My Competitor, My Friend

A friend in need is a friend indeed, and for me this friend has been very special. He keeps me awake at nights so as I do not take things lightly. He gives me jolts when I tend to relax and he keeps me reminding of innovations that I missed. He is my competitor who has been with me ever since I graduated out of university into professional role.

For me, my competitors is not my rival  but he is:

  • someone with same thought process as mine, that’s why are in the same business.
  • someone who has validated my concepts, we do same thing
  • someone who reminds the customer about me, in whatever way
  • someone who thinks about me, they plan strategy keeping me in mind

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Case Study: Buyer is not the end-user – challenges for the Product Manager

Amol, the product manager of a Set Top Box (STB), was responding to a RFP (Request For Proposal) from a DTH (Direct To Home) operator; the contract if secured would mean significant revenue boost for 2 years, to start with. The STBs would be purchased by the operator in bulk and distributed to their customers (end-users). The RFP had a series of detailed questions on securing the digital content transfered, tamper proof ability, over the air firmware upgrades, recording capabilities – among others. Amol was as usual irritated. Continue reading

Product Manager – Are you going feature crazy?

I love discovering features in products, features are what define a product, right? As a product manager, one has the important responsibility to shape a product by carefully filtering through the thousands of feature requests from various stakeholders.

However sometimes there is way too much focus on building a feature rich product, especially in the enterprise space. It becomes very easy to end up feature chasing instead of focussing on producing a valuable and usable product.

It is useful to think about the following when adding new features: Continue reading