Many companies struggle with the challenges of reconciling the need for strategic planning and the desire to execute in an “agile” or Agile fashion. Generally speaking, this is because they’re stuck with the perspective that a “roadmap” must be a set of promises regarding what’s to be delivered, and not merely a strategy that will and must change over […]
Five MORE Things a Product Manager Should Be Thankful For
Last year, around this same time, I created a very popular post on the 5 things that Product Managers should be thankful for: Customers, Sales, Developers, the Cloud, and Our Peers. As we’re running up against another Thanksgiving here in the US, it’s time to revisit that post and provide a few new things that […]
Becoming a HiPPO Hunter
This is the second in an ongoing series of blog posts originally published on the UserVoice Product Management blog. There’s no Product Manager alive who hasn’t spent time dreading a HiPPO attack; the sudden derailing of well-laid plans by a management or executive-level stakeholder who insisted that their direction was the right one simply because it was […]
Why Isn’t Agile Working for Me?
It seems that lately Agile (and Scrum in particular) have become the latest targets of non-stop complaints and criticism in the Product Management and Development worlds. I’ve read articles that talk about how “Agile is destroying the business” or where “Scrum is a career-limiting methodology that only creates generalists.” Neither of these are necessary conclusions […]
Creating an Effective But Agile Product “Roadmap”
As companies transition from traditional, more waterfall-oriented approaches to their products, they often struggle with understanding how agile practices fundamentally change the ways in which they need to plan and develop their product roadmaps, both for internal use as well as for discussion with key customers and market prospects. The old-school method of assigning specific […]
Questions Every PM Should Ask, Every Day
As with any vocation, there are many “tricks of the trade” that on develops as a Product Manager over time. Most of these tricks are pretty basic, and seem entirely too obvious on reflection, but before you come to the realization that they’re important, they elude you. One of the common problems that we run […]
What Makes a Good Product Manager?
The question of what makes a good Product Manager seems to be a strongly recurring theme throughout the world of those who are interested in becoming Product Managers, those who already practice the craft, and even those who must work with us on a daily basis or have to hire on a Product Manager to […]
The Troubles with “Transparency”
The common wisdom in the Product Management world is that more transparency is always better — transparency into the planning process, the roadmap, the product strategy, prioritization, design, development, etc. And while transparency is certainly important, generally speaking, it can also have its dark side, especially when the culture in which you are being transparent […]
Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, and Fail OFTEN!!
In the world today, it’s no longer efficient or effective for a Product Manager in any company to devote months of time, effort, and expense in designing and developing new products or new product features. The market moves faster than that, and even in traditionally slower markets like B2B customers are increasingly exposed to the […]
Don’t Forget to Evangelize INSIDE Too!
Product Managers often wind up serving as product evangelists, due to their interest in maintaining product dominance in their market, as well as their constant touch points with the market as a whole. It’s really almost inevitable in a healthy company for the Product Manager to reach out and present at conferences, meet regularly with […]
The “CEO of the Product” Myth
I’m fairly confident that anyone who’s worked as or interacted with Product Managers for any extended period of time has run into someone talking about how the Product Manager is the “CEO of the Product.” The implication is that the Product Manager has some form of ultimate authority for what’s in, what’s out, and when things ship; […]
Understanding How to Lead Through Influence
It’s a common truth that’s discussed in Product Management circles that we generally do not lead through direction, from a position of direct power or authority; but rather through influence, indirectly and by convincing others to go in the direction we want or desire. But what does this really mean, and how can we best […]