Oh, it’s the end of the year? That can only mean one thing: A top 10 list of my favorite product management posts of the year!

Actually, let’s do a top 12 — one for each month — which, of course, will only scratch the surface of the PM wisdom percolating throughout the web, but should provide some great reading.

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They’re coming to you with an idea. Ungallant to reject it, right?

As product managers, we’re the Grand Central stations of ideas: We don’t necessarily originate all the ideas for the product, but all ideas should route through us on the way to their final destination. Some ideas go to production, some to the backlog, some back to the drawing board, and others to shallow graves.

Unfortunately, killing off bad ideas isn’t always an easy thing…

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Michael Ray Hopkin wrote recently about the importance of capturing ideas:

Ideas are the fuel for great products. [...] The more ideas you capture the more likely you are to get the perfect new product or feature. Many times ideas will seem silly or absolutely unobtainable; write them down anyway. Over time circumstances change, technology improves and opportunities appear that you do not expect.

The conversation only lightly touched on the mechanics of capturing ideas, and knowingly avoided the sometimes difficult and awkward process of sorting ideas, so I thought we’d talk about the former today and the latter next time.

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A new Product Manager finds a note and three envelopes on his desk. The note is from his predecessor, and it says, “I’ve left you three envelopes. If you encounter a problem you can’t resolve, open one of the envelopes…”

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Yesterday: We recapped the classic WKRP episode “Turkeys Away”, where the bumbling station manager comes up with a Thanksgiving Day promotion involving live turkeys, and a helicopter.

Today: We’ll use that story recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: Micromanagement, and its implications for product managers.

People being micromanaged can improve their situations.
Usually, before turkeys start crashing to the ground like bags of wet cement.

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