One of my dream projects is to compare product management in the technology industry to similar jobs in other parts of the economy. For example, there are people with the job title "product manager" in the biomedical industry. How different is their work from a product manager at IBM or SAP? (I know a little about our cousins in other industries, but that's not the same as doing the research.) We also have the product ...

I know a lot of PMs cruise through some of the technology industry forums, such as Slashdot, for the occasional useful feedback about products. However, for products like Microsoft Office, you have to go where the less techie folks hang out. In that spirit, I thought the letters section for this post on Salon's technology blog was actually more interesting that the original post itself. The topic: Microsoft's plans to put Office in the cloud.

In the small corner of the blogosphere devoted to product management, you'll often find musings about the value of customer advisory boards (CABs), such as this post from the Cranky Product Manager. In my own experience, CABs are frustrating beasts, which is why PMs keep talking about how to handle them: Development teams know that they should have some regular contact with customers. However, they view regular contact as a luxury--particularly if CAB meetings turn ...