My answer, originally posted on Quora. My Answer Yes, but there is some debate about how many are adopted each year. It is probably in the 100s, and the leading foreign adopter of American children is Canada. Source: Overseas adoptions rise -- for black American children. »
My comments on an answer to a Quora question. Original Question: Motherhood: Are stay at home moms/dads who have a full-time nanny lazy? One person who answered this question basically said YES for the following reasons. "This trend of stay-at-home moms getting full time nannies is bull and needs »
My answer to this Quora question was originally published on 10/16/2013. My Answer: Yes, you should tell your child. Because he or she WILL definitely one day find out. Read the other answers for insight into how devastating this can be. But let's say you want to go »
When I tell people I’m a Product Management Consultant, it sometimes throws them. “Product Management Consultant? I haven’t heard of that,” they say. Then, “how does one use a consultant to help with product management? Isn’t product management too strategic to not be in-house?” So first off, »
My answer, originally published on Quora Q: What are the disadvantages of being a female in a male-dominated CS/engineering university? My Answer The other answers to this question are all spot-on and great. I will just add one more. When a technical woman gets older, say around age 35, »
I got some questions about results-focused testimonials after my last webinar. In the last post, I gave a high-level template, but here is one at a much more granular level of detail. It can be daunting to give this template to a recommender and tell them to fill it in. »
While no one has ever hired me for a project based solely based on my collection of testimonials, my clients tell me it helped them pull the trigger and decide to go ahead with our first project. In their minds, the risks of hiring a stranger was mitigated because so »
When proposing a fixed-price project to a client, I nearly always present three options for doing the project: lowest price / lowest value medium price / medium value highest price / highest value If the client has a very small budget, then I’ll sometimes figure out a “lowest value” project that has »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Q:Why do parents adopt children from foreign countries rather than from their own country? Foreign adoptions are more expensive, the process is more time consuming, and switching to a new language and culture is hard on the child. What is the motivation for »
Early - Starting August 2011 (13 months) At age 1 yr, 1 month, in the USA for just over 1 month) 1. Dog / doggy (8/18/2011) 2. Tickle 3. Hi (11/24/2011) 4. "Bucka bucka" - the name of his special strawberry pillow 5. "Bap" (fruit and/or »
Most product managers and product marketers I know have a fear of — or at least a strong dislike of — selling. They find selling unpleasant and often think they are bad at it. Especially the closing the deal part. Alas, this fear/revulsion of selling is perhaps the biggest obstacle that’ »
My answer, originally posted to Quora My Answer I don't know about other countries, but yes, an adult can be legally adopted in many states in the USA, including California. The criteria for allowing adult adoption varies state to state. Adult adoption creates a legal parent-child relationship between two adults, »
A colleague asked me this the other day: *If a company is pursuing a “freemium” business model, how should they determine the optimal mix of features to offer in free vs. paid software? * It’s a good question. Freemium – where a product is made available in both a free and »
I love it when a gnarly technical concept can be elegantly explained via a good analogy. In fact, I have found myself searching for these perfect analogies throughout my career. I’ve been working on NoSQL projects of late, and found the following two articles – both with brilliant analogies — to »
This post is about a serious topic - how a DECENT company deals with the death of one of its employees. My husband and I have both had some first-hand experience with this. Both incidents were long ago, but the wounds are still fresh. Let's just say that both employers »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Q: What is the best way to visually present a product roadmap to executive stakeholders? What are some effectively ways to communicate a product roadmap to executives clearly and concisely? My Answer My facetious answer is to use powerpoint with lots of superfluous animation »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Q: Should I finish a degree in CS if I don't really want to be a software engineer? Some context: I started a degree in engineering, did well in it academically (marks wise, I was typically in the top 10% of the class; not »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Q: Is there a market for fractional or part-time product management? Thesis: Early stage startups could use dedicated product managers, but often can't afford one or don't have the resources to support a full-time PM. From all the conversations I've had with early stage »
Content Management is huge in enterprise software, and thus the Content Manager Pattern is one of the most important high-level Product Patterns. Content management is the primary function of most software described as a platform, server, or online service. It’s not just limited to the realm of official “Content »
In my posts about Product Patterns, I’ve mentioned the word “content” a lot. I’ve even mentioned a few high-level product patterns called the “Content Manager” and “Content Authoring Tool.” This is an important product pattern because basically every piece of software that touts itself as a “platform” or »
Since I’ve become attuned to Product Patterns (buckets of software functionality that appear in product after product), I’ve noticed dozens of them. Some are big, top-level patterns. And some are really sub-patterns, that exist in the context of a larger pattern. I’m going to start with a »
Over the past 10 years, I’ve probably done hands-on analysis the functionality and usability of over 300 software products and online services (not including mobile apps). Why so many? Because playing with software is not just my job, but also my weird hobby. I’m always on the hunt »
You've heard that old chestnut. You've seen it in a million articles. The big advice Sales Reps offer to Product Management is "Don't just talk about features. Tie the features to benefits." And whenever I see Yet Another Article offering this advice, I think, "Doesn't every product manager already know »
My answer, originally published on Quora. My Answer The Must-Read Books for Product Managers For product managers working on business-to-business high tech products and early technologies, the following are absolute must-reads: Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, by Geoffrey Moore. This book was pivotal in »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Q: Does Apple get too much credit for its UI design? Why does everyone treat Apple UI like god? My Answer Apple deserves the credit. First they discovered UI metaphors that are so intuitive that they seem to be hard-wired into our brains. And »
My answer, originally published on Quora. My Answer I've worked with dozens of software / online service companies and helped them recruit product management candidates. None of them care about the PMI certification, and in fact it might be seen as a sign that an applicant does not understand that the »
We all know the supposed purpose of Beta testing programs: to get customers to actually use about-to-be-released software, in order to find and fix problems that would not have been found by internal-only testing. So why (why?!?!) do so many so-called Beta testing programs seem explicitly designed to PREVENT this »
In general, I advise against pre-announcing upcoming product features until you are so close to releasing it that you can practically taste it. But your circumstances might differ, so here are the The Cons: Reasons to NOT pre-announce upcoming features You could stall the sales process. Instead of buying what »
Some rules of thumb that I’ve accumulated during the last 3+ years as an independent product management consultant: Always include several options in proposals, ideally three choices that are good/better/best. Always provide a discount for full prepayment, ranging from 5-10%. Always include a late payment penalty in »
My answer, originally published on Quora. My Answer They do it the way ANY adoptive parent -- male or female, gay or straight - does it: usually -bottle-feeding with formula. Entire generations of kids grew up healthy on just formula, and today formula more closely resembles breast milk than at »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Q: What Kellogg MBA classes have students found to be the most useful and why? My Answer From the vantage point of someone who has been out of Kellogg for over a decade, here are the classes that have proven the most useful in »
Product managers create business cases and business plans all the time. I've created and seen a bazillion of them in my day. Lots. But, alas, so many of them are weak. In particular, many use a device that is one of my pet peeves. It's the "one percent of the »
Almost every time I read about a new B2B startup or product, I get a sense of déjà vu. Alas, it's not a glitch in the Matrix. It's because pretty much every product pitch sounds exactly the same. Watered down, generic, and 100% free of taste. A grinder is at »
Dear Kian, Today is Saturday May 28, 2011. I just had the most wonderful day with you. You are 4-1/2 years right now, on the brink of entering kindergarten. And 4.5 is truly a wonderful age. Perhaps the best age (although I know that consistently throughout your entire »
Below is an online Q&A from a presentation I gave on Agile Product Management. Just wanted to share…. Q: How do you deal with a management team that is entrenched in the Waterfall method and a development team that is Agile from a roadmap and planning perspective? Sue »
My answer, originally published on Quora. Answer: Don't hide that you are married. And if you are a guy, don't hide that you have kids. But if you are a mother, the answer is more complicated. Unfortunately, there is a strong bias against female founders (and executives) with kids. In »
We Product Manager sometimes can't understand why the product bugs we complain about so vociferously take so long for Engineering to fix. Well, here is the developer's point of view when faced with a nasty bug. It's an extremely well-written guest post by an engineer who is a fan of »
Today we have a guest post from Scott Sehlhorst, product management consultant extraordinaire and author of the tasty-good Tyner Blain blog. Although he is contributing this "Cranky Test for Agile Product Managers," Scott may be genetically incapable of true crankiness. One of his co-workers once accused him of having excess »
Hadoop is starting to come into mainstream consciousness. As a result, a lot of people are grappling with understanding the relationship between Hadoop and traditional data warehouses, and how ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load technology) fits into the picture. On one of the “Big Data” forums on LinkedIn, someone asked »
I received an email from a reader regarding this blog's recent guest post, The 7 Types of Engineers. To Whom I May Concern, I have attached a picture of the real Veteran Engineer that works with me. I saw your post, the description of Mike, and bought the mug for »
A few weeks ago, I went to the pharmacy to purchase the most womanly of accoutrements. Yep, maxipads. Now, before you click away, be assured this post does have something important to say about product management. Please sit tight and bear with me. Anyway, I walked into the store aisle »
I’ve had a lot of conversations lately with product managers who are wrestling with the appliance question: Should they create a software-only product, or should they deliver an integrated hardware-plus-software appliance that contains all the underlying hardware and software needed to run the product? It’s an important question »
In our coupious spare time, Product Management bloggers just LOVE writing haikus. Check it: here (Pivotal PM), and here (my previous post), and here (Product Management Meets Pop Culture), and here (Tyner Blain), and here (On Product Management). The fun just never ends. Anyway, here's some brand, spankin' new haiku. »
1. Don't visit customers. If customers want to talk to you, ask that instead they put their list of enhancement requests in an email or a spreadsheet. Take said list and cut/paste it into Jira. Don't bother to find out WHY the customer wants any of this stuff. If »
(I originally published this article semi-anonymously on the Cranky Product Manager blog in October, 2010. The post received a lot of traffic from reddit and other sources. At the time, I received some criticism for hiding behind an anonymous persona and for not naming names, so I'm updating and republishing »
I had the pleasure of attending Business of Software 2010 last week. It was a fascinating conference, chock full of interesting speakers and lots of learning. Seth Godin was there. He's wicked awesome! The attendees were mostly technical founders of small software companies. Many were pre-venture financing, but many (most? »
I am a big fan of anything that will get quality, innovative, market-killing products out the door more quickly. Sincerely. I would even trade in my extensive work wardrobe of jeans for a pile of business suits if it would improve product quality. I would even stop swearing if it »
Oh goodness. This April Fool's send-up of technology analysts has been creeping around the Internet for some time. But this is the first time I've seen it. Please read. Very funny stuff. It's about Harvester Research's launch of ForceSales.com, the industry's first Analyst-as-a-Service (Aaas) offering. I especially like their »
I am on vacation, but posting in my stead is a WICKED AWESOME guest blogger: an extremely talented writer/product manager/mom with the nom de plume "Another PM." Her post is below, and it is so good and so TRUE... The Identification, Care and Feeding of Engineers on Your »
I have recently become obsessed with the TV Show Hoarding: Buried Alive. If you are unfamiliar, it is a reality show that profiles people who hoard stuff -- tons of worthless artifacts and even unsanitary crap (literally crap! think rotten food! old diapers! full cat boxes!) -- until the point »