There are a great many company cultures in the world that go out of their way to avoid conflict of any kind. And, while the intent is good — nobody wants to work in a combative workplace — the common practice of lumping all conflict together into a single bucket and trying to toss it […]
10 Questions: Jay Stansell of the Product Coalition
At some point in my meanderings online, I heard tell of a Slack channel that had been set up for Product Managers to engage with each other and discuss topics of concern to those in the profession. And, being the Clever PM that I am, I had no choice but to check it out — […]
Silence is a Tool — Use it Effectively!
While Product Managers have a great many tools in their belt to use when working internally with stakeholders or externally with customers, there’s one tool that seems to elude so many of us. That tool is silence. When you’re talking with someone and trying to get them to say what’s really on their mind, what’s […]
Agile Transitions – Managing Expectations
We live in a day and age where there’s a ton of information and mis-information out there about pretty much every topic imaginable, and Agile development is certainly not immune to this phenomenon. In fact, anyone who looks for help in pushing through an Agile transformation in their organization is immediately confronted with a vast […]
The Many Hats of the Product Manager
Sometimes an idea just strikes me out of the blue and sounds interesting enough to sit down and write a little bit about. This is one of those posts, spurred on by a discussion I had today with a newly-hired Product Manager with almost as much experience as me. As we were talking about our […]
Why Does Agility Matter?
We tend to take the fact that agility is important as a given, when the reality is that not everyone in the business world has reached the same conclusion. Thus, it’s important sometimes to take a step back and examine why agility actually matters, so that when we’re faced with people who aren’t as convinced as […]
10 Questions: Suzanne Abate
One of the benefits of teaching with General Assembly has been to build my network of talented, knowledgeable, and experienced Product Managers, not just in the Seattle area, but around the country and the world. One of my more recent connections was with Suzanne Abate, an LA-based product management coach who caught my eye with […]
How to “Level Up” Your Product Management Skillset
A common theme in online discussions and forums around Product Management lies in how to level up our skills and be a better Product Manager. While there are a lot of different options available, just as there are as many different aspects of Product Management to focus on, there are some very specific areas that […]
How Accepting Uncertainty Drives Successful Teams
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you’ve probably noticed that accepting uncertainty is a a recurring theme when it comes to Agile and agility. While it’s never stated outright as a “value” in either the Agile Manifesto or the Twelve Principles of Agile, the concept itself underlies many of the points made in […]
Why “Scrumbut” Shouldn’t Be a Bad Word
There’s a term that gets floated around the Agile world by what I like to call the “textbook Scrummers” that really bugs the crap out of me, so much that I decided to write an article about the concept, and why I think it’s a wrong-headed, anti-agile concept. The concept is known as “ScrumBut” (a […]
Balancing Agility and Strategy
One of the common struggles that Product Managers are faced with is figuring out how to be “agile” while still managing to a vision or strategy that’s been established by the Executives or Board. The important thing to remember is that strategy and agility are not in conflict with one another — if a strategy is […]
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 […]