Due to the vagaries of how different companies and industries define the role of Product Manager, it’s often a struggle to determine what skills and abilities one must have in order to separate themselves from the crowd. But while the roles may differ, I’m a strong believer that there is a core set of capabilities […]
What Does an Agile Culture Look Like?
A common question posed to Product Managers in organizations interested in or transitioning into Agile is, “How do we know that we’re Agile?” Because agility is a cultural value, there’s no pre-determined checklist of things that one can step through and certify your company as 100% Organic Agile. There are, however, indicators that we look at to […]
Just Because You’re Delighted by Your Product Doesn’t Mean Your Users Are!
There are a lot of potential pitfalls that threaten our success as Product Manager — but by far the worst, in my opinion, is falling too much in love with your own ideas, whether those are problems, solutions, or even assumptions about the market and our customers. While I think they take it a bit […]
PM 101 – Working With Marketing
We’ve already touched on the importance of working with Designers and Sales — and UserVoice gave me an opportunity to discuss working with Engineers — so today we’re going to continue the logical progression of teams that a Product Manager must have good relationships with by talking about the proper care and feeding of your Marketing teams. Product […]
What to Do When It’s All Falling Apart
As Product Managers, we’re often right on the front lines when things start to go sideways — when the demo fails in the middle of a big customer presentation, when the Ops team can’t deploy the “fully-tested” and “ready for production” release, or when your customer acquisition and retention numbers start to dip. But rarely […]
PM 101 – Working With Sales
Of all of the teams that Product Managers must deal with on a regular basis, I really can’t think of any that have a worse reputation amongst our kin than Sales teams. Common tropes that I hear when talking about Sales teams with other Product Managers include things like “they don’t understand the product” or “they […]
Struggles With Scrum – It’s About RESULTS
There seems to be a lot of discussion these days about whether or not Agile still works, and whether or not Scrum in particular is “dead” or at the very least dying. The common thread that I see in these discussions is usually something to the effect of “why do we need set iterations” or “user […]
PM 101 – Working With Designers
This is the first in what I hope to be a series of PM 101 posts, wherein I focus on some fundamentals of Product Management. For this first article, I’ve chosen a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, as well as one that’s been raised several times during my teaching sessions at General Assembly […]
Why Isn’t Agile Working For Me – Part 4 – What to Do When Agile Isn’t Working
This is the fourth (and possibly final!) installment of my series of posts discussing why Agile may not be working for you or your organization. Part One focused on the role of culture and training; Part Two focused on the importance of continual improvement and evangelism; and Part Three focused on lack of knowledge, lack of commitment, […]
When “Bias Toward Action” Goes Wrong
If you’ve been on the job market in the past several years, you’ve undoubtedly come across the phrase “bias toward action” in one or more job descriptions or company overviews, or even during a call with a recruiter. It’s become something of a buzzword, and in the way that many buzzwords do, has a meaninglessness […]
Which is better – Kanban or Scrum?
A very common topic of discussion amongst Product Managers in general, and Agile practitioners in particular, involves the comparison of different forms of process and project management. By far the most prominent and popular of these are Kanban and Scrum. And, much to my own personal dismay, often these discussions wind up devolving into some […]
Why Isn’t Agile Working for Me? – Part 3
This is the third in a series of posts discussing the various reasons why Agile transitions tend to run into roadblocks or fail completely. In the first post, we looked at some fundamental considerations that often wind up causing problems for teams wanting to make the change to Agile practices. In the second, we discussed the […]