The Product Manager's Handbook

by Linda Gorchels

The essential guide to seamless product management for today’s fluid, unpredictable business world

Long considered the most useful and insightful guide of its kind, The Product Manager’s Handbook has been fully revised and updated to give you the edge in today’s challenging business landscape. It features expanded coverage of product development processes, intelligence-gathering techniques (including social media), and a greater emphasis on international issues.

This indispensable resource proves that the techniques and tools product managers use are similar—regardless of what industry they work in and what kind of products they manage. Simply put, this book has everything you need for superior job performance—whether you manage consumer or business-to-business products created by an organization that is hierarchical or horizontal.

The Product Manager’s Handbook shows you how to integrate your organization’s disparate segments into a cooperative, results-focused unit that produces satisfying products—from initial design through the postpurchase experience. If your job is to create and commercialize products, it provides the information you need to:

Balance breakthroughs and line extensions Create business cases—including competitive assessment, market requirements, and risk reduction Conduct gate reviews and beta testing and manage scope creep Get everything in order for a smooth product launch

For those who manage existing lines, this guide provides:

Specific tips for each of the 4Rs of product life-cycle management Brand guidelines Approaches to customer message management Advice on working with sales and the channel

Clear, easy-to-read charts show you how to manage each crucial step from conception to completion, and practical checklists help you evaluate progress at every stage. Interviews with seasoned product management consultants and top-performing product managers provide you with dynamic, proven strategies for addressing potential problems in marketing, production, cross-cultural communication, and more.

The Product Manager’s Handbook examines current market-leading companies, the latest research findings, and evolving customer perceptions to provide you with the tools you need to design, produce, and market winning products—and beat the competition at every turn.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Management

402 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 1995

Reviews

[Aneesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for someone who is starting their career in Product Management. It's also a refresher and reminder of what Product Management is all about.

[Tuan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the middle chapters especially helpful in giving ideas on how to improve our processes and thinking framework when approaching product development. Of course, product management across different industries and product types would be different and not necessarily everything is relevant to a single company's requirement. Having said that, it tried its best in referencing different industries, from manufacturing to financial services, and I appreciated that.

[Nix · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview, although I don't think it quite lives up to the hype. If you don't know anything about product management, this is a great place to start. If you're an experienced PM, you probably won't get too much practical knowledge out of reading this. Software PMs are better off reading Dyer's 'Essentials' book, as it's at least got some usable templates etc (also, its a lot shorter!)

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took forever and was very redundant to b-school and life. That said, they call it the bible for a reason. It's a good compendium of resources and a way of thinking about doing business. If you want to be conversant in product management, read this book.

[Lori Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read book on product management for knowledge workers and entrepreneurs.

[Gary Hsia]

閱讀此書的朋友建議您至少做過PM相關的工作喔

[Adam Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good basic guide to product management.