Comments on: The Biggest Professional Mistake I Ever Made As A Product Manager, Part 2

By: Great Apologies Product Managers Can Learn From. (Plus, One Of My Own.) | Product Management Meets Pop Culture

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:15:48 +0000

[...] we all know, I have a spotty record when it comes to customer apologies. Early last week, I was given a new opportunity apologize to [...]

By: DB

DB — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:29:47 +0000

Do you have any examples of emails that might have worked better?

By: Jacquelien Li

Jacquelien Li — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:52:25 +0000

Thanks for the story – I agree emails need to be crafted ever-so-carefully when dealing with end users (or even partners!) of your software…you never know how they would interpret it!

By: Christopher Cummings

Christopher Cummings — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:17:51 +0000

@Tom – That’s excellent advice. I remember at the time, the impulse was to FIX THINGS RIGHT NOW. And even though the email was reviewed, it wasn’t necessarily read by a calm, impartial third party.

@Saeed – One thing I definitely impress now upon my teams (which, I guess, is lesson #7, after Tom’s lesson above) is to tell me when I’m being too adventurous. Engineering Manager got particularly good at that, after this incident–and I appreciated that very much.

By: Tom Grant

Tom Grant — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:32:21 +0000

In high-stress situations like this, always, always have someone else read the e-mail. And then walk away from it for at least an hour.

Re. the “bore you with the details” flap, were they angry because they felt belittled, or because people wanted some idea what happened, even if they don’t really understand it?

But, honestly, at least one user deserves belittling. And he doesn’t seem to mind it:

http://www.theheretech.com/2009/06/the-heretech-podcast-episode-8.html

By: am1019

am1019 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:33:53 +0000

Lessons from a Product Management disaster: http://bit.ly/3wMeZY

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: Engineering Manager

Engineering Manager — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:44:30 +0000

Saed-
A QA team was a luxury we didn’t have. As I recall, the lead developer made a small, last minute, “harmless” change and didn’t fully test afterwords. Just a small difference between equals and not equals.
Chris didn’t mention that not only was the lead developer in Brazil, but the company was closed the week between Christmas and New Year’s and everyone was on vacation. Getting in touch with the legal staff was not easy.
I’m not sure why I decided to check my work email late that Saturday night, but I still remember the horror I felt at seeing thousands of emails, each announcing a different winner.
While there were certainly errors made as Chris pointed out, there were things we got right as well. We quickly got in contact with the right people, made a decision as to how to respond, and fixed the broken software to prevent a recurrence. All within 12 hours with our staff dispersed around the globe.

By: Saeed Khan

Saeed Khan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:20:01 +0000

Chris,

Good story. Thanks for sharing. Maybe I missed it, but what could the lead developer have done to stop the error? That doesn’t look like something anyone would have predicted, except maybe the QA team.

By: Gregory Y

Gregory Y — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:59:17 +0000

Thank you for sharing. Very educational. I will keep the link to this post close by, just in case.

By: chriscummings01

chriscummings01 — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:53:29 +0000

The Biggest Professional Mistake I Ever Made As A Product Manager, Part 2 - The thrilling conclusion #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/1CTMpj

This comment was originally posted on Twitter