What is a Product Manager? (And why hiring one can save you a lot of money and headaches)

In the tech world, the role of Product Manager (PM) is well known within any successful software company. But outside the tech world, I frequently get blank stares when I tell people I am a PM. So what does a PM really do? And why are they useful? And why would using one for your technology projects save you time and money? 

 At a high level, a good PM should heavily guide the vision of the company’s products using input from customers and management. Or, if you are an organization working with a PM on building a website or technology product, the PM should work with you to translate your vision into what actually gets built. 

The relationship piece is really the key. A PM is the glue between the customer and the engineer. 

They can also play an important role as traffic control — managing all the different stakeholders (client services, sales, marketing, engineering) that want to have input on a project — to keep things moving. 

Imagine you want to start a fashion line and had no experience designing clothing. You want the clothes to be a made a certain quality and embody a certain style. You wouldn’t go to a clothing manufacturer and say “make me some clothes that are edgy, cool and high quality.” 

Who knows what you’d end up with? So yes, you’d hire a designer to design the individual clothing pieces. But you’d also make sure that you had someone who could work with you to make sure that the designer delivered what it is that you were expecting. You’d also need help working with the manufacturer, distributors, and retailers to ensure that your clothing was manufactured properly and handed off to the proper channels to make sure it could be sold. 

It’s the same with technology. 

Honestly, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen folks try to go it alone under the assumption they can simply work directly to the developers to build what they want. Then they are disappointed in the end when there is a communications breakdown and tons of time and money are wasted going back and trying to fix things (and this is no dig on engineers, but it simply takes a lot of work that is not programming related to translate concepts and vision into technical specs or even wireframes). 

It’s much easier and more cost effective to build something right the first time, then try to change it later. 

A solid PM should help you both create your vision for what you want to build, and work with the developers to make sure they deliver what you want. 

–Angie

Top 5 Product Management Tools for under $100

Below are my top five favorite PM tools. With these you should be able to run an amazing product development process on a start-up budget. As a bonus, all of these tools are very user friendly so don’t worry if you’re not very technical. 

5. Snagit
Great for quick design work or page manipulations. Take quick screen captures and use their really solid editing tools to manipulate existing designs.
Price: 30-day free trial then $49.95 per license.

4. Confluence Wiki or Google Docs
Confluence has a nice wiki for writing tech requirements, sharing wireframes, product roadmap, etc. Or, if you want to go even cheaper you can honestly get by just using google docs. The benefit to a wiki, in my experience, is that it’s a little easier to keep things organized and link back and forth to things, but honestly, you won’t lose much going with google docs. I have also heard that Wiki Spaces is a nice free wiki option, but I’ve never used it and can’t vouch for it yet.
Price: For Confluence, if you host it yourself (which I admit I have never done), you can get it for $10 for 10 users (if you want them to host it it gets expensive). Or, Google Docs is free obviously.

3.  Usertesting.com
Such a great way to get lightening fast feedback on new features before you release them. This is probably the most expensive tool on the list, but if you are super pressed for time, but don’t want to launch a crap feature set, it can be a lifesaver.
Price: Each user test is $39.

2. Balsamiq Mock-Ups
Awesome tool for wireframes. Super easy to learn and use, even for the super technically inept.
Price: 7-day free trial then $79 per license.

1. Pivotal Tracker or Jira
Both are great project management and bug tracking software. I’ve heard Pivotal Tracker is used currently by many hot new start-ups (Airbnb, Loosecubes, Vayable, etc.). And it’s totally free. Jira is less pretty,  but has a lot more functionality and is more flexible. But it also costs a bit more. If you have no budget, go for the former, if you have a little to spare, go with the latter.
Price: Pivotal tracker is free (but not sure for how long…), Jira is $10/mo for 10 users if you host it yourself (and considerably more expensive if you use their hosted version).

–Angie

The Death of the 9 to 5

The 9am to 5pm work day is dead. 

I don't know a single person that has those hours anymore (who is not working part-time).

Everyone I know works to at least 6:30pm to 7:00pm (which is now considered coming home on the early side), and many have to be at the office well before 9:00am.

And that is sad.

Why is it sad? Well, it's not really, unless you have young children. Then it's really sad.

Why? Because the desecration of the 8 hour work day means that it is now ridiculously hard for us to see our young children -- and I mean see them AT ALL -- when they are awake.

Most babies and toddlers go to bed between 6:30pm and 8:00pm and get up between 6:00am and 7:30am. So if you are working 8:00am to 7:00pm you have a maximum of 2.5 hours a day with your child. And those are the lucky parents. And if you factor in a commute, which most people have to do, many parents don't get to see their kids for more than an hour each day, if at all.

And that really saddens me.

It seems clear as a society, we've chosen to value productivity and ambition over the strength of our families.

And it's not the fault of parents. We need to provide for our families. And no one wants to be the one person at work who leaves at 5:00pm or even 6:00pm. Or if you do, than you have to be prepared to sacrifice an upward career trajectory.

We are the first generation where the choice between career and family has been so stark.

It's not fair to this generation of kids, who will grow up only seeing their parents on weekends. And it's not fair to us as parents, who will miss the joy of watching our kids grow up, and the valuable role of being our children's primary caregiver.

Baby Gear Recommendations

When I was pregnant and setting up my nursery, I found it really difficult to figure out what to buy. I remember spending hours researching which car seat to get.

Some of my mom friends sent me spreadsheets or emails full of recommendations that were really helpful. In turn, I have put my list of baby gear recommendations here.

Hope it helps some of you!

Mommyland

This blog has followed me through many stages of my life. It's been with my for most of my adult life. As a wise woman once said: "You can have everything in life, but only sequentially."

I'm very aware that my life progresses in stages. I've been through the try-to-change-the-world-and-become-somewhat-disillusioned stage. Then came the-traveling-and-exploring-this-crazy-world-and-myself-is-all-I-want-to-be-doing stage. Then came the I-must-make-my-mark-before-I-get-old-and-settle-down stage. And recently, I went through the must-find-a-good-life-partner-and-cultivate-a-healthy-relationship stage. And right now, as the title suggests, I'm really heavily focused on being a new mom.

I mean, I still have a lot of other things going on (some have said too many), but being a mom is what is occupying the majority of my head space.

My son is a year old now, and I wish I had had more energy to blog some of my experiences in the first year. But I figure it's never to late to begin. This shift in priorities also coincides with a move to the East Coast for my husband's job. We are now in Boston. Time to update the mast head!

Why Women Entrepreneurs Get Funded Less

I just wanted to share some really interesting findings from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research out of Stanford about why women entrepreneurs have a tougher time getting funded than their male counterparts.

Basically, they found that:

1) Social capital and network ties were even more important to women than men : Many successful women entrepreneurs have strong ties to a man that gives them legitimacy as opposed to successful men that tend to have larger, but weaker network ties. There was also some discussion on this panel I saw recently at an Astia conference that women tend to have 2 different networks -- one social, one professional -- while men tend to integrate their social and professional networks much more easily.

2) If a woman has a technical degree then that levels the playing field: Women technicians have a much easier time getting their ventures funded. But clearly there is work to do in order to build a pipeline of technical women leaders. Sep and I are still working away to do our part through CodeEd. Looks like we'll be expanding into two more schools/program NYC and also found two great teachers to start teaching a program in San Francisco in the spring.

CNN Piece on CodeEd

CodeEd in Business Week and on Mashable

Check out this piece in Business Week on our new program CodeEd, which teaches middle school girls from underserved communities computer science.

We also got a nice write-up on Mashable.

We’re getting a lot of great feedback that there is a real need this type of program. So we’re currently trying to figure out how to reach as many girls as possible in New York and hopefully beyond. By the spring, we’ll be 3 NYC schools and programs. We’ll be teaching more classes at Girls Prep, Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn and also working with a program called TEAK.

We're currently looking for volunteer teachers to help pair-teach a 5 week, 1 hour/week Introduction to HTML class in the Spring of 2011. If you know anyone who might be interested, I'd love to talk with them.

Girls and Computer Science

There is a really interesting article in the New York Times today on why their are so few women in technology and engineering.

Girls begin to turn away from math and science in elementary school, because of discouragement from parents, underresourced teachers and their own lack of interest and exposure, according to a recent report by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Computer Science Teachers Association.

Just 1 percent of girls taking the SAT in 2009 said they wanted to major in computer or information sciences, compared with 5 percent of boys, according to the College Board.

Only 18 percent of college students graduating with computer science degrees in 2008 were women, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.

One reason is that engineering has a serious image problem, many women in the field say.

“There’s a really strong image of what a computer scientist is — male, skinny, no social life, eats junk food, plays video games, likes science fiction,” says Sapna Cheryan, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington who has researched why few women choose computer-science careers. “It makes it hard for people who don’t fit that image to think of it as an option for them.”

This is exactly why Sep and I are starting CodeEd, a program that teaches low-income middle school aged girls computer science. We launch our pilot program in less than a month at an all girls Charter School on the lower east side of Manhattan.

We're really excited to get into the classroom and start trying to break the cycle described above.

Time to Share Work and Family Burdens Equally

Great to see this article in the USA Today about how the economics of marriage have become increasingly beneficial for men because women in the workplace have become more "equal market producers."

It's something I've been thinking about a lot. Feminist gains have gotten us more equality in the labor market (thank you past generations), but we've added the economic burden to our lives without displacing any of our previous household or family burdens (with the possible exception of access to birth control which has helped us keep our families to a more manageable size).

Last September, Maureen Dowd wrote a nice article about women being unhappier due to their increasingly "crowded" lives and more demands being placed on them.

So the solution seems pretty clear. We took on some of the man's economic burden which used to be his alone. Now men need to take on some of the household and family burden that used to be women's alone. It's what the next wave of feminism should be about, and it's a final step to more sustained equality.

If we can better share the responsibility for house and family with our husbands, then perhaps we can actually stay in the labor market and go on to become CEOs and Senators without trying to do it all and then feeling like a failure when we realize we can't and we have to choose family or career. And most of us end of choosing family because that is still our burden to carry alone. If children have issues, the mother is still to blame.

My father stayed home with me from ages 4-8 while my mother worked and it was an incredibly important period for me. I was able to bond with my dad in a way that most other girls my age don't get to, and he continues to be an incredibly important part of my life. Moreover, both of my parents were able to have successful careers as lawyers (although society did make it hard for my dad to reenter the labor market after being a stay at home dad even though he had a law degree).

Anyhow, I know from experience that the career-family burden can be shared effectively and what results are more happy, fulfilled parents and children.

New York Craigslist

I've had two really crazy things happen to while using New York Craigslist.

The first happened about 2 months ago while we were still in San Francisco just browsing for New York apartments on Craigslist. I found a cute two bedroom in the West Village that looked perfect. I emailed them asking them to contact me if it was still available when we got out there in about a week. I immediately get this email back saying:

Angie!!!?! It's jamie from Wes! Is this you?!

It turns out it was my friend Jamie Wong from Wesleyan. She had just moved to San Francisco and was looking for someone to rent her place! While we ended up deciding to get a one bedroom instead, Jamie and I were able to reconnect a bunch over the past couple months which has been a lot of fun.

But it doesn't end there.

Fast forward 2 months. We were now furnishing our new place, and decided to look on craigslist again. I saw this glass coffee table I liked, so I sent off an email inquiring about it. I got this one back:

Are you serious?

I am sure Heather and I can work something out with you guys!!

So funny-we have got to stop running into each other like this-

It was my friend Heather's husband Matt, both of whom I also went to Wesleyan with and had already coincidentally bumped into them the weekend before when we got on the train to go to a wedding in the Hamptons.

I thought this city was supposed to be so big and chaotic!! It's like a small town for crying out loud. No one would even believe these coincidences if they were written in a script.

I am also seriously starting to wonder if the only people who use craigslist in the city went to Wesleyan. Either way though, it's been a pretty reassuring introduction to New York.

Ask Randoms

From the creator of Wedding Turtle comes the latest and greatest question/answer site:

http://www.askrandoms.com

Check it out!

Obama Does It Again

"We did not come here to fear the future, we came here to shape it." -- Barack Obama, September 9, 2009.

God he's good.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I encourage you to watch his whole speech on health care. I laughed, cheered, and even teared up a little at the end. If you don't have time watch the whole thing, watch from 23:75 to 31:53 where he eloquently, yet simply, explains the importance of the public plan. Also, watch 38:30 to 39:00 where he socks it to the Republicans. Now I'm no lip reader, but at 38:54 doesn't it seem like rising star Republican Paul Ryan (R-WI) says something like "That was a good point." I love it.

I have faith he'll get this thing done. The media loves drama, and Obama has a history of letting them spin a little but still bringing it home.

Pureed Wild Radish and Rutabaga

I recently coordinated a little volunteer expedition with a few friends pulling invasive species for Golden Gate Park's department out on Land's End. Land's End is near Ocean beach in San Francisco, and is absolutely gorgeous and a great place to go running or walking.

Anyhow, they had us pulling wild radish, which is an invasive species that take over the area and make it tough for the native species to thrive (there's a better definition here).

Some of the radishes we pulled up were really big (see picture of our friends Paul and Alex for size reference), so I decided to take a couple home to see if I could cook them up.

On my way out, one of the other volunteers said that if I managed to make anything decent I should email this woman Cynthia who had an invasive species cook book for recipes that include, for example, fennel or nasturcium which are invasive yet very tasty plants. Isn't that cool that someone actually wrote an invasive species cook book?!

Well, I went home, did some experimenting, and finally ended up making a nice little side dish out of those big bitter radishes. I emailed this woman Cynthia to let her know, but she never emailed me back, so I decided I'd post the recipe here. Maybe I should write a compet invasive species cook book. This could be my first recipe.

Anyhow, the wild radishes are really tough so you have to eat them cooked instead of raw. First I tried to roast them but they got really dry, so then I tried boiling them which worked much better. Also, like I mentioned, they are super bitter. I ended up having to add a rutabaga to the recipe to cut the bitterness. The radishes taste a lot like a mustardy rutabaga when boiled, so that worked out really nicely.

Here's the recipe:

Pureed Wild Radish and Rutabaga

• Peel and cut wild radishes into chunks
• Peel and cut equal parts rutabaga into chunks
• Boil radish and rutabaga together in a pot for about 15-20 minutes or until they are both very tender
• Add some milk, butter, salt and pepper to taste
• Blend with a mixer like you would mashed potatoes until creamy
• Serve as a side dish with meat or fish or anything really.
  

And here's a pictures of the finished dish. I should have taken it when it was plated and looking pretty, but you can get the idea.

It would be great to hear if anyone else out there has ever attempted to eat Wild Radish and what your recipe was.

Obama's Speech in Cairo

If you haven't seen Obama's speech in Cairo that he gave last weekend, definitely check it out. It's absolutely amazing.


Watch CBS Videos Online

I still can't believe what a relief it is to have Obama as our president.

I'm very proud of him for being so bold and strong regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also reminding us that Muslims and Muslim countries have played an important role in America's history and culture.

This speech is going to be one for the history books. Also, I believe this president will be viewed by history with the same reverence as we now view Lincoln.

Moving

People keep asking for an update. Before when I was super busy with work and life I felt I had a reason to slack. But now that I just quit my job, I guess I don't anymore. So here goes.

The big update is that we are finally getting our act together and moving to New York. We've been saying we're going move for about 6 months now and haven't made any progress, and apparently a few of our friends are even making bets on our timing (I think Maryam already won some money betting against our former claims we were moving in March).

But I quit my job two weeks ago so that was the first real tangible step. The next step is finding a place in NYC. We're thinking of trying to do a house swap for the first three months so we can get a sense of the city before committing, and we wouldn't have to deal with either renting out or selling our house in San Francisco. Plus Sep wants to come back in the Spring to teach a semester at Stanford so it will be nice to have our house back for that.

We're actually in New Jersey right now but we're not looking for places, we're going to Sep's 10-year college reunion at Princeton. Then, over the next few weeks, we have like 5 weddings and my parents and Aunt Lisa coming to visit for a week. We'll start really looking for a place in July/August.

So I thought I was going to be excited to be unemployed for a couple months before moving and finding a job in New York, but it actually makes me very uncomfortable! I don't like uncertainty and I really don't like not being super busy. I also didn't realize how much of my identity is wrapped up in my work and my career path. I think when I take breaks from work from now on, I need to be traveling so that it just feels like a temporary vacation instead of feeling like such a lofty transition. If I look at it objectively though, I know I'm super lucky to have this time off and I'm using it to do the things that make me really happy. Like spending more time with Sep, my family and friends, and also doing things like being in nature, getting more exercise, doing pottery, cooking, and reading a ton. So that has been really nice. I'm also looking into taking some computer science classes to get a little more technical and maybe also taking a Farsi class.

Anyhow, that's my update. I'm going to try to keep this a little more updated although I think I do a lot less political ranting than I used to. I do want to write some about my experiences cooking up an invasive species that we took out of Golden Gate park last weekend, walking Bay to Breakers, Maryam's wedding, and Emily's new baby, so those will be fun.

Also, if you're curious about the picture. That's me sitting here right now. Unemployed. In New Jersey. Sep is in the background. It's a crappy picture taken by my webcam, but I just think blog posts look better with pictures.

Speechless

Except to say that I feel so damn proud right now!

I thought this would be a good time to post one of my favorite photos from the 2004 Democratic Convention.


















p.s. I purposely said "I feel proud" in hopes of being prominently featured on Sep's website "We Feel Fine" which is reporting that since the election, people are "feeling proud" on blogs 8 times more often than usual.

My Election Day Conspiracy Theory

So I have to admit that I was one of those people who thought that for sure there would be at least one manufactured catastrophe like another anthrax scare or new Bin Laden video that would magically surface just before election day to instill tons of fear in Americans to vote Republican again.

But I am pleasantly surprised to say that election day is here and despite a few implicit connections and fear mongering throughout the campaign, it has been surprisingly clean.

I had been wondering how we got away so unscathed this year when I stumbled across this article this article on how Karl Rove recently predicted that Obama would win.

At first I wondered "Why in the heck would Rove say that??" It didn't make any sense to have a top Republican advisor conceding the race publicly during the final days of the election. That's when another conspiracy theory formed in my head. This one is entirely baseless, but kind of fun to imagine.

What if, Rove, known for his dirty tricks, went to McCain and said: "Okay McCain, you're 12 points down in PA and the economy is in the tank, were going to have to get down and dirty and fight back with the only weapon we have left: fear."

But McCain, who we know has at least some decency said back to Rove: "No way man. We're going to win this on merits and only a little ethical fear mongering (think William Ayers) or not at all."

Then Rove got all pissed off and stormed away to alert reporters that he thought McCain was going to lose.

It could have happened!

Either way, I was wrong in my cynicism and now I hope I'm wrong in my longstanding worry that this country was really going to have a hard time electing an African American.

Gobama! GO USA!

Best Wedding I've Ever Had

And the only wedding I've ever had of course... but I don't think I'm being biased in saying that it was the most incredible, magical evening and Sep and I were so happy and everyone around us seemed like they were having lots of fun.

We had great photographers and they posted the first professional photos on their blog but we won't get the rest for a couple weeks. Check them out. They are really nice.

Where have I been?

I've been busy.

1) Getting Married to Amazing Man in September: Sep Kamvar
2) New Job (and Career) at Cool Company: AngelPoints
3) Three Week Vacation/Pre-Wedding Honeymoon: Europe

I feel like that is a good update. It's got some meat in it.