Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - The Basics

I saw Randy Pausch's Last Lecture on YouTube and highly recommend it to everyone, for a number of reasons.

Of the many, many points he conveyed very poignantly, one stuck out for me today.

I was in a meeting that had gotten heated. Someone had "dropped the ball." Apparently some people in the meeting thought that that someone was probably me. I argued that it had never been my ball to start with. Of course I said so, rather eloquently, I thought.

The only way to resolve the dispute was to go back to the basics. My role in that organization is to be the product manager. The question was, did this particular issue fall into my purview?

It came back to the question I've pondered many times (as a product manager.) What, precisely, in this context and in this organization, is a product? A simple question, but shades of nuance change the way that I approach everything. If this thing we were arguing about was, in fact, a product; then I was responsible for ensuring that it adequately went through our company's processes. If it was not a product, but a service we had contracted to perform as a one-off item, then I our product life cycle wasn't relevant.

So, was it a product?

I still think the logical answer is no, but the correct organizational answer was yes. So I'm fixing the problem. :-)

Have a great weekend!