Prototyping Myths; Aligning Marketing and Product; Why Healthcare Needs Product Management

Jeff Lash

6 Myths about Prototyping
Prototyping provides many benefits in terms of idea generation, obtaining customer feedback, streamlining development, improving coordination, and ultimately improving the end product. However, many organizations do not regularly prototype new offerings before beginning development, and many have never created a single prototype. As I talk with product management teams, I hear many implicit or explicit objections to prototyping. These are usually myths based in misunderstanding — beliefs that, for example, it’s too costly, too time-consuming, or that special skills are needed.

In this post on the SiriusDecisions blog — 6 Myths about Prototyping — I dispel these myths and others. Prototyping can be cheap, easy, and hugely beneficial to any innovation or product development initiative. Plus, it’s fun! I’m interested in hearing from readers, so please post a comment on the blog post. How are you utilizing prototyping? What benefits have you seen? And if you’re still not prototyping, why not?

Aligning Product Marketing and Product Management: Seattle, August 21
On Thursday, August 21 I’ll be in Seattle for a presentation to the Product Management Consortium (PMC). PMC is a non-profit, volunteer driven organization for Product Management professionals, and meetings are open to anyone.

The topic of my presentation is Aligning Product Marketing and Product Management. Here’s a preview:

In many organizations, product management and engineering work in isolation on building a product, only to throw it over the wall to marketing and expect them to somehow “market it.” It’s not just alignment with product marketing that’s an issue — most b-to-b companies are bifurcating marketing into specific roles like demand generation, corporate marketing, content marketing, regional/field marketing, channel marketing, marketing operations…and the list goes on. Having product management work effectively with product marketing and other marketing functions is essential for product success. This session covers specific techniques for product managers to get better alignment with marketing colleagues.

You can get more details on the PMC web site and even register for the meeting in advance. If you’re in the Seattle area, it would be great to see you there.

Why Healthcare Organizations Need Product Management
My colleague Jennifer Russo wrote a great post on the SiriusDecisions blog a few weeks ago on a topic near and dear to my heart — Why Healthcare Organizations Need Product Management. I spent a good part of my career working in healthcare, and I work with many healthcare organizations in my role at SiriusDecisions, so I can attest to some of these challenges. However, I think the opportunity is huge for those healthcare organizations that can establish strong product management functions.

One other comment: even though this post is focused on healthcare organizations, the challenges that Jennifer mentions — such as no formal analysis or validation of the market opportunity; lack of knowledge of competitors — are present in lots of companies in all industries. Read the blog post: Why Healthcare Organizations Need Product Management

Product Management Festival 2014
In my last blog post, I mentioned that I’ll be speaking at the 2014 Product Management Festival this September in Zurich. This is a reminder that registration is open — it’s hard to believe that the conference is only about 6 weeks away! My presentation on Wednesday, September 17 will be on Effectively Communicating Product Roadmaps. It looks to be a great conference and I’m excited to present, participate and learn. If you’re attending, let me know and we can plan on meeting face-to-face.

What’s Hot on Twitter
Here are a few of my tweets that have generated the most interest over the past week; to get these in real-time, follow me at @jefflash: