In the first part of this series, I focused on two of the primary causes for failure in the implementation and use of Agile methodologies — cultural failure and lack of training. While these are probably the primary things that cause issues with Agile processes, they’re far from the only things that can (and do) go wrong. […]
Solving the Mystery of Latent Customer Needs
The single most powerful tool that Product Managers have to make products that amaze and delight their users is to figure out what problems their customers have that they don’t even realize are causing them pain. Most people didn’t understand the benefits of 1,000 songs in their pocket when Apple first introduced the iPod back in […]
A Product Management Reading List
There seem to be tons of books out there that claim to be “perfect” for the Product Manager and those wanting to move into a role in Product Management. There are also reading lists across the Internet — some better, some worse. I’ve found the following 18 books to be essential reading for anyone who […]
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 […]
Don’t Be Overly Defensive
As a Product Manager, we all have very close ties to our product — in some ways it’s our metaphorical baby. And like any parent, we tend to focus on the good parts of our product — the problems it solves, the efficiency that it provides, the benefits that everyone who uses it gets to […]
Saying No Without Saying No
One of the biggest challenges that many new product managers face is that they want to make sure that they’re making a good impression on their stakeholders, and they don’t want to say “no” to any request coming in. They don’t want to be viewed as a blocker of progress or as an unsympathetic ear […]
Pulling Yourself Out of the Fires
If you’re like most Product Managers, you find yourself constantly struggling to manage incoming priorities, especially when there are problems that directly impact your clients, customers, and ongoing plans. It’s way too easy to wind up getting caught up in the constant firefighting efforts that happen on a day-to-day basis, and extricating yourself from the […]
“I Don’t Know” is Not a Four-Letter Word
There comes a time in every PM’s life (perhaps even daily) when someone will ask you a question that you honestly do not know the answer to. This question might be about the product, the process, the customer, future plans, or something else business related. And, all too often, we either wind up dodging the […]
Top Five New Year’s Resolutions for Product Managers
As the clock turns past midnight, it’s officially a new year — out with 2014 and in with 2015! If you’re anything like me, 2014 was an interesting year, full of both challenges and opportunities, as is every year as a Product Manager. As we’re looking forward into 2015, I thought it was appropriate to […]
Prioritizing in an Agile World: What’s Now, What’s Next, What Else?
While helping through a transition with a PM and Dev team that I worked with on a daily basis, one of the major stumbling blocks I ran into was Release Planning and Roadmapping. When I got there, they were in many ways using all of the right Agile terms, but not really following Agile principles […]
You Go to Market With the Dev Team You Have, Not the Dev Team You Want
This is the second time I’ve massacred a quote from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and while I personally have no love for the man, he’s a font of applicable and interesting quotations on the subject of battle tactics, strategy, and resource management. This particular quote comes from a hearing in which he was […]
Five Things a Clever Product Manager Should ALWAYS Do
In a prior post, I talked about five things that clever PMs should never do — traps that we often fall into as a result of our focus on getting things done and delivering value, while perhaps not being as mindful as we should about leading through influence. Today, I’m going to flip that post […]