INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
There is a lot of advice out there for how to write requirements. There is not as much discussion about why to write requirements. Spend some time thinking about why you write requirements before you make decisions about how to write your requirements. Why Write Requirements? MORE
How can Theodore Levitt’s classic Whole Product approach help with defining a product roadmap? I’ve been revisiting his concepts and their use recently, thinking about how to revise them for some exercises I’ve been doing with product teams. Whole Product Game Background. MORE
Understanding your users is critical to developing good products. A “complete” understanding is sometimes required, and always comes at a cost. A contextualized understanding is valuable but less so, and costly but less so. MORE
There are several ways to answer the question “is agile cheaper than waterfall?” ” Here are two of my favorites: “It depends. Agile done well is cheaper, as long as you measure correctly.” ” “You’re asking the wrong question. MORE
Agile is not magical. Changing from a waterfall process to an agile process changes how your team works, and helps eliminate inefficiencies. Adopting an agile process does not let you magically have a more successful product. What makes agile powerful is also makes it dangerous. Triage and Urgency. MORE
You know you’re a product manager when this image causes more than a chuckle. A few random thoughts inspired by this Rorschach test of product management concepts from sunk cost fallacy to intentionality. Hanlon’s Razor. MORE
How do you work with professional services, consulting, field engineers, etc. to make your product better? Do you just treat their inputs as yet another channel for feature requests , or do you engage them as an incredibly potent market-sensing capability? Conversation Starter. MORE
Theodore Levitt may have developed the whole product model to help companies compete more effectively with their products. We wrote about the whole product game based on Mr. Levitt’s work. MORE
How the past can provide context for your future plans. For our recent book, Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty (O’Reilly), my co-authors C. Todd Lombardo, Evan Ryan, and I interviewed over 80 practicing product people. MORE
Being “outside-in”, “outcome-based”, and “market-driven” is particularly important for creating successful products. The problem is that just saying the words is not enough to help someone shift their thinking. MORE
Paddy Barrett in Ireland is preparing his Master’s thesis on Product Management and would like to interview (USA) state-side product managers for his primary research. It would be awesome if you could help him, and help us all. My Connection. MORE
Defining and building a good minimum viable product is much harder than it sounds. Finding that “one thing” you can do, which people want, is really about a lot more than picking one thing. MORE
Software as a Service is not a one and done transactional offering. A product or business built on SaaS is built on the subscription model – recurring revenue is half of what drives the business (and valuation). The other half is the rate of growth of that recurring revenue. MORE
The pop-culture concept of a silver bullet – a simple solution to a hard problem – is a dangerous idea. It can be used to over-promise, and doom a team to under-delivery. MORE
In my previous post , I described a way to think about our internal product communications, and how that can help us optimize our time and make us more effective as Product Managers. MORE
Fundamentally, product management requires you to assess, synthesize, and prioritize the needs which drive the creation of your product in the context of three main objectives: desirability, viability, and feasibility. While laudable, these objectives are too abstract to be actionable. MORE
Why Technical Debt Matters for Product People. As the person in charge of the product, you may not be terribly concerned about how clean and well-structured the code is. MORE
Are you inviting your engineers to participate in discovery with you? If yes, do you get pushback from them? Does your organization prefer that your engineers only write code? MORE
We hear a lot about building products which are “good enough” or “just barely good enough.” ” How do we know what “good enough” means for our customers? No one really tells us. Different Perspectives of Good Enough. MORE
Your product roadmap is a view of what you are building right now, in the near future, and in the more distant future. Or is your roadmap a view of why you are building whatever you’re building right now, in the near future, and in the more distant future? MORE
Taking agile, a process otherwise optimized for small, cross-functional, collaborative teams and making it work at scale is fascinating. You have to change some elements, and retain others, as you redefine the context. MORE
Come Prepared. Make sure you carry out the necessary prep work prior to the sprint planning meeting. Be clear on what you want the sprint to achieve, ensure that the product backlog is appropriately refined (or groomed) , and have its high-priority items ready. MORE
You’ve got some shiny new segmentation data about prospective customers; how much they earn, where they are located, how old they are. How does that help you make decisions about your product? MORE
As Steven Haines first told me, “strategy first, roadmap second.” ” There is a step between the two – deciding which problems you will focus on solving with your product. Strategy defines the context for product strategy, and your product roadmap is a planning (and communication) tool for executing your product strategy. Understanding how problems are framed in your market is critical to developing a successful product strategy. Ted Levitt Whole Product Model. MORE
Product owners and product managers. Two roles, often done by one person. Together, the product people need to take an organization’s strategy, figure out the appropriate product strategy, and convert that into actionable work for the delivery teams to create the right product. MORE
Assumptions are interesting things – we all make them all the time, and we rarely acknowledge that we’re doing it. MORE
If you ask someone if they require encryption on their device, first of all, you will likely get one of two answers – yes or no – useful for segmenting your market or developing persona. MORE
Last month, Mike Smart of Egress Solutions and I gave a webinar for Pragmatic Marketing on product roadmapping when working in agile environments. We had a great turnout of over 1500 people in the session – with not nearly enough time to answer all of the questions. MORE
Forbes quoted Steve Jobs as saying “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” ” This is a really enlightened perspective – and a way to enforce focus from the top down. MORE
Your passion is your greatest asset, learn how to share it Continue reading → Knowledge Purpose ambitions courage creativity entrepreneur experience grit passion MORE
What is Sustainable Pace? Sustainable pace is an important agile principle. The Agile Manifesto defines it in the following way: “The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” MORE
Why a Product Strategy Process Matters. An effective product strategy process should ensure that a valid product strategy and an actionable product roadmap are always available—that a shared and valid approach to achieving product success is available at anytime, as the picture below illustrates. MORE
“Agile” is something most teams do wrong*, without realizing they’re doing it wrong. A good 2×2 matrix acts as a lens, helping to convert information into insight. MORE
Refocusing the Lens. Yet another call from an IT team asking if we can help them transition from a project-focused view to a product-focused view of their work. MORE
Product owners are likely to find themselves alone in the organizational wilderness. Their organizations expect them to connect the towers of long-term strategic planning with the frontiers of great new products. Iterative and incremental development of solutions can bring these two worlds together. MORE
By Bruce McCarthy – I was completely wrong about the Business of Software conference. Friend and Co-Founder of Sense and Respond Press, Josh Seiden, told me it was great, but when I went the first time last year I think I was expecting an event for the CFOs and financial analysts of large companies all… Product Marketing MORE
Tyner Blain
MAY 24, 2017
Taking agile, a process otherwise optimized for small, cross-functional, collaborative teams and making it work at scale is fascinating. You have to change some elements, and retain others, as you redefine the context.
Tyner Blain
NOVEMBER 26, 2018
As Steven Haines first told me, “strategy first, roadmap second.” ” There is a step between the two – deciding which problems you will focus on solving with your product. Strategy defines the context for product strategy, and your product roadmap is a planning (and communication) tool for executing your product strategy. Understanding how problems are framed in your market is critical to developing a successful product strategy. Ted Levitt Whole Product Model.
Tyner Blain
JUNE 11, 2017
The pop-culture concept of a silver bullet – a simple solution to a hard problem – is a dangerous idea. It can be used to over-promise, and doom a team to under-delivery.
Tyner Blain
SEPTEMBER 10, 2017
Understanding your users is critical to developing good products. A “complete” understanding is sometimes required, and always comes at a cost. A contextualized understanding is valuable but less so, and costly but less so.
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Tyner Blain
JULY 10, 2017
You know you’re a product manager when this image causes more than a chuckle. A few random thoughts inspired by this Rorschach test of product management concepts from sunk cost fallacy to intentionality. Hanlon’s Razor.
Tyner Blain
OCTOBER 6, 2016
Being “outside-in”, “outcome-based”, and “market-driven” is particularly important for creating successful products. The problem is that just saying the words is not enough to help someone shift their thinking.
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Tyner Blain
APRIL 12, 2016
Product owners and product managers. Two roles, often done by one person. Together, the product people need to take an organization’s strategy, figure out the appropriate product strategy, and convert that into actionable work for the delivery teams to create the right product.
Tyner Blain
APRIL 7, 2015
Last month, Mike Smart of Egress Solutions and I gave a webinar for Pragmatic Marketing on product roadmapping when working in agile environments. We had a great turnout of over 1500 people in the session – with not nearly enough time to answer all of the questions.
Tyner Blain
JANUARY 8, 2017
Assumptions are interesting things – we all make them all the time, and we rarely acknowledge that we’re doing it.
Tyner Blain
DECEMBER 10, 2014
We hear a lot about building products which are “good enough” or “just barely good enough.” ” How do we know what “good enough” means for our customers? No one really tells us. Different Perspectives of Good Enough.
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Basic dashboards used to be enough to thrill end users. But over time, modern capabilities have emerged—and bare-minimum features are no longer cutting it. How have analytics changed? And where do your BI offerings fall? Find out sophisticated ways to future-proof your application. Brought to you by Logi Analytics.
Tyner Blain
DECEMBER 3, 2014
Your product roadmap is a view of what you are building right now, in the near future, and in the more distant future. Or is your roadmap a view of why you are building whatever you’re building right now, in the near future, and in the more distant future?
|
Tyner Blain
JUNE 3, 2016
How do you work with professional services, consulting, field engineers, etc. to make your product better? Do you just treat their inputs as yet another channel for feature requests , or do you engage them as an incredibly potent market-sensing capability? Conversation Starter.
Tyner Blain
APRIL 6, 2016
If you ask someone if they require encryption on their device, first of all, you will likely get one of two answers – yes or no – useful for segmenting your market or developing persona.
Tyner Blain
APRIL 29, 2015
Fundamentally, product management requires you to assess, synthesize, and prioritize the needs which drive the creation of your product in the context of three main objectives: desirability, viability, and feasibility. While laudable, these objectives are too abstract to be actionable.
Tyner Blain
FEBRUARY 17, 2016
Software as a Service is not a one and done transactional offering. A product or business built on SaaS is built on the subscription model – recurring revenue is half of what drives the business (and valuation). The other half is the rate of growth of that recurring revenue.
Advertisement
Think your customers will pay more for data visualizations in your application? Five years ago they may have. But today, dashboards and visualizations have become table stakes. Discover which features will differentiate your application and maximize the ROI of your embedded analytics. Brought to you by Logi Analytics.
Tyner Blain
MARCH 30, 2016
Product owners are likely to find themselves alone in the organizational wilderness. Their organizations expect them to connect the towers of long-term strategic planning with the frontiers of great new products. Iterative and incremental development of solutions can bring these two worlds together.
Tyner Blain
NOVEMBER 12, 2014
“Agile” is something most teams do wrong*, without realizing they’re doing it wrong. A good 2×2 matrix acts as a lens, helping to convert information into insight.
Tyner Blain
JULY 17, 2013
There is a lot of advice out there for how to write requirements. There is not as much discussion about why to write requirements. Spend some time thinking about why you write requirements before you make decisions about how to write your requirements. Why Write Requirements?
Tyner Blain
JULY 9, 2013
There are several ways to answer the question “is agile cheaper than waterfall?” ” Here are two of my favorites: “It depends. Agile done well is cheaper, as long as you measure correctly.” ” “You’re asking the wrong question.
Advertisement
Many application teams leave embedded analytics to languish until something—an unhappy customer, plummeting revenue, a spike in customer churn—demands change. But by then, it may be too late. In this White Paper, Logi Analytics has identified 5 tell-tale signs your project is moving from “nice to have” to “needed yesterday.". Brought to you by Logi Analytics.
Tyner Blain
JUNE 12, 2014
Agile is not magical. Changing from a waterfall process to an agile process changes how your team works, and helps eliminate inefficiencies. Adopting an agile process does not let you magically have a more successful product. What makes agile powerful is also makes it dangerous. Triage and Urgency.
Tyner Blain
AUGUST 1, 2014
Theodore Levitt may have developed the whole product model to help companies compete more effectively with their products. We wrote about the whole product game based on Mr. Levitt’s work.
Tyner Blain
JANUARY 5, 2015
Forbes quoted Steve Jobs as saying “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” ” This is a really enlightened perspective – and a way to enforce focus from the top down.
Tyner Blain
FEBRUARY 11, 2015
You’ve got some shiny new segmentation data about prospective customers; how much they earn, where they are located, how old they are. How does that help you make decisions about your product?
Advertisement
Every time an application team gets caught up in the “build vs buy” debate, it stalls projects and delays time to revenue. There is a third option. Partnering with an analytics development platform gives you the freedom to customize a solution without the risks and long-term costs of building your own. Learn when and why it makes sense to build, buy, or take a combined approach to embedded BI. Brought to you by Logi Analytics.
Tyner Blain
AUGUST 7, 2013
Paddy Barrett in Ireland is preparing his Master’s thesis on Product Management and would like to interview (USA) state-side product managers for his primary research. It would be awesome if you could help him, and help us all. My Connection.
Tyner Blain
AUGUST 1, 2013
How can Theodore Levitt’s classic Whole Product approach help with defining a product roadmap? I’ve been revisiting his concepts and their use recently, thinking about how to revise them for some exercises I’ve been doing with product teams. Whole Product Game Background.
Roman Pichler
DECEMBER 4, 2018
Why Technical Debt Matters for Product People. As the person in charge of the product, you may not be terribly concerned about how clean and well-structured the code is.
280 Group
DECEMBER 10, 2018
Refocusing the Lens. Yet another call from an IT team asking if we can help them transition from a project-focused view to a product-focused view of their work.
Advertisement
Why do some embedded analytics projects succeed while others fail? We surveyed 500+ application teams embedding analytics to find out which analytics features actually move the needle. Read the 6th annual State of Embedded Analytics Report to discover new best practices. Brought to you by Logi Analytics.
Product Talk
DECEMBER 12, 2018
Are you inviting your engineers to participate in discovery with you? If yes, do you get pushback from them? Does your organization prefer that your engineers only write code?
Lead on Purpose
NOVEMBER 20, 2017
Your passion is your greatest asset, learn how to share it Continue reading → Knowledge Purpose ambitions courage creativity entrepreneur experience grit passion
Roman Pichler
NOVEMBER 6, 2018
What is Sustainable Pace? Sustainable pace is an important agile principle. The Agile Manifesto defines it in the following way: “The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.”
Roman Pichler
OCTOBER 2, 2018
Why a Product Strategy Process Matters. An effective product strategy process should ensure that a valid product strategy and an actionable product roadmap are always available—that a shared and valid approach to achieving product success is available at anytime, as the picture below illustrates.
Speaker: Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant, Rothman Consulting Group
Is your agile team overloaded with feature requests, with no time for discovery? Do your roadmaps read like impossible wish lists? Well, you’re not alone. It may seem impossible now, but what if we said that with a few changes, you could be meeting deadlines with the ability to predict progress with accuracy, be happy with your progress against the roadmap, and be making time for near-continuous discovery? Johanna Rothman has seen this all too often across many different organizations. She will take us through five common traps that agile product teams fall into – and likely you are in several of those traps right now. And good news - she has ways to avoid them!
bpma ProductHub
SEPTEMBER 9, 2018
By Bruce McCarthy – I was completely wrong about the Business of Software conference. Friend and Co-Founder of Sense and Respond Press, Josh Seiden, told me it was great, but when I went the first time last year I think I was expecting an event for the CFOs and financial analysts of large companies all… Product Marketing
Roman Pichler
SEPTEMBER 4, 2018
Come Prepared. Make sure you carry out the necessary prep work prior to the sprint planning meeting. Be clear on what you want the sprint to achieve, ensure that the product backlog is appropriately refined (or groomed) , and have its high-priority items ready.
bpma ProductHub
NOVEMBER 27, 2017
How the past can provide context for your future plans. For our recent book, Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty (O’Reilly), my co-authors C. Todd Lombardo, Evan Ryan, and I interviewed over 80 practicing product people.
Folding Burritos
FEBRUARY 13, 2018
In my previous post , I described a way to think about our internal product communications, and how that can help us optimize our time and make us more effective as Product Managers.
Speaker: Miles Robinson, Agile and Management Consultant, Motivational Speaker
So you want to set your product apart with the latest analytics, but you’re not sure where to start. How do you know what your customers want? And how can you make sure that you’re solving their problems? And wait a second, is it even feasible for your team to take this on right now? Join Miles Robinson, Agile and Management Consultant, as he covers five key considerations for you to keep in mind when you’re updating your software or app to offer the latest in embedded dashboards. You’ll leave with a better understanding of where to begin on creating actionable, insightful dashboards.
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