CIOL:What role do you see for technology in collaborating product
planning and product marketing?
DK: In any product the product engineering and marketing goes hand in
hand. The product development methodology should allow interactions
between product development, marketing and even end-users. Proper
milestones for prototypes, alpha, and beta should be defined with
specific target end-user communities. Quick feedback and incorporation
of these are highly desirable.

Thankfully, now a day's agile methodology and tools allow collaborating
and meeting these targets easy.

CIOL: What are the factors that act as deterrents while defining the
product management roles and responsibilities?
DK: Most of the products, during their initial phases, are developed in
non-linear fashion in a slightly in-formal working culture. Typically,
product teams are driven by a very small set of people, some times just
one person, who are very passionate about it. However conflicts start
when it expands to next set of people. For example, at this stage
technology team starts striving to make the best product while the
marketing team want the products to be out to the world fast. Sometimes
conflicts start arising on issues which are non technology related like
what feature should be added, what should be the approach to the market, how
to price etc. Creating a military style hierarchy does not work either,
as it kills creativity and passion. Thus creating the initial team
and defining individual responsibilities becomes one of the most important
tasks during early phases.