The Cranky Product Manager

Shameless Begging

Holy grande triple latte. The Cranky Product Manager has been nominated for a big-league award. And it is an award that requires that you be a humungous super genius, no lie. Totally.

Guess which one it is?

The CPM knows what you're thinking. It goes like this: "WOW, the CPM must have been invited to speak at this year's TED Conference."  Alas, you are incorrect.  For some reason TED did not deem the embittered rantings of a spat-upon, cynical product manager to be worthy of a speaking slot. Assholes.

Instead, the Cranky Product Manager has been nominated for a far more prestigious award: The ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 2008 in the IT Project Management Category.  And in case you are as ill-informed as the CPM, note that ComputerWeekly is based in the UK. 

Mind you, this is a big fucking deal. Oh shut up. The Cranky Product Manager sees you rolling your eyes and muttering to yourself "Oy vey. Yet another blogular awards scam. Some website invents a bunch of blog awards -- all a scheme to get nominated bloggers to link back to the award bestower's site with 'vote for me' posts."  

To which the Cranky Product Manager says, shut the hell up already. She knows the score. She's perfected the fine art of cynicism after all. But, shit, her self-esteem is in the toilet after the whole TED thing. And because she's never gotten an award related to her profession before, other than "Best Requirements Document" (an award that made her mother SO effing proud). 

An aside...  Lest you think the CPM's lack of amassed awards must mean she is not so great at her job, let her remind you that 1) She is a Product Management Goddess and no one does it as fantastically as she, ask anyone, and 2) She's not in Sales where they give you 4 or 5 awards a year if you manage to wipe your own ass without the help of your District Manager.  She's in Product Management, the land of no awards, ever.

Back to business.  To make a tedious story short, the Cranky PM is actually genuinely psyched to get nominated, even though it is not quite for a MacArthur. She is very vain yet highly insecure and pathetically craves the validation.  

So -- begging here -- stop yer eye rolling and go to the ComputerWeekly.com site and vote for The Cranky Product Manager.  You know you want to. Please?

Tell the Cranky Product Manager

The Cranky Product Manager is well aware that she is perhaps the lamest, most irresponsible blogger in any industrialized western nation. A post every six-to-eight weeks is pathetic, she knows.  She wouldn't stand for it and is surprised you do. 

Problem is, every time the Cranky PM is inspired to write about some shockingly numb-skullian situation at DysfunctoSoft she has to stop and think really hard - much harder than her lazy ass brain is accustomed to thinking - about how to best to disguise the story. All so no one would guess The Cranky Product Manager's real identity. 

And nothing kills the creative muse like worrying about being fired or losing all of one's friends. Or worse, having the paparazzi "out" her and pasting an unattractive candid photo on the cover of Product Manager Weekly. Yikes-o-rama.

So...  so, the Cranky Product Manager ask YOU for inspiration.  Have a ridiculous software or PM related story?  Write the CPM.  She'll help you tell the Product Management Universe of your tale of woe -- all with exactly your desired level of anonymity, bitterness and sarcasm.  Because it's easier to disguise someone else's pain than it is to hide your own.  Trust the CPM on this.

A Bit on Anonymity

The Cranky Product Manager wants to respond to the comments on her last post.

Maybe y'all are right.  Maybe the CPM's real-life alter ego could not be fired for keeping this here blog.  She thinks you're wrong, since her state is an "at-will employment state", which she understand means she can be canned at any time for any reason that doesn't have to do with discrimination.

But anyway, assume you're right and she can't be fired for keeping a blog.  That doesn't mean she's willing to risk being found out by her colleagues.

Even though the CPM's stories are fictional, well, think about it.  How would you feel if you found out one of your co-workers was the Cranky Product Manager?  Would you wonder if your latest gaffe was the inspiration for her most recent post?  Would you wonder if you were the inspiration behind the Asshole Product Manager? Or the Product Marketing Director who is a self-styled visionary?  Or what about Sally, the Spineless Release Manager?

Do you think the Cranky Product Manager's credibility and influence with developers, marketers, salespeople, and executives might be impacted?  That maybe her entire ability to get her job done would be gravely compromised?  And that her diminished job performance might lead to her eventual firing?

The Cranky PM thinks so. And thus she continues to remain anonymous and do her utmost to protect her identity, regardless of whether or not her company can officially fire her for having a blog.

She's back again

Cripes, it is a pain in the ass being an anonymous blogger.  One becomes constantly paranoid that her identity will be revealed, and that a pink slip and unemployment claims will be the end result.

Picture, if you will, the Cranky Product Manager doing a horrendously stupid thing at her real life job that -- if anyone was even paying the slightest bit of attention -- would surely have exposed her as the author of this here site.  Within 5 minutes of realizing this grave mis-step, the Cranky Product Manager blew this site away. No time to backup the site, except for a quick export of all posts. In desperation, she pressed *DELETE WEBLOG* and *poof* it was all gone.

Fortunately, it seems that no one was paying attention.  Perhaps it has blown over. Perhaps it is safe to come out of her cave again and breathe the fresh air of civilized society.  Perhaps the Cranky Product Manager can rebuild and venture in the blogosphere once more, but a little bit wiser this time.  OK, a lot wiser as she was an unbelievable idiot for letting this happen.

So the site is republished. Mostly.

Alas, all the photos on this blog -- including her marvelous logo image -- are gone.

And a bunch of links are effed up.  If you ever linked to a specific CPM post, you might want to redo your link. So sorry about that. 

And the site looks like crapola now, with all the missing images and the yucky plain green design.  It physically hurts the Cranky Product Manager to think of her site looking so freakin' disgusting.  Cripes again.

The CPM apologizes for her disappearance, especially to those who gave a s*&$. She gives a shout out to the folks at On Product Management for filing the equivalent of a missing persons report. And to the fine, upstanding individuals who emailed her, inquiring about the CPM's health and whereabouts.  Love to you all.  Kisses. Every one of you.

Stay tuned for the next post, being slaved over this second.  It's called How to Gain the Respect of Development in 10 Easy Steps. You'll love it.  Swear to Cheesus. Unlike her usual bitch-and-moan posts, the Cranky Product Manager promises that this post will actually be useful.

See you soon. Promise. And again, apologies.

Someone Has Been Spying on The Cranky Product Manager

The Cranky PM has become obsessed with the TV show 30 Rock.

She is convinced that Tina Fey is spying on her and translating her dysfunctional software life into the sexier setting of televised sketch comedy -- especially the parts where Fey's alter-ego, Liz Lemon, coordinates and cajoles a bunch of crazy nerds, egocentric stars, and micromanaging executives into producing a worthy product each week.

The similarities don't end there. Both the CPM and LL are known for always having food stuck in their hair, for being unskilled in the way of high heeled shoes, and for having a sporadic-at-best relationship with makeup. Even their jean-centric workday wardrobes* and "I'm so smart" glasses are essentially the same.

Granted, the resemblance between the CPM and Tiny Fey would be even stronger if the Cranky Product Manager were funny, beautiful, famous, funny, rich, funny, and had access to a Star Trek-style pushup bra.   

...OK, maybe there's not much of a resemblance after all.

* But unlike LL, you won't catch the Cranky Product Manager wearing low-cut tops in the office. What did you think? That she was one of those Marketing Bimbos who are always trying to bed the CEO?

5 Things

2. Last time the Cranky Product Manager worked out: August 2006, for an organized 30 mile bike ride.  Unless you count a heart attack-inducing, 20-minute-long, all-out sprint in the Philadelphia airport.

3. Number of hours the Cranky Product Manager worked this week: 81, if you count the mandatory partying at kickoff.

4. Frequent Flyer status of the Cranky Product Manager: United Premier Executive. 42 segments flown last year.  Still have not successfully used a single upgrade coupon.

5. Origins of the Cranky Product Manager: American. More specifically, the East Coast.  Can't you tell?  You don't get this cranky if you grow up in the sunshine. 

Oy. The Cranky Product Manager apologizes. What a catatonic, stupefying list. So boring.  But that is the life of the Cranky Product Manager. Boring, but with some worrying about her effed-in-the-head cyberstalker.

She's BACK (& New Rules)

Yo, yo, yo!  The Cranky Product Manager regrets to inform you that she is BACK. Just in case you don't have enough software business-related crankiness and bitchitude in your life already, the CPM is here to up your weekly (or more realistically, biweekly) quotient.

You might be wondering, "Why oh why did the Cranky Product Manager disappear for weeks and weeks and weeks?  Wherever did she go?"

Good question. No, she was not laid up in the hospital as the victim of vicious bedbug attacks. Nor was she detained in Guatanamo Bay for smuggling lip gloss onboard a flight.  Alas, no. Nothing quite as fun as that.

Instead, she was dealing with her freakin' cyberstalker. What a fantastic time that was. But don't you worry your pretty little craniums (crania?), that situation has been resolved without bloodshed or anyone losing their weekly paychecks. Maybe, one day, once she recovers from the trauma, she'll relate the story.

Anywho, the situation made this blog's author realize that some changes are needed around here in order to protect the author's privacy, family, and career. In short, she realized she needs to be extremely explicit and take evasive measures.

So, people, huddle up. Here's the deal:

1. The Cranky Product Manager is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER that is loosely based on reality. Yes, her experiences and observations are based on the accumulated real-world experiences and observations of a real-life former software product manager/developer/consultant who has been doing this "software product" thing for a very long time for many companies.  But that doesn't mean that even MOST of what you read here is actually true.
2. Just to reiterate point #1, the Cranky Product Manager character is far more outspoken, obnoxious, and bitter than her real-life author. The Cranky Product Manager is so pissed off that you should never put her in front of a customer because she would totally bitchslap the next one who mentions the words "social networking."  Rest assured, the real-world author is a bit more refined, at least on the surface.


3. The company that the Cranky Product Manager works at -- let's call it "DysfunctoSoft" -- is a FICTIONAL COMPANY rife with dysfunctional FICTIONAL characters, processes, and behaviors, yet somehow has a bunch of customers and occasionally manages to ship product.  The real-life author does not work at this company. This company is "the worst of the worst" that the author has ever experienced or ever heard about.  You'll be introduced to DysfunctoSoft's truly awesome management team, product development staff, and marketing mavens in due time.
4. Don't bother trying to find out the Cranky Product Manager's true identity. Just take it for granted that ANY detail of her persona that might possibly provide clues as to who she is in real life has been disguised / changed to protect her anonymity. FOR EXAMPLE, the Cranky Product Manager character is an in-the-trenches product manager, because that's where all the humor is. The author, on the other hand, may have moved beyond that career stage. In fact, the author might not even in product management or in software anymore. Maybe, just maybe, she has given up the software life and is now a suitcase-wielding model on "Deal or No Deal."  Or maybe she is not even a she, but a 300-lb prison inmate who uses the broken fingers of creepy cyberstalkers to remove popcorn kernels from between his teeth.

   

Perhaps the author of the Cranky Product Manager blog is pictured above.  But you will never know...

The Gulp Factor

The Cranky Product Manager has had writer's block for the past two weeks. Please excuse her lack of posts. But she has a really good reason... swear!

Here's the scoop... While the Cranky Product Manager is on the one hand totally delighted by the massive increase in visitors to this site (largely thanks to the shout-out from the FeaturePlan Product Management View blog), on the other hand SHE'S COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT.  And this has caused writer's block -- BIG TIME!

Being an undeniable egomaniacal narcissist, the Cranky Product Manager was at first elated by the traffic spike. "I am just SO fantastic," she muttered to herself at all hours of the day and night. "By Golly, this proves once and for all that I am the shizzle... That's right, the SHIZZLE, hot damn!"

No denying, it was a fun time.

But, as the saying goes, it's all fun until someone loses an eye. Or a job. Or a career. Or has some creepy dude cyberstalking her.

The first "gulp" moment was when someone in the Cranky Product Manager's "real life" unknowingly urged The Cranky PM to visit her own site.

The second gulp was when she finally read the 30 or so emails from blog readers and realized a few of these poor souls took her posts quite literally.  Naive, young pups. They actually believed she once threatened to apply a can opener to the torso of a development manager. But perhaps more dangerously, many of these folks had the impression her real-life company was overrun with incompetents, which -- for the record -- is patently false. The Cranky Product Manager's real-life company is a fantabulous place to work with Mensa geniuses in all departments and products that are masterworks of art, by God.

And finally, the third gulp was from reading the small fraction of emails that were just downright freaky or perverted.

As expected, there were immature comments about the Cranky Product Manager's posterior photo. Whatever. Working in a 90% male nerd-dominated environment for 10-20 years trains one to ignore such tripe.

More disturbing, though, were the emails from Creepy Dude. He began by asking the Cranky Product Manager is she is staying in <Insert City Here> because Creepy Dude has a extra bed in his hotel room that was guaranteed bed bug free. Ha, ha. How inappropriately "funny." But then it got really icky when Creepy Dude asked far too many identifying questions and then became downright hostile and making freakin' scary threats when the Cranky Product Manager refused to answer.

Without a doubt, the Cranky Product Manager is partially to blame for this uptick in creepiness -- after all, her post on technology analysts is a top match for Google searches on streetwalkers and their ilk. But still. Kinda unsettling.

So, to sum up, three gulps is WAY too many. They've stopped the Cranky Product Manager in her blogular tracks. Every time she started a post, she'd freeze with worry of being discovered by a colleague, that her stories would reflect poorly on her as a professional and would drag down her real-world reputation forever, or that she'd reveal personal details that might give some unbalanced John Karr-type entree into her real-world life.

All legit fears. But she thinks she's found a solution that entails some changes to this here blog. You'll see.

The Cranky Product Manager will provide more details in a few days, so stay tuned...

Who is the Cranky Product Manager?

The Cranky Product Manager is a fictional product management professional at a fictional enterprise software vendor named DysfunctoSoft.  These are her fictional stories.

The Cranky PM has been officially in product management for many years, but before that spent time in the trenches as a developer and professional services slave.  All told, she's been working in tech for lots of years, at companies ranging from itty-bitty startups to IBM-sized behemoths. 

The Cranky Product Manager's personality flaws and character failings include a passion for sodium-encrusted food, snarkiness, cynicism, abject driving skills, bluntness, and an absolute inability to tolerate pompous jackasses.

The Cranky Product Manager has decided to fulfill her lifelong ambition of one day referring to herself in the third person. This blog is the product of this misguided goal, when combined with a lust for fame, the antithetical desire for anonymity, and a vast store of cynicism that must be vented in order to preserve her mental health.

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Addendum: Just to make it perfectly clear: this blog is fiction, although "inspired" (as Disney would phrase it) by the true-life experiences of a real software product manager, her colleagues, and her friends. The characters described in this blog are not real people; they are compilations of common software industry personality types that the author has encountered during her career. As they say, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Do not try to figure out who the author of the Cranky Product Manager blog is, because her life is completely different than the Cranky Product Manager's.  FOR EXAMPLE, the author may not even be a product manager any more. She might no longer even work in software. Perhaps the author is a lot more experienced than her snarky, although naive, fictional alter-ego. Hell, the author might not even be a "SHE" for all you know!