Product Management: my perspective

After reading all the ebooks, guides, definitions, jargons, articles and blog posts, I really get confused some times that what product management is all about.

Sometimes i feel it means being the brand ambassador of your product, some times i feel being the marketing manager and trying to promote my product in all possible ways and in any direction, sometimes i feel being a support manager and just trying to understand customer issues and trying to convince them that even if it has so many issues, still its the best product to use in the market among others.

At times i just feel to be a good business analyst and try to stuff my product with all possible features that could make it shine like a star among the rest.

And some times just be a good project manager and try to communicate so well among the team members, that release never get delayed and always meet deadlines. And hence we penetrate into the market on time.

With all due respect to everyone whom i read and talked with, i feel product management cannot be defined.

Its like asking a mother that how much she loves to her child. And defining her responsibilities/roles towards her child.

I think now you could understand my perspective.

Its a relation of mother and child. Nothing you could list out that you won't do for your child whenever there is a requirement. Means at times you become his friend, at times teacher, at time guardian, some times critic, sometimes parents.

Does that mean i'm being diplomatic and trying to say that product manager has no roles and responsibilities defined. No, its not like that.

Like sometimes for our children we become everything i.e. friend to play with, teacher to teach him, critic to help him understand his shortcomings, parents to take care of him and doctor to take care of his health.

But still we take him to the good school, get him a good teacher, ask him to meet his friends and take him to the best of the doctor whenever he is sick.

So, in a nut shell this is what i personally feel is the role of a product manager. And this is what a product demands from his product manager.

This knowledge i have gathered from my experience as a product manager at WizIQ and having discussions with Harman Singh, who himself is a great visionary & an excellent product manger and Gurjinder singh who is having a zeal to excel in product management and make WizIQ reach heights.

Never lose hope !!!

Whatever your cross, whatever your pain, There will always be sunshine, after the rain....

Perhaps you may stumble, perhaps even fall, But God's always ready,To answer your call....

He knows every heartache, sees every tear, A word from his lips, can calm every fear....

Your sorrows may linger, throughout the night, But suddenly vanish, in dawn's early light ....

The Savior is waiting, somewhere above, To give you his grace, and send you his love...

Whatever your cross, whatever your pain, "God always sends rainbows ....after the rain..."

Success

डुबकियां सिंधु में गोताखोर लगाता है,जा जा कर खाली हाथ लौटकर आता है। मिलते नहीं सहज ही मोती गहरे पानी में,बढ़ता दुगना उत्साह इसी हैरानी में। मुट्ठी उसकी खाली हर बार नहीं होती,कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती। असफलता एक चुनौती है, इसे स्वीकार करो,क्या कमी रह गई, देखो और सुधार करो।जब तक न सफल हो, नींद चैन को त्यागो तुम,संघर्ष का मैदान ...छोड़ कर मत भागो तुम। कुछ किये बिना ही जय जय कार नहीं होती !!!

Chandigarh - 'City Beautiful'

"Each One Teach One Plant One"

Agile Methodologies And Extreme Programming

Check out this SlideShare Presentation on Extreme Programming:

Agile Methodologies And Extreme Programming

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What is Rational Unified Process ?

The Rational Unified Process® is a Software Engineering Process. It provides a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and responsibilities within a development organization. Its goal is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users, within a predictable schedule and budget.

The Rational Unified Process is a process product, developed and maintained by Rational® Software. The development team for the Rational Unified Process are working closely with customers, partners, Rational's product groups as well as Rational's consultant organization, to ensure that the process is continuously updated and improved upon to reflect recent experiences and evolving and proven best practices.

The Rational Unified Process enhances team productivity, by providing every team member with easy access to a knowledge base with guidelines, templates and tool mentors for all critical development activities. By having all team members accessing the same knowledge base, no matter if you work with requirements, design, test, project management, or configuration management, we ensure that all team members share a common language, process and view of how to develop software.

The Rational Unified Process activities create and maintain models. Rather than focusing on the production of large amount of paper documents, the Unified Process emphasizes the development and maintenance of models—semantically rich representations of the software system under development.

The Rational Unified Process is a guide for how to effectively use the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The UML is an industry-standard language that allows us to clearly communicate requirements, architectures and designs. The UML was originally created by Rational Software, and is now maintained by the standards organization Object Management Group (OMG).

The Rational Unified Process is supported by tools, which automate large parts of the process. They are used to create and maintain the various artifacts—models in particular—of the software engineering process: visual modeling, programming, testing, etc. They are invaluable in supporting all the bookkeeping associated with the change management as well as the configuration management that accompanies each iteration.

The Rational Unified Process is a configurable process. No single process is suitable for all software development. The Unified Process fits small development teams as well as large development organizations. The Unified Process is founded on a simple and clear process architecture that provides commonality across a family of processes. Yet, it can be varied to accommodate different situations. It contains a Development Kit, providing support for configuring the process to suit the needs of a given organization or user.

The Rational Unified Process captures many of the best practices in modern software development in a form that is suitable for a wide range of projects and organizations. Deploying these best practices using the Rational Unified Process as your guide offers development teams a number of key advantages. In next post, I’ll describe the six fundamental best practices of the Rational Unified Process.

Short Stories

A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died.The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs said, "Did you not hear us?" The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.