Accept Software Resource Library

Thanks, Scott, Mr. Product Manager!

In Scott Sehlhorst's recent blog post about "Why Products Fail?", he posits the questions product managers should asking. That's if they could step back and take the time to consider how they might mitigate product failure.

Firstly we thank-you Scott, not only for helping us talk to others of your ilk, i.e. our audience in past webinars you were so kind to host with us, but moreover, for exacting the larger issues and asking the harder questions of "why products fail?". We thank you because we spend a lot of time trying to extract this information out of product managers; when they're not running around trying to gather spreadsheets and herd their teams.

Of course, this attempt to get at the meat of the matter is self-serving since what we offer is a way to help companies have successful product outcomes, especially when the challenges ramp up and everything gets a whole lot more complex.

But getting to the heart of the all-too-often-product-failure conundrum matter – to really understand the enormous gap between products that come to market and those that really make money – is no small feat. But we believe to do so is to ultimately make our offering a whole lot better and viable over the long haul.

So in short you we are thanking you for jettisoning the collective product management mind-set to a larger understanding here and now. There's nothing like having a "fly on the wall" view into your product-manager-mind-thinking and your thoughtful drill into the deeper issues. We should just call you once a week.

As you so wonderfully point out in Ishikawa's tool, to identify all the branches that lead to product failure, that it's many things, and some not so easy to tackle. And though our offering tries to make at least one or maybe two of Ishikawa's branches easier to take on, we can't help but notice that there is a long distance between what you want your product brethren to consider and where they're at. It's as if you were a modern day health guru asking about life-style, exercise, spirituality and community when most can't manage to eat 2 cups of veggies a day let alone consider spirituality.

You point out the bigger issues and we find that many frustrated product managers can't manage to even capture and see the information they have to inform and steer requirements and changes. To suggest, as you so eloquently do in your blog, that they listen to whether there is a market, or have a product that is out of step with a market when, not many are even close to sorting out the most basic things like capturing and using information. So the idea that they do anything beyond that is brave, oh-so-true but, perhaps, way out in front of what's possible for many.

But okay, we still thank-you because no matter where the product managers are in their consciousness about their product failure problems we feel assured we will have a long life of product updates to begin to tackle Ishikawa's other branches.

For now we just want enough product managers and their bosses to realize where one fundamental problem lies, in freeing data. That would be a nice start.