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Chad McCallister === [00:00:00] Chad: Unfortunately PDMA in some sense is the best kept secret in the product management community. Cause it's not well known, right? It's been around, it's the longest professional association for us. And I bet many people listening right now are going PD who, what, right? What is this? But , whether they are aware of it or not, the high performing organizations tend to do the things that are talked about in the book. [00:00:21] audioNilsDavis11200137743: That's my guest for this episode, Chad McAllister, who in addition to having his own long running product management podcast called Product Mastery Now is out and about telling everyone about his latest project, the just released third edition of the Product Development and Management Associations, Body of Knowledge. The PDMA Body of Knowledge or PDMA BOK. Or should I say the virtually unknown PDMA Body of Knowledge. What you might be asking is this thing. In short, it's an incredibly valuable resource that not enough product managers know about. The Product Development and Management Association, or PBMA has been a foundational professional association. Advocating for effective product development and management practices across all kinds of products, not just software, since 1976. They have a guide to these practices, which is known as the PDMA Body of Knowledge or BOK. Now PDMA has recently released the third edition of the PDMA BOK and Chad was one of the main leaders on the third edition effort. And that's why he's on. Hi, this is Nils Davis, and you're listening to episode 163 of the Secrets of Product Management Podcast. In this episode, Chad McAllister shares insights on the inception of the PDMA and its Body of Knowledge. The value of the BOK brings in knitting together the various principles and practices for product innovation and how it serves as a comprehensive guide for both new and seasoned product managers across industries. So we touch on the challenges and opportunities for PDMA to increase its visibility and its impact within the product management community. And Chad will tell us the story behind his own podcast, Product Mastery Now. I started by asking Chad to give us an overview of the PDMA BOK and how he got involved with it. [00:02:09] Nils: Chad, welcome to the podcast. It's fantastic to have you here. And thank you for having me on your podcast a while ago. It was really great. And I'm really happy that I can return the favor. You're here because of the PDMA Body of Knowledge, which is a really interesting topic, I think. I was familiar with the PMI body of knowledge, but not the PDMA one. And so maybe you can just start by giving us an overview, the elevator pitch, the 30, 000 foot level view of the PDMA BOK. [00:02:39] Chad: So yeah, the body of knowledge. It's interesting that you mentioned PMI, right? So the Project Management Institute. PDMA is an analogous organization for product managers, right? When we trace the history back and you've probably read some of these articles too, most people point back to the 1930s and the brand managers at P& J and say, the discipline started there. And there was this group primarily academics back in the seventies. Bob Cooper was one of them. A lot of people know him from his portfolio work and _Winning at New Products_ his books on that. And they got together and said, we're, we've been researching how to do a better job creating products. We need to get some of this knowledge out to people that aren't reading the academic articles, right? And how can we go about that? And I don't know the details of how that all came about, but PDMA was born out of that notion. A lot of these people were involved earlier on. In 1976, right? And a lot of us in product management, we're like it's only been around 10, 20 years or something, right? No, there's actually a lot of research that is out there that we could get our hands on about the disciplines. And the Body of Knowledge is analogous to PMI to the Project Management Body Knowledge. This is for product managers and innovators. , , and what are those practices that we have found out through research that organizations do that seem to be helpful for creating new products, as well as making our existing products better that next generation of the products. And there is a book form of it now, and I got asked to help out with the third edition. The first two editions, I contributed to both of those in various ways, but when I first got exposed to the body of knowledge, what PDMA called it they just pointed to a set of books and a bunch of articles and said, go learn these things and you'll get exposed to the disciplines that are important for our profession, right? For product managers. [00:04:29] Nils: Great. So it's essentially research based list of things that people should be doing. There's a lot of talk on LinkedIn and everything about frameworks and what frameworks do you use and things like that. Would you call this a framework or maybe in part a framework? It seems like it's more than that though, right? [00:04:47] Chad: Yeah, it's reasonable to think of it that way. When I stumbled across what I had been doing, I was a project manager doing product management, not knowing such title existed, right? , I'd been doing that for about 10 years, , with an engineering background. And it filled in holes for me, right? When I stumbled across this body of knowledge and studied it with a group of other people that were in the same spot wanting to just fill in some holes. It did fill in holes and I thought of it as a framework that it connected some dots for my experience that were helpful. And filled in some things that I was missing oh, that would really help me if I, had known sooner. It's categorized or organized, into seven areas. So the body of knowledge and the seven knowledge areas. Those seven areas make up the framework, so to speak. It's really just the practices that we should know as product people to do a better job being a product manager, delivering good products to our audience, to our customers, as well as leading product management. And interestingly enough, a lot of people are in the same boat I was in when, today I help people learn this body of knowledge as well. And most of the people I interact with, they've been doing product management on average about 10 years, right? Five years is on the low side, and I've helped people that have been in for 20 years, and are moving to the next step of their career now. And I was like let's make sure we're grounded in these seven areas. And it will probably help you in the way it helped me, which is, connect some dots and fill in a few holes. [00:06:12] Nils: That makes total sense. Some frameworks I know are really about the what, if you think about the Pragmatic Framework, it's the framework itself at any rate, not the training is all about what you do as a product manager the Body of Knowledge, the PDMA body of knowledge. It includes a lot of how as well. Is that true? [00:06:29] Chad: There's a lot of how. There's a lot of depth in the number of things that you're exposed to. And so there's not a lot of detail in the how throughout the guide, right throughout the book. Its purpose is to expose you to the things you should know about. And this is, product management has been around for so long. And like I said, if you're thinking about going back to P& G, that was consumer. Products, consumer goods. You and I are both have software background among some other things, but the, this is a body of knowledge meant for product people across industries, right? And so the examples come from multiple places, not just software. And the tools come from multiple places. And you may run into some of them in your organization and you likely not run into some of them, right? I never know if this analogy works. You let me know if this helps you or not. I think about this as going to the all you can eat food buffet, right? And you look at all the things that are there that are possible. And you're going to go through and you're going to select the things that, that sound good to you, the things that make sense for you to do, for your job, product management. But you'll get exposed to the things that you should know about. [00:07:36] Nils: Okay. Very, that sounds great. So I guess this leads into the next question. So how and when should someone approach the PDMA body of knowledge? [00:07:47] Chad: It's a great question. I went through an effort some many years ago to try to get people new to product management to pay attention to this. And frankly, it just was unsuccessful. And that may have been more because of me than the actual efforts. I seem to just attract people that are further along in their career that, are interested in this work. But, there are places in the country, PDMA, in the world PDMA is an international organization. And they have a huge following, interestingly enough, in China right now of new product managers. A new product manager saying, okay I'm moving into this career from, customer support, from engineering, from marketing or something. And they're using it to learn, which I think is really smart, right? To get this under your belt sooner than later. But frankly, it's also helpful to have some context. And if you don't have at least two years of product management experience it's hard to have context to put these things into place, right? I really think of it primarily, and this is my perspective, not PDMA's particularly, but for people that are thinking about that next step of their career, right? I have some knowledge now. I want to expand my responsibilities. I want more influence in the organization. I want to do a better job with products our customers love. And they're thinking about, how do I organize? How do I purposely, design that next step? This helps. [00:09:07] Nils: So would you even go so far as to say, don't read another product management book before you read this one? [00:09:14] Chad: I like yours, so I don't know if I would go that far. [00:09:17] Nils: Okay. So aside from my book. [00:09:20] Chad: Clearly there's lots of good books. And this book does a good job of referring to some of those as well. So this is a good book to get your hands around the things you should be aware of. And that would probably help you have a better context for other things you might read about. One of the foundational topics is strategy and why strategy important to us and how does it work inside our organization? Great. Now you know a little bit more about that. So the next time you pick up a book on strategy, you'll be able to relate it to other aspects of product management better. [00:09:50] Nils: Sure. And we all know that learning from one source is usually not as good as multiple sources anyway. You're going to get different perspectives. Now do you have to be trained or certified to make use of this? I'm pretty sure there is a certification. Is that right? Of [00:10:07] Chad: Yeah, that's how I got drawn into this. PDMA used to have several local chapters. Now there's fewer of those in existence right now. It just depends where you live, if there's one in your area or not. But I stumbled across a local one in Denver, Colorado, near me one year, and went to that. And there were a few of us that were just, we were all doing product work, but we were thinking what do they mean by the body of knowledge? And we decided to get together and study those books they pointed to and all those articles, and they do have a certification. So we thought if we study for the certification we'll have an understanding of what they mean, and we'll see if that's useful to us or not. So it was an experiment. So about six or seven of us, we'd get together once a week and we all took turns, right? Someone would, we broke up all the body of knowledge to start with and said, okay, I'll become the so called expert, right? I'll actually. learn this book more carefully than everyone else has to, and then present a summary of it, right? So we got this study group to help each other out, and we did that. And then I ended up doing the certification, figured I did all the work learning it, I might as well put the letters, add that to the resume. But frankly, a lot of the people that I work with today, including I help companies do a better job creating products. And this is one of the foundational tools that I can use with that. Most people are wanting to do it because they want to learn how to do a better job and they're less interested in the certification, I think the certification is useful, but I think we also all recognize none of us are have been showing up at job interviews with people saying you really need a certification in product management. It does give you a pretty good story to tell about why you felt it was important though. So in that way it can help differentiate yourself. But I think the knowledge is a lot more important. Hope people from PDMA aren't listening. The certification is the cherry on top of the sundae, right? Yeah, [00:11:54] Nils: And as you say, I think. If you have a certification, you'd better have a good story about why, because the certification itself is not that valuable, typically, right? [00:12:04] Chad: People aren't asking for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is a rigorous certification. It is. I've done PMIs, Project Management professional which is for anyone that's done that, you understand that's very rigorous in the, And this is similar but learning the knowledge is the key thing. [00:12:21] Nils: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a good thing to know that it's a non trivial sort of examination to take to get that certification. Are there any big changes in the latest version? Because you've been working with it for a while at this point. [00:12:34] Chad: Yeah, I'm thankful we have a book, right? So that's a huge thing a guide to go to. And just to mention the, you said earlier this research notion of the body of knowledge. PDMA does do research every few years on, on the best performing organizations. And. They contrast that with the less performing organizations when it comes to innovation. I think the name has changed a little bit, but basically it's the best practices study. And I suspect we all understand that one company's best practices doesn't mean that they're the right things for you. But in general when we look across a lot of companies and say these companies are at the top of being able to create products that customers love. These are the things they tend to do, and these companies that are at the bottom tend to not do any of those things that, those things get your attention. And that's something that informs the body of knowledge. And one thing we did with this edition we did update everything. Every, Sentence got touched in some way, just to make things a little more readable and a little more clear. It's in some ways a reference book to let you be aware of what's going on. But we wanted it to be approachable too. A little more clear. We added examples along the way. We added some case studies, which are helpful to illustrate how some of these things work. We did some reorganizing in it. Before we jumped into strategy, as a starting place which we could argue is a fair starting place, but the first chapter now is product innovation management, which kind of gives you a better overview of what goes on and creating something new. And how to maybe think about that, how project management plays into that. And then what happens when that something new hits the market? And what does a life cycle look as that lives in the marketplace? So some things got rearranged. We dropped a few things that seem to be less important that we're just not finding in across industries very much anymore. And added some new emerging concepts along the way too. [00:14:23] Nils: One of the things I always wonder, so you have this research on best performing organizations and a, let's say a benchmark of what good mostly looks like, what bad mostly looks like, do you know what out in the actual world of companies making products, how many of them are doing things that make them successful or that are likely to lead to success and how many are not? Basically, how many companies should be using this thing that aren't? [00:14:48] Chad: Yeah, surprisingly a lot are in some way, whether they recognize it or not. So. The long time ago when we talked about process, we would probably talk about StageGate being a kind of a risk management process for moving something through a product development lifecycle where you're trying to understand, You know, do we have a solution for the customer? Is it the right one? Is it going to create the right value for them? And you're making decisions along the way. And that hasn't largely gone away, the today it's probably, if we're doing software, this might be a little bit different, but if you're manufacturing something, it's probably still rather similar. Only we've added agile sprints. Inside of it a lot. A lot of the so called best practices are reflections of what the successful companies are doing and making observations of what they do. And we see that across other successful companies. And we noticed that's not going on at the lower performers and call those things out. And so just by nature of that, if you're a higher performing company you're probably motivated to do your own benchmarking work internally and figuring out what others are doing that are making good sense. And they're doing those things. Unfortunately PDMA in some sense is the best kept secret in the product management community. Cause it's not well known, right? It's been around, it's the longest professional association for us. And it's, I bet many people listening right now are going PD who, what, right? What is this? But there, whether they are aware of it or not, the high performing organizations tend to do the things that are talked about in the book. [00:16:18] Nils: Yeah. So we had a PDMA chapter in Silicon Valley. I don't think it exists anymore. It had meetups and things like that. So it was a good organization. And several people who I have a lot of respect for as product managers were involved in it. But. An interesting question is there a way to apply product management thinking to PDMA to get it into a lot more households, so to speak? [00:16:42] Chad: Interestingly, this is like the cobbler's shoes problem, right? I think this organization of product managers isn't particularly good at applying it to themselves in their organization. [00:16:51] Nils: I always, what I always say about product managers is we're very smart. We're often the smartest people in the room. We're used to doing everything ourselves. We don't have a budget and we don't like asking for help. And that all leads to, we don't necessarily get some of the things that we should. It's amazing people even buy product management books, to be honest, given that, but they should definitely buy the PDMA body of knowledge when it becomes [00:17:15] Chad: It's a great thing to be exposed to and to have it nearby. And when you're confronted with a problem, look it up, right? I want some new insights on how to prioritize features or how to select between options we have. What are some design tools I haven't tried yet? We're trying to come up with some ideas with some frameworks I could look at. And it will give you some great ideas. [00:17:34] Nils: Yeah, do it and create a study group as you did. I think that sounds like a great way of everybody's practice going up the rising tide lifting all boats. So yeah. So hopefully with this podcast episode contributing a tiny bit, new product managers or young product managers will learn about this and say, Oh, I must grab that! And I'll also, I'll publicize it on my LinkedIn feed, for example, and I have a lot of young people who follow me. So maybe they'll say, Oh, I think I've got to get me one of those. Is it, so it's going to be in a book form. Is it also going to be, is there an online version? Is there an electronic version, that sort of [00:18:11] Chad: Yeah we're just at the end of that with Wiley right now. And they should be making a Kindle version and have that available as well. There, there is a page up on the Wiley site for pre orders. And by the time this gets out to your listeners, that hopefully will be available on Amazon and places for real. And I'm sure you'll have the name of it in your show notes too, but it's the, PDMA's, the Product Development Management Body of Knowledge. The subtitle is A Guidebook for Product Innovation Training and Certification. [00:18:39] Nils: Excellent. That's a mouthful and a [00:18:41] Chad: It is a mouthful. Yep. And for people that just want a quick overview, right? There's the seven knowledge areas . I have that information posted on my website and that's just productmasterynow. com. [00:18:54] Nils: okay, great. And I, we're, so let's actually switch over to the topic of product mastery now, because that is your podcast. It's what, you're one of the OG product management podcasters, and I don't know if you know what OG means. So I had to explain it to somebody the other day. Originalgangsta, that's you. [00:19:10] Chad: There we go. [00:19:11] Nils: You're very inspiring to those of us who don't have as many episodes as you. You have 477, I think, are out. That's what the latest email said. Um, I have 158, so fine. This is 150, 160 something probably is this one. I don't know the actual number as we record this. Tell me a little bit about your path to this podcast and maybe you can actually bring in a little bit of your path to product in that. [00:19:38] Chad: Yeah. Yeah, so 2013 and 14, my wife and two kids, we got into a motorhome and we drove across the U. S. for a year. And I worked from the internet so that was possible to, do such a thing together. And, we primarily did it for the experience as a family. But I also wanted to get out and have conversations with people that were building products, that were leading companies, that were innovative, because I had been doing, I have my day job, which has, that has evolved from working as a product manager to teaching. I've been teaching basically since about 2008. I've been doing training then for organizations and individuals, and I felt like I was getting a little bit out of touch. At that time, I had been working more with individuals than organizations. And now that pendulum has swung the other way, but I wanted to use part of that time on the trip to encounter people and have interviews, right? And had fascinating conversations. Some that I, planned ahead of time, reached out to people. And some of the most interesting things, I think it was just for divine intervention to, plop into my lap that were just amazing conversations. And I thought I would get back and, take all those interviews and write them up and make a book. And you get back and life gets busy and that never happened. So I really enjoyed though trying, many of the interviews did make it as blog posts. And I enjoy trying to help the product management community, with some more information. And frankly, I missed having the interesting conversations myself. And that's what the dual motivation for the podcast then, and continues today, nine years later, has been, let's bring interesting knowledge interviews to people in the product management community. I'm scratching my own itch and I'm wanting to help others too. At this point, it is the longest running weekly podcast podcast for product people. [00:21:29] Nils: Very impressive. It's, and it's a great lot of resource in there for people want to learn about anything basically related to product. I would assume I haven't, I didn't go through the full list to see what all the topics are, but there's 477 of them. So I'm sure you can find something multiple things that are of interest. At that point you had made multiple transitions in your career. How did you get into product originally? [00:21:53] Chad: I started in electrical engineering, got outta school. I had interned with this very small company. I was employee number four. And liked the people and stayed with them. And six months into this job out of college, we turned into a software company. And I'm not particularly good at that. As an electrical engineer, you take a few classes on programming, but not the thing I really enjoyed a lot, right? So I did what little I had to. But it turned out, I never knew this would have been the case, if you had asked me ahead of time, but it turned out I was pretty good at meeting with customers and listening to what their problems were, and then helping the software people figure out what to create. And so I, I found myself in that role, which we thought of at the time as a project manager role. And I also had a stint of doing lots of prototypes for a while. And so we had customers where they would come in and describe something and I would be the guy that would go off for a week or two and make a a reasonable prototype, to reflect what they were thinking about and go through iterations with them. And that was a lot of fun. That was a really good fit for me. And so that led to just, creating more products for customers and working with the leading the team and the like, and really enjoyed that and fully just stumbled into it. My, my best early experience was I got sent out to work with a group of customers, a team for one week, and I was supposed to just, observe what they were doing, and I had no idea why I was really there. It's just understand what they're doing, figure things out. I did know that there was a demonstration of a product that was being built by another company that I was supposed to help with that was gonna be used for this team. So this was, give me some context and really enjoyed being among this team and. If I thought of it today, we call it ethnographic research, basically what I was doing, right? Lots of observation, trying to understand their problem just through observation. And two weeks later, as it turned out, the other company that was supposed to be delivering software to solve the problem what, I don't know what happened, fell through. And I was still on the road at this point and had the equipment with us. We, this is a long time ago, we were running a Silicon Graphics International SGI workstations and lugging around my little O2 computer to do work on. And thankfully I could throw enough together with good help back at the the home office, so to speak. And in the course of a three day weekend, I had something to demonstrate in time for where it needed to end up and that was such a great experience and that led to a project with that team that those customers to really make this real and evolve that over several months with them. And this is before the scrum book was written, but a lot of us that were doing software, when scrum came out, we went. Yeah, that's what we've been doing, right? And had the customer coming once a week to see what we're doing and talk about what needed to be done next and very iterative development. And that was really enjoyable. But there were still some things I was definitely missing through all that, right? And one day it dawned on me because I had gotten involved with Project Management Institute because everyone tells you if you're managing projects, go learn what these guys tell you. So I did all that. And one day it dawned on me and If there's a PMI, is there some group out there doing something for product? And it was literally a Google search that I did. And that led me to PDMA and a few other things that were helpful, but let me to PDMA and I'm very thankful for having discovered that and The reason why I'm still involved with the body of knowledge is simply because it helped me so very much. And then I got to help others with it because it helped them. And the, many years later now, I'm still finding a way to help out with that [00:25:41] Nils: That's amazing. And is that when you found out that you were actually a product manager and not a project manager? [00:25:47] Chad: Yeah. Like a lot of us, right? Doing the work for 10 years, having no idea such a discipline or title exists. [00:25:53] Nils: exactly. Yeah. I, when I started product management, I, my story is not similar to yours, but it's except in the way that it's an accidental sideways slide. , I was a tech writer. The product manager left. None of us knew what he did. He dressed nicely, but that was a him thing. It wasn't a product management thing. And they said, Oh, you should do that. And I thought. Okay. I don't know what it is. What is it? Nobody knew, and then over the years I had to figure it all out. So same kind of deal. In fact, I always said, Oh, I wish there was a Secret Product Manager Handbook, which is why I called my book that. And now I'm just hearing finally that there was one,, the PDMA book. I don't know back in the nineties if it was existing, but that would have been perfect for me. [00:26:38] Chad: And it's a good thing to know about, right? To uncover that this thing exists. [00:26:42] Nils: Exactly. I have lots of people that I'm very excited that I can tell them about this, about the PDMA Body of Knowledge. It's going to be great. Excellent. . Why don't you just give me a little summary of. Where people are going to find this and when it's going to be out. And also if they want to follow up with you and your podcast and whatever else you're working on, [00:27:02] Chad: okay. And I do really appreciate your podcast. I was very glad to have stumbled across it when I was looking for a product management podcast. And just a shout out, your listeners already get this. You do such a good job of decomposing concepts and breaking them down and helping provide actionable information and recognize that you're very good at that. [00:27:22] Nils: I appreciate that comment, Chad. [00:27:24] Chad: it's something we're trying to do in our podcast is just to make sure there's takeaways and you always deliver on that, right? So if people are interested in hearing another podcast on product management, ours is primarily an interview format. Most of the episodes are interviews. Product Mastery Now. And same for the website, productmasterynow. com. That's a good place to find out more information about the Body of Knowledge, about other training I do. These days I'm primarily a professor and a part time practitioner and do some training here and there. And glad to help with those things. But those are all good resources. LinkedIn is a good place to connect with me as well. [00:28:09] Nils: Okay. Fantastic. And this, and the Body of Knowledge will be out March timeframe, 2024. [00:28:15] Chad: Yeah, so I suspect by the time listeners are hearing this, you can find it on Amazon and be able to order it at that time. [00:28:23] Nils: fantastic. That sounds great. Can't wait to get my own copy and learn everything I'm supposed to already know. I'm sure there will be a lot of surprises in there for me. That sounds great. Chad, it's been great having you on. Loved your stories about how you learned about this thing and how you have helped keep it alive and are working to make sure that people know about it. I think that's very valuable. Making better products, having people being able to make better products is really good for all of us. [00:28:52] Chad: It is. Yeah. And Nils, thank you so much for the invitation. So glad to be part of your podcast. [00:28:56] Nils: Of course, it was my pleasure and we'll do it again. Let's make a, let's make a date. [00:29:01] Chad: Love to. Thanks Chad. [00:29:03] Nils (2): Thanks again to Chad McAllister for sharing his knowledge and excitement about the PDMA Body of Knowledge. You can find links to Chad's LinkedIn, his podcast, Product Mastery Now. And of course the PDMA Body of Knowledge in the show notes at secretsofpm.com/163. If you liked this episode and want to share the ideas in it please share it with your friends. It's a great way for the show to grow. If you want to reach out to me about this episode or any other topic that I cover on the podcast. I'd love to hear from you. You can leave a comment in the show notes or drop me a line on LinkedIn or via direct email: [email protected]. And I'd love to hear from you. Until next time. This is Nils Davis. Bye-bye.