Category: Product Strategy
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An alive strategy vs. Dead strategy
Product Strategy is Important One of the most important roles of a product manager (PM) is setting the product strategy. The strategy, by way of a roadmap, is the document that drives team alignment. When a group of people adopts a strategy, it transforms the product strategy from just a piece of paper to something that drives team…
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What Do Product Managers Produce?
Product management, unlike many other technical disciplines, doesn’t create a discrete output. So, what should you be spending your time on? Product managers (PdM) are responsible for helping companies make better decisions consistently over time. In a previous article, I talked about how wide-ranging the job can be. Product managers do a lot, but the…
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To stay agile, don’t let your product team get trapped in a loop
To ensure your product team is truly following the Agile Manifesto, you have to give yourselves time to adjust. That can’t happen when you’re stuck in a positive feedback loop. Product managers (PdM) oversee more than features. Simply focusing on them is a mistake and will leave the product person in charge of nothing more…
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What does a product manager actually do?
Product management requires flexibility and adaptability in its practitioners. So, with so much nuance, how do we define what product managers actually do? Product management (PdM) is a flexible discipline. It means different things to different people for a few reasons. I could continue a list like this for quite some time. The theme would…
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What is product discovery?
Product discovery is a process typically undertaken by product teams, UI/UX researchers, UX designers, UI designers and company stakeholders. The process is performed to define a problem, explore potential solutions and build a working prototype that will present value to customers. Modern product discovery and validation is essential to startup success, for example, those utilizing the outcome-driven innovation framework see an…
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How to conduct better product management interviews
Hiring is one of the most important parts of product leadership. Use these principles to make sure you’re landing the best talent. Product leadership is difficult. That difficulty comes because it’s often very different from product management. As a product manager (PdM), your focus is squarely on making sure that your team is consistently making…
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As product manager, what story should you tell?
As product manager, how do you take your plans from theory to action? Simple: Tell the right story. Making change is hard. Even harder is making change while projects are in motion. As a product manager, though, this is the job. Remember, as a PdM, you are judged on how you improve the decision fitness…
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Why projections fail — and what to do instead
Projections are useful because they give the rest of the organization a concrete idea of what you’re working on. Unfortunately, they can also set unclear expectations and raise questions that go unanswered. But a better tool exists. We don’t know what is going to happen. Let me repeat it. We don’t know what is going…
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You need to know when to fire a customer
We work so hard to build a customer base that we despair at the thought of ever losing one. But sometimes, your relationship has run its course, and it’s smarter to let them go. hen you build a product, you work so hard to attract those first customers. Cracking into a marketplace is difficult, and…
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How good product strategy makes decisions easier
Product development requires a team to make a host of decisions. Your strategy should make that decision-making process as easy as possible. Product strategy is hard. And let’s be clear: it should be. It’s a messy world out there, and strategy is all about trying to bring some order to that chaos. Like many things,…
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Beware the tyranny of customer feedback
The customer is always right – right? This adage – one that many of us grew up with – is a guiding principle of product development. If we can just listen to the customer – if we just give them what we want, our path to product success can’t be too far off. Isn’t that…
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What is good documentation, anyway?
Is anyone reading what you are writing? This is a serious question and one you should be asking yourself regarding documentation. As product people, we act as the keepers of documentation throughout every stage of the product development process. We didn’t ask for the role, but since product’s principal job is to foster alignment, it’s…
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How to create a minimum viable product (without code!)
“I have an idea.” It’s the most dubious phrase that comes from our teams. Why? Because if they have enough pull, we can spend hours building an idea that makes sense to that person, or even internally, and do nothing to the marketplace. I’ve seen it a ton of times in my career, someone swears…
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Why you should exchange your epics for initiatives
So, it’s four weeks into a project, and you’re running into a few problems. First, your teams aren’t sure what resources they need to bring to bear. One engineer, for example, is now half-time after you’d have sworn you had her for a full six weeks. Second, no one is really sure about what this…
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How lessons from wargames can help you ship products and build strong teams
We all know that product is hard, so here are some themes from a very playful activity that will help you get better at it. Shipping products is rough, full of false starts, lousy execution, and a lack of will to kill products quickly. But a bad strategy creates a state of false hope, and can…
