The Product Manager's Desk Reference

The Product Manager's Desk Reference is a comprehensive reference for the product management process, useful for anyone who works in product management and product marketing.

The PMDR's The Product Master Plan is the 'plan of record', considered an anchor, an archive, and a point of reference for people who may come and go. The chapters on Leadership, Cross-Functional Teams, and Decision-Making are well-presented. Haines offers valuable guidance about finance for product managers who have no formal training in this discipline.

The second module, Making the Market Your Primary Focus, includes discussion of Industry & Competitive Analysis, Segmentation, Forecasting, and Strategic Planning, with clear explanation and practical tools such as The Customer Visit Plan Template in the segmentation chapter.

The third module's sections on The Start of the Product's Journey and the New Product Development Process are practical. The Business Case chapter and the Marketing Plan for the Product are well-organized and applicable.

The fourth module, Continuing the Product Journey: Post-Launch Product Management, considers what happens after the product is in the market. Haines offers auditing techniques after the launch, as well as a logical way to 'run the business of the product'. These tools enable re-strategizing, re-planning, and overall financial and market optimization. The chapter on Life Cycle Product Portfolio Management considers products as investments, and efficient ways to evaluate how products contribute to the business, across individual life cycles. Haines also offers practical guidance for product discontinuation.

The end of each chapter includes a section called Raise Your Product Management Experience Quotient, offering helpful tips and tools for product mangers. The book is easy-to-read, accessible, and well-organized. This is a worthwhile reference for anyone in product management or product marketing.

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There are some books that are destined to become classics in their field. The Product Manager's Desk Reference by Steven Haines is one of those books. Anyone working not just in Product Management but also Marketing and Business Development, should take the time (and it is a hefty volume of 700 pages!) to read and absorb the comprehensive body of knowledge that Steven has organized around Product Management. If that sounds too daunting, be reassured by the fact that this is a reference book as well, so specific topics can be accessed easily without reading the entire book.

Steven demonstrates his vast knowledge of the true scope of the Product Manager's role. After explaining the basics in the first module that goes through the Foundational Elements of Product Management, the Desk Reference then explains the myriad details that position the Product Manager as the end to end owner of the business. Starting with the market analysis of the industry and competition, he then moves onto the fundamental elements of the role by teaching customer need analysis, market segmentation, forecasting and product planning. However he doesn't forget that a Product Manager needs to be the champion who can keep the process moving along with the Product Development team as well as being able to persuasively argue the business case to management to justify the product investment.

In particular, I appreciated that he sees the Marketing function as intricately linked to the Product with the Marketing Plan and details of the Launch synchronized together with the Communications Team and Sales Channels. In Module Four, he ups the ante with a clear-eyed explanation of auditing the launch results as input to running the business and going through the details of the entire lifecycle of Product Portfolio management, including End of Life.

The book has accessible Executive Summaries at the start of each chapter as well as easy to read diagrams and charts and a section at the end of each chapter called PMEQ that are a series of questions and suggestions for raising a Product Manager's Product Management Experience Quotient. Finally, there are two modules at the end about how to be professional and develop your career as a Product Manager and how to develop your employees, if you manage Product Managers. Taking this advice together with the last module, which is a Toolbox for Product Managers, leaves the reader with a full compliment of tools to successfully and methodically manage products, whatever the industry. As an endnote, I liked the extensive glossary, references and resources section, bibliography and comprehensive index.

This is the type of book that you will want to pick up often to check against an idea, template or list, so don't be surprised if it becomes dog eared as you find pages that you will want to get to quickly over and over again. This comprehensive guide should appeal to both neophyte product managers and those with experience, who just need to check a particular area or topic.

Amanda Noz

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Steven Haines has does an amazing job of providing a resource that is useful to Product Managers regardless of experience level. The novice Product Manager would benefit from reading the book cover to cover to get a good understanding of what Product Management is about, where the experienced Product Manager can use it truly as a desk reference to get into the details when needed.

With every company defining Product Management differently, Product Managers often end up being the catch all. Steven has done an excellent job of bringing a standard definition of the roles and responsibilities of this "accidental profession" to the industry, and provided a path along with tools to improve your skills within the product management profession.

Short Answer: Buy this book and use it as the valuable resource it is.

Brian Weber
Product Manager
Thomson Reuters