Mike Lunt on "Selling" to the Development Team

My friend, Mike Lunt, writes:

There are many jobs that a product manager may do, and while most focus the vast majority of their time gathering requirements and selling the products to the sales team, I contend that another equally important role is necessary. This role involves selling the engineering team on the value the new features or changes in the product will have for the customer (and ultimately the success of the group). In other words, for a product to be successful, the engineering team must be motivated to implement the product manager’s feedback. Many projects have failed or been plagued by engineering feature creep because the team did not have confidence in the information stream coming from the product manager(s).

A product manager's responsibility is to help the entire product team fully understand and appreciate the needs of the customer. This responsibility underscores the product manager's facilitative role. The most effective product managers facilitate not just customers, but sales, marcom, and developers.

Mike goes on to propose some ways that a product manager can use objective data to persuade developers. While objective data is helpful, I think fundamental facilitation techniques - active listening, the Socratic method, etc. - are what's most important.

Comments

Roger L. Cauvin said…

Mike, I don't dispute that objective data can be helpful. So I don't feel compelled to produce examples of negative effects of objective data.

I do think, however, that the emphasis should not be on features, but on problems that customers are trying to solve. Go here for details.

Thu Sep 14, 04:19:00 PM 2006

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