The vicious circle of modern IT product management

I’ll admit it – I have a serious issue with the way most of the tech industry goes about discovering their users’ needs. The fact that I clearly understand why PMs everywhere keep on stepping on the same rake hitting themselves in the face time and time again doesn’t make it any better.

The script would be very familiar to anyone who’s been a PM or worked with one:

• Identify a handful of key large accounts;
• Ask key people there what they want you to develop;
• Develop all the things!!
• Try to figure out how to make the rest of your potential customer base buy what you’ve developed (a.k.a., “get busy hammering square pegs into round holes”).

I think the leopard needs a new pair of shorts

VMware appears to be pushing hard into the utility compute space. It is easy to understand – there seems to be lot of peer pressure, both from Amazon and from OpenStack / CloudStack communities.

I don’t doubt they can make it work, but the question in my mind is “is that the best way of doing it?”.

On communicating your Product Philosophy

Recently, I walked into a trap. It is going to cost time and money to get out of, and in part, it is of my own making. It is most definitely not the end of the world, but it is unpleasant and may have been avoided. Hopefully I will not be making the same mistake again.

Recently I wrote about the importance of Vendors’ communicating the key reasons behind the existence and development of their product clearly, and this post I guess is an example case study.