It’s become rather commonplace lately for people to dismiss “Agile” out of hand as an industry buzzword with no meaning or substance to it. And in some ways, the term has earned that reputation — mostly from people who use it regularly without really knowing what it means or how it changes an organization — […]
Are You “Default Ship” or “Default Delay”?
A couple years ago I ran across a blog post by Paul Jackson where he mentioned in passing the idea of a tension between “default ship” cultures in relation to corporations versus startups. For some reason, those two ends of a spectrum have stuck with me ever since, and after struggling with some culture change […]
Five MAJOR Product Management Mistakes
There are a lot of different hats we wear as Product Managers, which means that there are a great many opportunities for us to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right people. But the inverse of that is also true — by virtue of wearing so many hats, there are a […]
A Product Manager’s Guide to Technical Debt
There’s always a fine balance to be found between making sure that your product is as buttoned-up as possible when it ships and the small (sometimes large) sacrifices that we have to ask our technical teams to make in order to just get the damn thing out the door. Within this gap lies the dreaded […]
Don’t Reward Behavior You Don’t Want!
One of the more common challenges that growing companies face is balancing the needs and goals of the company with the needs and goals of its employees. And, unfortunately, all too often decisions are made with a business perspective that don’t take into account the potential effects on the personnel side of the equation. The […]
Measure What Matters
Many people are aware of the famous quote from Peter Drucker, “What gets measured, gets managed.” But what people don’t often consider is that what’s being measured and managed might actually not matter at all at the end of the day. When we measure things that don’t actually drive us to improve, we’re just acting like a […]
The Challenges of Predicting Future Behavior
One of the ongoing challenges that we face as Product Managers is that we’re primarily charged with predicting customer and user behavior. We’re constantly asked to come up with new ideas, new features, and new designs that we “know” will delight our users, or at the very least satisfy them. But the fact is, predicting human […]
Signs You’re Working With (or Are!) a Bad PM…
Awhile back, I answered a question on Quora about behaviors that indicate that someone may be a bad PM; since I’m in all-day sessions this week in a sales kickoff, I thought I’d re-share these thoughts here on the Clever PM blog… Dictators, not Facilitators This behavior shows up across the board, from the sprint […]
How Amazon’s Fire Phone Proves Their “Customers First” Rule
This is a post that I originally published last month in coordination with my friend Molly Lindblom, principal strategy consultant at Business Transformations. I hope you find it just as interesting as her readers did… Amazon.com is pretty much world-famous for their customer-centric approach. Product Managers who want to build something new are supposed to start […]
Five Things a Clever Product Manager Should NEVER Do
There are a lot of things that Product Managers can be accused of “doing wrong” when it comes to our daily jobs. As a wise mentor once told me, if there’s not at least one stakeholder upset with you, you’re not doing your job right. However, that doesn’t mean that we’re without fault. If we’re […]