Linda Gorchels
NTC Business Books, 1995
Linda Gorchels
NTC Business Books, 1995
ISBN 0844236691 (boards)
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Buy it from Amazon.co.uk
Gorchels has managed that rare thing, to write a true handbook that is immediately and obviously useful. It is aimed fairly and squarely at product managers, but contains much that will interest requirements engineers. A small fraction of the text concerns specialized topics such as how to price a product. Far more discusses issues familiar to systems engineers, such as how to screen and prototype promising ideas, how to develop a product, launch it, and evaluate its performance. The perspective is, naturally, commercial, but mercifully free of the hype that too often ensnares marketing nowadays. This is a fine clear book, evidently the product of much hard-won experience and reflection.
The 11 chapters are organized into 4 sections: the role and operation of product management; planning skills; product skills; and functional skills.
The first section is an overview of the field. The writing is direct, the chapters structured simply, and the claims supported by a short list of references. The text is supported by tables of factors to consider, and simple graphics - such as a management hierarchy, a decision tree, a worksheet. A checklist rounds off each chapter, with practical advice such as 'Be careful not to lose sight of the customer as you strive to create competitively superior products and services'.
Section two describes the processes of planning the marketing of a new product, and preparing the annual product plan. These are interesting in themselves, but seen with an engineer's eyes, they are examples of process description in a field that is not far from home but quite unfamiliar. It is an interesting exercise to take one's favorite process modeling tools and to see how far market planning can actually be described in such terms. Gorchels' spare text is expressive.
Section three looks at the constant challenge of evaluating the product portfolio ('avoid the trap of constant fire-fighting'), strategic product planning, and the introduction of new products. This last, which Gorchels calls 'proposal, development, and launch' is the system engineering life-cycle writ large. The process is described with a flow chart and a helpful table which defines the stages - eight of them, of which the fourth is 'Physical development of product in R&D; functional and customer testing of the actual product' - implementation is, plainly, stage 4(a)(ii) or some such particle of the bigger picture. As for pricing, well, if your market is rather insensitive to price, your product well-differentiated, and facing little competition, then you should charge a high price while the going is good.
The book ends with a case study - a broadcast tape cartridge from 3M - which itself concludes with as clear a recommendation as could be hoped for: 'The first step is to identify the problems and opportunities for a given product'. If you are developing something and you haven't done this, take note.
The Product Manager's Handbook repays a careful and meditative read, by anyone involved in system development. For product managers, it should be bedside reading.
© Ian Alexander 1998
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