by Mark Kromer

Hey, folks, I may only be able to blog here 1-2 times a month it would like at this time, based on my new job, back with Microsoft.

But something came up the other day that I saw a lot from my first role as product manager with Microsoft. I and my colleagues referred to it as “The Smartest Guy in the Room Syndrome”.

What that refers to is that in companies like Microsoft and other very competitive, very strong technology companies, only the best are hired and only the best survive. Most of these employees came from schools or other companies where they were usually the smartest guy in the room. But when they come into Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc., they are now just a dime-a-dozen and end up competing with their peers to be the smartest guy (or gal) in the room.

It is how this manifests itself in the company’s products that I find interesting. Apple does probably the best job of sticking to consumer and customer expectations, requirements and market trends. In fact, Apple tends to lead or make the trends. Microsoft, Oracle, etc. tned to be laggards. And sometimes their products (i.e. Windows Vista) make people scratch their heads and say, “what were they thinking”?

Is ”The Smartest Guy in the Room” syndrome the cause of some of the products we see like operating systems or mobile phones or laptops that make folks with average technical compentencies quickly hit the wall? Is it because the smartest guys in the room had no trouble testing, deploying, configuring and using these products, yet they were not sufficiently measuring these products with the guys & gals who are not on the same technical competency level?

Sorry, but it beats me. But my point is this: this is where the product manager must step in & step up. It is very likely you will not be the most popular person with these technical gurus. But you will the war by winning these battles. Product managers must protect and play the part of the product owner and end-users and shield that persona from the smartest guys in the room.

Ensure that the test cases, use cases and requirements are met without requiring that your target personas have a PhD or can write Java code in their sleep. Without product managers as that buffer,  will we all suffer through many more Windows Vistas?

by Mark Kromer

I had a few thoughts that I wanted to capture here @ TechProdo about product management, which I did for the past 6 years. As I now move into a field-based role in technology pre-sales, I am struck by how much these activities overlapped, particularly when I was a PM with Microsoft. Except, of course, I am now directly compensated for the pre-sales efforts!

That is, working with customers & prospects to describe roadmap, business value and propose solutions. Perform assessments, requirements analysis and ensure satisfaction with the products.

To me, a main difference is that (beyond the direct revenue responsibilities in sales) the product manager is responsible for the roadmap and must perform the analysis on the requirements and then make the tough decisions on backlogs and release mapping. The rest of the cycle is where I really enjoyed working with development, particularly Agile Scrum teams and bringing the product to market.

My apologies for not blogging here for awhile. I am taking a break from my product management ways and have moved into a field-based pre-sales role as a data platform technology specialist with Microsoft. Since I left Oracle, it’s been several weeks of transition and re-learning Microsoft technologies again, so I’ve been very busy, as you can imagine.

Len has recently started a new position, still in product management, with Comcast here in Philly. So I am hopefully that he will be able to start getting back on line to keep our technology product management community alive, well & on-going here @ TechProdo.

I do intend to continue to check-in, post, comment, etc. when I can. But I am also maintaining several other blogs now that take my time away from TechProdo and also moves me away from my concentration on agile product management, which is what I focused on with Oracle and TechProdo previously.

Best regards, Mark Kromer