Thanks for the comments. Whatever I said to Paul, I’ll say to you.

http://onproductmanagement.wordpress.com/2007/06/21/if-were-so-smart/#comment-9

Congrats again on release 1.0.

Second, the name of the CPM’s blog is “The CRANKY Product Manager”, not the “I-Love-Everyone-And-Everything Product Manager.” It’s a humor blog, taken from a fictional, yet based in reality, perspective. There is more humor in conflict than in harmony. Thus, expect the CPM to continue to bitch and moan more than love and praise.

Also, keep in mind that the CPM is the fictional alter ego of a mild-mannered, real-world product management professional who does indeed attempt to fix thing, and actually does have excellent relationships with developers.

Thanks for the comment. I wasn’t picking on you or your blog, so no offense intended. In fact, I read your blog and like it. It’s in our Blog Roll. I was just using those two postings (yours and CrankyPM’s) as examples of some of the complaining I’ve been hearing in the PM community.

I agree, it’s OK to vent, which is certainly what I was doing in my post, but I guess the parallels in the PM community with my previous experience as a technical writer were a bit to close to each other.

So, thanks for the comment, and keep up the fight!

Saeed

Long Answer: Saeed, there is a difference between whining and an occasional healthy vent. If you perused the rest of the site, and even that particular post, it is all about how to work with other groups by understanding their motivations.

So, while no, it may not be “news” that these groups act differently than Product Management, I do believe that it is important to discuss the implications of those differences. These statements you’re hearing are not just PM’s proselytizing the cult of the complainer. They’re frustrations because the PM wants to move the company FASTER and other functional groups resist due to their motivation not being aligned with the company (Sales people want to slam and bam w/o building relationships, Developers wanting to work a feature b/c it is “cool” not b/c it solves a problem).

So while the sales person may make more money (I’m fine w/ that, my payoff comes at the end w/ stock), and the Developer may have more influence (…for now, most startups begin as engineering driven companies - the CEO brings in Product Management when they realize that they’ve gone as far as they can on cool tech alone…), Product Management is where the success or failure of the company will begin.

Last, you presented the options of: fix it, move on, or complain about it on your blog. It’s wrong to present those as exclusive choices. I address these problems every day in my role, and still blog about them.

Something that every PM will experience is there happy fun collaborative time and there is kick ass and take names time. The latter creates friction in the machine. Friction creates heat, and heat must be vented or the PM will burn out. You can do it over a beer or a blog, either is fine. So long as you don’t let it define you, it’s healthy.