Brian Lawley Expert Product Management

Brian Lawley Expert Product Management - As the name might suggest, this book is aimed at providing techniques and guidance in the realm of Product Management. Author Brian Lawley is well-placed to consider himself something of an expert in this field too, as he owns the 280 Group, a Product Management consulting, training and services company, and is Chair of the very active Silicon Valley Product Management association. Armed with these credentials and a vast experience in technology companies, Lawley cherry-picks a few key facets of the role and puts them under the microscope, providing valuable insight for the rookie and and a healthy reminder for the die-hard product management professional.

Commendably, Lawley's approach is to keep things pretty simple, to spell out the goal of each section, and to talk the reader through each stage. Anyone new to the role will appreciate this as it provides a sensible context, but even those with some experience already will happily tolerate the tutor-style approach as it helps focus attention on the ' meat' of the chapter.

The chapters themselves are divided by PM topic. I have to admit here feeling a little underwhelmed by the lack of ground covered; four key topics are discussed (roadmaps, beta programs, launches and review programs), which is a little thin, (not unlike the book itself which is an extremely modest 90 pages or so) and suggests money will be demanded for the likely Volume 2 (and 3) that may fill the obvious vacuum. Of course that's only guess, nonetheless we find ourselves none the wiser after reading the book about important topics of the day such as Sales Education, Process and Enablement, Evangelism and Communication, Product Retirement, P&L, KPI's, Agile Methods and several others. This doesn't make what the book says any less valuable, but it might indicate that there is more to come. I for one would expect any further efforts to be equally useful.

Perhaps a couple of specific examples where Lawley's neat presentation style and peerless industry insight really prove the value of this book include the section on roadmap creation, where an 8 step process and some illustrations of'types of roadmap'were a real eye-opener in terms of both political positioning and operational best-practice; and also on the Beta programs, again the profile of the product and how it shapes the volume (and drop-out rate) of a market sample, was keenly observed and resonated very clearly with personal experience. I think there is a nugget of wisdom buried on every page and found myself nodding sagely and taken aback by raw insight in equal measures.

Lawley is an industry guru, of this there is no doubt. He sits up there with the leaders at Pragmatic Marketing, another PM and training organization. The discipline and scientific approach being proposed here is real-world based, sensible, pragmatic, but has a good level of formula and process about it too. The role of PM needs to be flexible enough to handle the needs of a variety of stakeholders, and yet be sufficiently process driven as to establish credibility, transparency and auditability, just as any strategic business process should. Lawley helpfully prescribes some real sense in achieving that.