Steve Johnson

Before the demands of others overwhelm you, you need to prepare yourself to be the business and market liaison to the product team. Your role as a product manager or product owner is to make the best business decisions for the product, working from the best available information.  Refresh your domain expertise If you’ve been in your industry for years, you probably have strong domain expertise but you may not be up-to-date on the latest information.  Review the corporate pitch. Perhaps the faste ...Read More

An MBA is helpful but not required for product marketing. Relevant work experience is more important. About 40% of product marketing managers have an MBA, so it becomes one aspect of hiring criteria. Given two candidates with equal qualifications, the MBA could be the deciding factor.  Consider the activities in product marketing: most of them require deep understanding of the market and its buyers. A strong product marketing manager needs to be a good researcher, a good communicator, and a good ...Read More

Experienced product managers know that we need to start planning launch as soon as we start planning a release. Alas, many inexperienced product managers (and most product owners) assume that BUILDING is all that matters. (Sigh). They're the ones who think release and launch are the same thing.  That said, more than one marketing person has said, "We need to know what's shipping a year in advance!" Which is impossible. We know what we know when we know it.  Release is the end of a development pr ...Read More