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Product management is a critical strategic driver in a company. It can make a huge impact in terms of whether products, as well as the entire company, succeed or fail in both the short and long term. It’s the only role in a company that grasps all aspects of the business, including customers, the market, competition, trends, strategy, business models, and more. As such, great product management makes great companies.

While writing Product Management For Dummies, we tapped into our combined 60 years of hands-on product management experience. We also took advantage of the methodology and learning we’ve discovered working with tens of thousands of clients and individual product managers over the past 20 years in the product management consulting and training business. The resulting book, we hope, will allow you to discover and apply great product management concepts to your business and products to create massive success.

Product management has grown tremendously in importance in the corporate world in the past 10 years, as have the resources available to learn about it. As authors, we can sincerely say that we wish there had been a book like this when we were just starting in the profession. We had to learn much of what is in this book by trial and error. We owe a great debt to our mentors and the organizations we’ve had the privilege of working for.

If you’re looking for the link to the downloadable Product Management LifeCycle Toolkit, jump to the “Beyond the Book” section later in this Introduction. We wish you tremendous success in delivering products that truly delight your customers!

About This Book

Product management as a topic is vast. The breadth of knowledge you need to be an effective product manager is very complex. The best answer to a question that arises is “It depends.” As such, covering concepts from all angles was a challenge. We have done our best to provide a well-rounded look at the product management profession.

One of the beauties of a product management career is that you can make how you perform your job unique to who you are. Rather than envisioning this book as a prescriptive set of rules, imagine it as a starting point in your own career. Understand why a concept is important and then pretend you are playing a jazz score. You find yourself improvising actions while keeping the end goal in mind. This is the true fascination of this work: It is endlessly different while retaining core principles.

Product Management For Dummies is intended for all product management audiences: new product managers, those who are looking to enter the field, and businesspeople and entrepreneurs who want to apply product management best practices in their companies. We give you guidelines as to what you should be doing given your situation at any particular time; share when you’re likely to be thrown off track; and provide handy lists, tables, and figures for reference. For those with more experience in product management, the book no doubt has some concepts you’ve never experienced and can serve as a good refresher on other things you have picked up along the way. Because product managers are by and large self-taught, for certain topics, you can at least take comfort in that you’re on the right track. We also hope that you can use the book to review, enhance, and extend the excellent work you’re already doing. With more information and preparation, you’ll have more confidence in reining in a difficult situation and the ability to keep the project and your product headed in a good direction.

Here are a few conventions we use throughout the book:

❯❯ Info in the shaded sidebars or marked with Technical Stuff icons is text you can skip if you’re short on time. It’s good information, but it’s nonessential to the main concept.

❯❯ We often use the term product to refer to both products and services even though a product is typically an actual physical good and a service refers to the work done by individuals and companies for customers. In any case, the basic concepts of product management are all highly applicable to products, services, and hybrid offerings.

❯❯ Product marketing is a term that you may have heard interchangeably or in conjunction with product management. Its focus is typically responsible for making sure that the marketing, messaging, pricing, and other critical marketing success factors are in place.

Some companies have a dedicated product management group. Some companies have a dedicated product marketing group, and some companies have both product management and product marketing groups. And some companies have groups (called either of these terms) where the individuals perform all of the responsibilities for both.

In this book, we refer to both product management and product marketing using the term product management only. In this context it covers all activities in a product’s life from conception of the initial idea to when the product is retired. The only exception occurs when we’re discussing the difference between these roles.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, we made a few assumptions about you. We assume that you have some business knowledge but not necessarily any particular technical knowledge of a subject or product area. We assume that if you need to have this technical knowledge, you have acquired or will acquire it elsewhere (and we let you know when you’ll likely need to get outside information).

In an ideal world, product managers would all be deep technical experts and have MBAs and business backgrounds. However, that isn’t the real world. We assume that as you grow as a product manager, you’ll develop your own philosophy of product management, create your own versions of our tools, and innovate and share with others in the profession. Ultimately, you may aspire to help grow the next generation of product managers, resulting in more great products available in the world.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, you find icons that alert you to information that you need to know:

Product management definitions vary widely. This icon calls out key terms and concepts that you’d be wise to file away.

This icon means we’re providing some technical information that may or may not interest you. You can skip this paragraph if you want without missing any important information.

The Tip icon flags quick tricks to make your job easier and ideas to help you apply the techniques and approaches discussed. If there’s an easier way to get through your workload, this is where you’ll find it.

You can easily run into trouble in product management. This icon marks hidden traps and difficult situations.

Beyond the Book

Downloading the Product Management LifeCycle Toolkit: In addition to the great content in the book you’re reading right now, the 280 Group has included with your purchase a single-user license for the Product Management LifeCycle Toolkit at no extra charge. This collection of templates and tools goes along with the book and allows you to produce more effective documents more quickly. In addition, there are completed sample versions of these documents that you can use as a guideline for how to actually complete them. Go to www.280group.com/toolkit and use the coupon code PMDUMMIES to get your complimentary copy.

Also available online are some quick answers to some basic product management elements. To view this book’s Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Product Management For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

If you are new to product management or investigating it for the first time, the best place to start is in Part 1 of the book. Read it from start to finish.

If you already have some experience in product management, we still recommend starting at Part 1 to refresh what you have learned and to find information that may be new to you. If you are facing immediate challenges, find the chapter that most closely addresses your issue.