Yesterday we received the very sad news that our great friend and wonderful colleague Julie Giera passed away earlier this week. Although we were well aware of the fact that Julie had been battling breast cancer for several years, I still find it difficult to comprehend the news – in particular since we had lost another great analyst colleague – Andrew Parker – only a few months earlier.

Julie was one of the great stars and a leading voice of Giga Information Group – the analyst firm later to be acquired by Forrester in 2003. She was instrumental in establishing and extending the Giga brand and influence across a wide community of different stakeholders, including many CIOs as well as the senior executives of many tech vendors. She later continued that fame with Forrester where she quickly became a thought leader around the broader IT services market change issues. Julie was one of the founding members of the vendor strategy research team and many of the key reports that she authored over the last years are still relevant today and represent key highlights of our team’s research portfolio. A lot of her great research can still be viewed and downloaded online, so check out the following:

Adaptive Sourcing: Outsourcing's New Paradigm (together with Andrew Parker)

Are Barbarians At The Gates Of Outsourcing?

Services Providers: Are You Ready For The New IT Ecosystem?

Last week Verizon Wireless announced it will begin selling Apple’s iPhone 4 to customers in February 2011. The new relationship between Verizon Wireless and Apple terminates the exclusive relationship AT&T had with Apple since 2007 to distribute iPhones in the US. Verizon Wireless will be able to address pent-up demand for iPhones among existing customers, as well as from customers who switch from competitors such as Sprint and T-Mobile to gain access to these devices. The introduction of Verizon’s iPhone also impacts the competitive smartphone landscape, mobile application developers, network operators, and other participants in the mobility ecosystem. Details regarding the Verizon Wireless iPhone announcement are highlighted in the report “Verizon’s iPhone Sets The Battleground For iPhone 5,” written by my colleague Charles Golvin.

Verizon’s iPhone and AT&T’s iPhone will look and cost the same, however Verizon Wireless has not yet announced the cost of voice and data service for these devices. There are also key differences in Verizon’s iPhone, which have important implications on enterprise smartphone purchasing decisions. Verizon’s iPhone will not have a multimode chip, so these devices will only roam onto CDMA networks, which are used in Verizon’s network. CDMA network technology is not as common in other countries so firms with employees who travel internationally may find this to be a limitation. Also, the timeline for replacing corporate liable smartphone devices is often 18 months. Therefore, although Verizon Wireless will begin offering the iPhone 4 in February, enterprise smartphone contract renewal cycles may mean these devices do not make their way into the hands of employees for more than a year.

Politics is a word that we use so loosely that it risks losing meaning altogether. When we talk about office politics, as some recent posts by product management bloggers, we're usually expressing scorn for odious behaviors that stand in the way of some rational course of action. Every organization is susceptible to politics, in this negative sense, including every development team. Better to assume it, or even take advantage of it when possible, than to pretend that some magic tool or methodology will do away with politics.

Can't Live With Politics. Can't Live Without Politics
In their blogs, both Jim Holland and Jennifer Doctor recounted a session about politics at a recent Product Camp in Seattle. The topic struck a nerve, as evidenced by the outpouring of complaints from the audience. We've all heard them, whether we're product managers or not: Empire builders put themselves ahead of the interests of the group; real decisions happen in a back channel, instead of in the open; teams decide in haste, and repent at leisure . . . It sounds as if this session was as therapeutic for the audience as it was informative.

Earlier this month, the Silicon Valley Product Management Association kindly invited me to participate in a panel discussion about the state of PM as a profession. Since the role has wide responsibilities, the conversation ranged widely, but we did dwell a great deal on requirements. One participant asked, "If you could pick only one source of information for requirements, what would it be?" My response was a little tart: I hate that question, because there's no way to answer it.

First, no single type of information will be sufficient to answer a substantive question. Requirements are an exercise in triangulation. Is it worth pursuing a project? You could count the number of people who have asked for it, but that's hardly a reliable basis for making a potentially expensive investment. The next logical questions -- Why do they want it? How important is it? Do we really understand the request? -- require a conversation with at least a couple of potential consumers of this technology.

Second, the question determines the type of information needed to answer it. One type of market development question, such as, is there opportunity for us? requires market-level data. A different market development question, do people in this market need a different mix of functionality in our product? leads to an investigation of potential use cases.

The people responsible for requirements -- product managers, in the tech industry -- have no training in selecting the questions to ask, or the right way to ask them. Which is odd, because you might define the PM role as the questions person, delving into markets, users, competitors, stakeholders, business problems, and a towering pile of other topics.