry seen as having great marketing (debate over the quality of its software notwithstanding).

The book also seems to lean heavily on quotes from Pragmatic Marketing (course and consulting firm). We have a long way to go, both in the industry, and in guidebooks on the software product manager's job. Perhaps the second edition of Ms. Dver's book will be more helpful.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Way to Learn & Confirm Product Management, July 21, 2006

By 

Adam Weinstein - See all my reviews

This review is from: Software Product Management Essentials (Paperback)

As I went to go and post a review of this book, I was shocked to see some of the negative reviews that are here. This book was fantastic in that it was simple, clear, and comprehensive. I've been a product manager for over 15 years and have managed product managers for the last 7. I work in a very successful software company and have been a successful PM. I was looking for a tool to help train my staff and this book was recommended by one of my colleagues at another company who is also a succsssful manager of PMs. I am glad I listened to my friend and not the people who think they know too much and need boast this via an Amazon book review. From my perspective, this book really helps - it helps new PMs understand what they are expected to do and how to do it. It also confirmed for me what I should expect of my employees and gave me some really staightforward tools to use, even after all these years. If you want a solid and accurate view of software product management, this is it. If the book missed anything, it was how to deal with unfulfilled engineering types....maybe next version?