Here we are at the end of another year — I honestly can’t believe that 2017 is just around the corner!! Over the past year I’ve had the pleasure of engaging with all sorts of new folks, provided some mentoring to new and experienced Product Managers, taught a couple classes at General Assembly, and even started work […]
Five Things a Product Manager Should Be Thankful For – 2016 Edition
It’s become an annual exercise here at The Clever PM to create a list every year of the five things that Product Managers should be thankful for — it started the first year, continued into the second year, and is now rolling into the third year as your go-to source for tips, tricks, and hacks […]
“Humans Are Hard…”
Never have I heard a better description of the challenge that faces Product Managers than a quote that I overheard at this year’s ProductCamp Seattle — “Humans are hard…” spoken by none other than my fellow General Assembly Product Management instructor Tricia Cervenan, as part of a panel discussion. Those simple words struck a chord with […]
INVEST in Your User Stories!
I’ve touched on User Stories on several occasions, my favorite being Why Your User Stories Suck! Today I’m here to share with you a very common, yet very commonly overlooked, way to check each and every User Story on your backlog to see whether or not it’s really “ready” for your Dev teams. One of […]
What Can a PM Learn From Gaming?
While Product Management might be my career of choice, my primary hobby of choice has to be gaming. I’ve been playing games in one form or another for as long as I can remember — tabletop games, video games, role-playing games…you name it, I’ve played some permutation of it in my life. As I’ve grown […]
How to Spend Your First 90 Days as a New Product Manager
A lot of Product Managers wind up rolling into the position with little to no preparation, training, or even a real understanding of the role, and it’s common for early struggles to really hamper a newly-minted Product Manager’s success. To avoid this, it’s important to approach your job and your career just like you would […]
What Makes a Great Product Manager?
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 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 […]