The Product Manager's Handbook 4th Edition

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.

Part I: Bedrock Concepts
1. The Multifaceted Nature of Product Management Jobs and Structure
2. Leadership and Management Competencies
3. Business Competencies
4. Intelligence Gathering
5. Planning Frameworks
Part II: Upstream Product Management: Strategic New Products and Initiatives
6. Road Maps, Innovation, and the Fuzzy Front End
7. Creating—and Getting Approval for—Business Cases
8. Overseeing the New Product Projects
9. Formulating and Executing Launch Plans
Part III: Downstream Product Management: Ongoing Life - Cycle Management and Growth
10. Life-Cycle Management
11. Managing Brand Equity
12. Marketing Strategy and Go-To-Market Efforts
Part IV: Fine - Tuning
13. Establishing A Global Mindset
14. Goal and Performance Alignment 

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