Mistakes I have learned from...
Common Product Management Screw-Ups That Strike Even the Experienced
- Acting like a Requirements Monkey.
- Punting on strategy.
- Not focusing on a particular target market.
- Not meeting with enough customers often enough.
- Not meeting with prospects and non-customers often enough.
- Not truly understanding the real problems faced by your target market.
- Hearing only what you want to hear.
- Being afraid to draw pictures.
- Forgetting to incorporate features into your product that help you measure success or failure, and thereby improve over time.
- Going along with a development process that can't adjust when faced with negative market feedback
- Becoming Development's Co-Dependent, and having them come to you about the placement of every freakin' pixel.
- Allowing a junk to ship.
- Making the product hard to buy or add-on.
- Thinking that landing reference customers for a new product/release is someone else's job.
- Assuming that everyone that stands in your way is a jerk or a political player.
- Neglecting to spend the time building rapport and credibility with engineers.