More segments from the Q&A session I had with Matthew Smith — and shedding some light onto just exactly what made Matthew an outstanding runner-up to The Best Product Person of 2013.
Take a moment and congratulate this year’s runner-up to The Best Product Person of 2013: Matthew Smith. (tweet)
Looking Forward
> What trends do you see in product management? positive trends? any negative trends?
There is the obvious trends of “agile” and “lean” but I think, ultimately, they are just tools to help us build great products. The positive side of these trends is that the put the focus on customer feedback, and UX, and understanding behavioral trends. But the negative side of these trends is that people tend to put too much emphasis on the processes, instead of the output. Remember, your users dont care that you hit your sprints, they care that you are building something they want to use.
> How do you see product management evolving over the next 5 years?
I think the great product people in the next few years, are going to be people that are really experienced in three disciplines:
1) Traditional product management; determining what the company should build, the difficulty of building it, and the value of that effort
2) The user experience; understanding not only what to build, but how to design it so that people want to, and can, use it
3) The business impact; how does the business move forward by building it (i.e., you must understand the P&L)
More to Come
This year’s TBPP will be announced soon. 
And, don’t forget, take a moment and congratulate this year’s runner-up to The Best Product Person of 2013: Matthew Smith. (tweet)
Enjoy!
Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy
About ‘The Best Product Person’
The Best Product Person (TBPP) is the leading international award honoring excellence in Product Management. Established in 2010, TBPP is awarded annually in association with The Product Guy (https://tpgblog.com) and The Product Group (http://meetup.com/theproductgroup).
TBPP Recognizes 1 person each year, invites them to speak and share their knowledge and experience with the larger product community. The nominations can be submitted by anyone. And, if you are the first to submit the winning nominee, you too will be rewarded Over the course of the year, the various nominees are interviewed and the finalists narrowed down to: The Best Product Person of the year . The finalists are interviewed and evaluated for excellence in Product along the following lines… Becoming a Product Person, Your Product, Advice to Product People, and Future & Trends.
TBPP is both (1) the way the Product community gets together to recognize excellence amongst our ranks as well as (2) provide, to a large audience, insights into that excellence in a manner we can all learn from and leverage in our own Product journeys.
For more information about The Best Product Person award and past winners visit https://tpgblog.com/tbpp
About ‘The Product Group’
The Product Group is an opportunity for Product Managers, etc. to come together to meet, interact, and network. It’s an awesome way to meet fellow Product People in a laid-back, conversational environment within which sharing and learning can flourish and complement the knowledge base for all on a peer-to-peer basis. The NYC chapter of The Product Group meets the first Thursday of each month. If you are interested in a establishing chapter near you, please contact The Product Guy or The Product Group for more information. (https://tpgblog.com/theproductgroup/ )
The Product Guy 