Product Management: Saying No Without Shutting Them Down
As a product manager, one of the hardest things you have to do is say ‘no’ to ideas, suggestions, requests and urgent demands from customers and internal stakeholders. However, adding the word ‘no’ to your management vocabulary is essential in order to make those difficult product decisions. You ... →
To Manage a Product Roadmap, You Must Be a Diplomat, Strategist and Defender
It takes commitment to maintain the high level of trust required for company wide buy-in and follow-through. Here are the 3 roles Product Managers must perform to achieve roadmap leadership: The Diplomat It’s not our role to dictate through authority where the product should go. Instead, we ne... →
Essential Ingredients to Reach your Product Goals: Here's How to Accelerate Company Growth
The position of product manager can often be difficult to define. The job is not simply about covering tactical activities like managing backlogs, releases and user testing. It’s also about being strategic in delivering the true customer value, creating revenue at low cost and then getting your t... →
Factors that Damage Your Integrity. Reflecting on Adverse Conditions.
Product Managers rightly face criticism when negotiating or selling product vision to stakeholders. We increasingly turn to data analytics and customer insight in hopes of outlining a product's most pressing problems, whether it’s a user acquisition drop off, a shift in engagement, or failure to ... →
You accomplish everything through others
Imagine attempting to persuade a stakeholder and it results in increased resistance. So much talk, so much rationale, so many facts. And because your approach was logical — one that leveraged data, your experience, and expertise — friction and disagreement ensues. The Product Manager title alone... →
To make engineers more autonomous create a partnership
It is 5:00PM in the office, and a member of the engineering team stops by the Product team desk and expresses they want to build everything at once. When discussed, the head of engineering states that excessive rework undermines motivation. That they prefer focusing on code without a lot of distr... →
You need to be contagious and thrive on the right amount of tension
I've been in product for a while. Each year I write a few lines to re-frame what the hell it is I do and how to remain successful. --- Product management is a discipline of quirky nonconformists responsible of defining the "why". Winning products thrive on the direction of these individuals who ... →
Seek engagement from your office community to sell your views
You’re the one who will tell people what should be built and why. So why was it so tough to get engagement from the technical teams? Because people need to buy into your vision and engineers should understand the ‘why’ behind their work and how it relates back to delivering customer value. Nothi... →