This is 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; and, 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 that show you how to manage each crucial step from conception to completion; and, practical checklists that 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.

In 1995, I was frustrated with the lack of resources available for a product manager. After conducting extensive research, and coupling it with my own experience, I wrote my first book, The Product Manager's Handbook. Since then I have written two more books (including one on Channels) and the original Product Manager's Handbook is now in its third edition with translations into several languages.

People often ask me what I do for a living now. Well, as an employee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I do two primary things. First, I teach on the Executive Education faculty (part of the Wisconsin School of Business). Second, I manage the curriculum of marketing courses for corporate managers and professionals, including design, development, marketing, teaching and staffing of the classes.

In my "extended" career, I write, consult and collaborate on a variety of topics with a special… Read more

This biography was provided by the author or their representative.