The Product Manager's Handbook

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