Patils's Blog

@ the crossroads

patils — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:57:54 +0000

a post after almost 20 months , i wanted to write since quite sometime , been busy with life , but today determined to get started and here i m back again , with my belief of getting things done when u start writing your thoughts and start acting on them,as i always believed whatever you write you remember for a long time.

What after Product Manager

patils — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:04:15 +0000

As always the questions keeps cropping in about what afte this ?

How does one become a product manager ?

patils — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:50:32 +0000

In many real scenarios in an organization a product manager’s profile is not an instant one , not a ready made or tailor made, people work towards it , spending time with the product or domain is the key.I feel its not something which anybody can learn in a crash course or some sort of quick training etc.

So how does one become a product manager for the 1st time then .?, i found one survey which explains about how people learnt the skills needed to be product manager.The 5 categories listed were:

On-The-Job Training
Went to training classes
Read books
Learned from a mentor
Company had formal processes to follow

System side and software side of software development

patils — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:42:51 +0000

I used to get confused with the terms system development and software development , most of the times development was just a task for me and the pre or post fix for it was just a term , what was more prevalent was the term “Software”.When i tried putting some serious thought in understanding the difference between these two terms it took while to arrive at some conclusion.

System development as the name says is in a broader sense developing a system or may be a product from the begining till end , sometimes this can be enhancing the existing system too.Generally system development involves complex projects , huge amount of data , designs etc.More Importance here would be on innovation , precision and accuracy and so on.Many of these systems will be mission ciritical ones too.

On the other hand software development involvs much smaller projects without too much of data, these will be comparatively simpler projects with specified timelines and also budget.

Understanding Organizational structure

patils — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:49:25 +0000

We all work for one or the other department or division of the organization.It can be dev,test,Sales,marketing ,business development,IT,Admin or HR etc.(i can still think more departments , but let me stop here).For an organization to be successful or at least to be able to sustain in the marketplace all the above mentioned departments should work in tandem to attain a common goal.Like All human body organs work in tandem to make human body in a workable(rather alive) state.:)

In a broader perspective an organization can be split in to 2 divisions one is business side and there other is development or engineering side.A simple illustration can be made this way:the business side is Like showroom(where the products are displayed ,marketed and sold) and the engineering or development side is like a factory(where the products are made).

When we try looking in more deeper the business side consists of our CEOs,CFOs,CIOs,CTOs(?) etc. And Dev side will consists of Architects,Project Managers,Test Managers,Program Managers etc.There can few more profiles , but these will be the core ones clealy visible.

Beyond Test Management….

patils — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:14:05 +0000

When we look at the career growth in testing or QA , the things which come to our minds are Test lead=>Test Manager=>Senior Test Manager = ??.., I stopped at level 3 and couldn’t find many answers beyond senior test manager, a serious thought and look out resulted in few more profiles like group manager , and 2nd level manager and so on .All these are on management or people management side to be precise.

There is a technical side too , After tester and test lead one can choose to become a test consultant or a plain consultant then move on to become a test architect , senior test architect or a fellow or a distinguished engineer and so on.

How is Marketing different from Sales ?

patils — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:11:33 +0000

The one question which many of us tend to confuse ourselves most of times is the difference between marketing and sales.Many folks who are outside these two areas are always under the impression that both marketing and sales are same .I am also of the feeling that few(or may be more) of them who really are inside these roles clearly don’t understand the difference between these two.

If so , what really these two terms mean .? and how they are different from each other ?

This is my understanding:While marketing is all about promoting the product and making the audience or clients or prospective buyers aware of what the product is and what i can do for them and so on , while sales is more of selling the product or services.Often its marketing which drives sales or helps .This can be recursive too.While sales is more concerned about revenue marketing will be more of gaining market share.

The following picture gives a honest feedback about what my understanding was, surprisingly my understanding was quite right

Product Management Resources

patils — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:24:48 +0000

Top 10 Product Management Blogs

http://www.accompa.com/product-management-blog/2009/09/01/product-management-blogs-top-10/

AIPMM

http://www.aipmm.com/

Pragmatic Marketing

www.pragmaticmarketing.com

Resources for Product Marketing Managers

http://infrasystems.com/index.html

http://infrasystems.com/market-validation.html

The Process of New Product Launch

patils — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:09:46 +0000

We all work on some or the other product or service in an organization , but rarely(at least myself for most of the time ) try thinking or understanding how that product or service is made to undergo all phases within the organization and gets launched to become revenue earner for the company.When i tried understanding it i was amazed to see the activities involved in the whole cycle of making a product to be available in the market.What I work on is one real smal area of that whole cycle.

The origin of Product of Product Ideas

patils — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:39:13 +0000

Any product whether its software or hardware has to be dreamed , thought and conceived by somebody at some place within or outside the organization.This brings us the question of who is the person or entity within the organization who does this job.A quick glance about the origin will leads us to the following people / entities.

Engineering (dev/test/support)

product management

Sales/marketing

Customers

Competitors