Top Challenges for Product Management; Priorities for Product Management Leaders for 2015; Buyer Personas in Action

Jeff Lash

Top Challenges for Product Management
At SiriusDecisions, we’ve recently been conducting research into the top priorities of product management leaders. My blog post on the Top Challenges for Product Management in 2015 shares some of the high-level findings from our research, specifically around the top priority areas for product management leaders as well as the specific skills they are looking to develop in their teams in 2015.

We’ll be sharing more results from the survey in the “Priorities for Product Management Leaders for 2015” webcast. The webcast will be held on Wednesday, November 19, 2014 at 11am ET and is free to attend. In addition to sharing survey results, we will also provide examples of frameworks, models and research that can help product management leaders address these priorities more efficiently and effectively. Learn more about the webcast and register to reserve your spot.

Buyer Personas in Action
There are a lot of great posts on the SiriusDecisions blog, though I wanted to highlight one recent post by my colleague Julian Archer because it is particularly relevant to product marketers and product managers. His post — SiriusDecisions EMEA Summit 2014: Buyer Personas in Action — summarizes presentations by three of our clients at our recent SiriusDecisions EMEA Summit where they showcased examples of how they have leveraged buyer personas to transform their businesses. Personas are being used much more commonly by product managers, though often I see teams developing user personas — not buyer personas — and using them only for product development purposes. Julian’s summary shows three great examples of how buyer personas can be leveraged across the organization to align functions and improve business performance.

What’s Hot on Twitter
Here are a few of my tweets that have generated the most interest over the past few weeks; to get these in real-time, follow me at @jefflash: