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 […]
Why is Change So Damn Hard!?
One of the primary things that Product Managers are constantly working on is change — changing the way people view our customers, changing the way our customers view our product, changing the culture of our company to be more agile, changing peoples’ minds about what’s important and what’s not…the list goes on and on. And, […]
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 […]
Five New Resolutions for PMs in 2017
A couple years ago, shortly after I launched the blog, I posted my first New Year’s Resolutions for Product Managers, which was a big hit. Somehow it slipped my mind to update it for 2016, but here I am with an update as we roll into the new year…one as full of uncertainties as it […]
“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 […]
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 […]
Leading Through Influence: Limiting Choices
I was working with a future mentee last week and we noticed a recurring theme to some of our discussions — that a large part of good Product Management results from limiting the number of choices that our teams and our executives have to choose from, so that they make decisions that reflect the actual […]
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 […]
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 […]
When the Chips Are Down, Our Values Show Through
There comes a time in every Product Manager’s life when they face adversity and challenges above and beyond the day-to-day administrivia that we struggle with every day. And it’s in these moments, at these times, that we find out what we really believe in, and what we’re really willing to do to stand our ground […]
Getting Shit Done is Job #1
As a Product Manager, sometimes we get so caught up in either the macro or micro concerns of our day-to-day lives that we forget that getting shit done is our primary job. It does no good whatsoever to have our product remain in a constant state of development, with projects that get put on the shelf […]
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 […]