New Meaning to Cloud Update

Last week NASA updated the Mars rover, Curiosity. At a distance of 160 million miles, this was no small feat. Each command took approximately 14 minutes to transmit and 14 minutes to receive a response (and we all think Windows updates take time). The rover was designed to process updates as part of the mission, in fact NASA officials claim that the rover has a small storage space for the OS and needed to be updated once it had landed. The total update took 4 days as NASA wanted to make sure Curiosity did not become the proverbial brick that we have seen once you mess up a BIOS update.

While this is an amazing accomplishment, what I take away from this is the fact that with passion, all things become possible. I see this as a way to overcome an obstacle, with innovation and ingenuity driven by passion, NASA was able to overcome Curiosity’s limitations. As Product Managers, we often face the same conflicts. I have always felt that Product Management is one of the hardest jobs because you have virtually every department asking you for enhancements and yet none of the teams directly report to you. I am sure we have all had at least one department heads go to your manager and escalate an item that they feel has to be in the next release – I used to say that secretly, everyone wanted to be a Product Manager.

In my experience, most Product Managers only look at the end user as the customer, but in reality, Product Management has many customers, this includes Customer Care – who will tell you what they need to service the clients, Sales – who will tell you what they need to sell the product, Operations – who will tell you what the product needs to do to keep running efficiently, Accounting – who will tell you what they need to create an invoice for the service, Development – who wants to work on new and exciting technology and ultimately the end user – who pays the bills. The fact is that each and every group is important and finding a way to balance their requests and developing a road map that meets all of their needs is a challenge.

With that said, when you look at what it takes to do a software upgrade 160 million miles from the point of origin, you have to wonder how any problem could appear as large as it initially did. Great Product Managers find a way to overcome obstacles, maintain relationships with key stake holders and never forget that each constituent has a desire to make the product and customer experience better.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.