This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: What every Product Manager should do
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
There's one very good thing that building the blog server and BottomFeeder have accomplished for me - they've taught me a bunch of things about the product that I promote. I've been working with Smalltalk for a long time - since 1992. Until I pushed these two projects out though, I had never built anything "real" - I'd done consulting work, taught classes, built demos - but never anything that was intended to be really used. I run Bf on my desktop all the time now, and I use TypeLess (the plugin IRC client) to communicate with the community. I use the blog posting tool to post here
There's a difference between hacking around with a product (which is what I had always done before) and actually working with a product - which is what I do now. It's given me a lot better insight into the issues our customers face:
The development tools themselves - browsers, Store, etc - it's one thing to have intellectual insight into limitations. It's another thing entirely to run smack into them
Strengths and Weaknesses in the product - again, it's one thing to be an advocate - it's another thing to learn where your customers run into problems by slamming into them yourself
It's made me a better PM by taking me far more directly into the worldview of our customers. It's a place that more product managers ought to travel to.
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