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
by Ellen Gottesdiener – The Product Canvas can help address a number of challenges as you transition to a product-centric organization. You may want to take a step back to rethink your product strategy. 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
by Charu Manglani – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has invaded nearly every sphere of our lives. It is the hidden force of math suggesting the best route on google maps or what to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. 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
by Scott Hilton – On October 11, 2019, the Product Executive Forum(PEF) held another well attended meeting. This month’s topic was product launches. Many thanks to Steven Veneman and Julius Francis of Juniper Networks for serving as awesome hosts. 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
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
Christina Wodtke’s latest is a gripping read, combining a compelling story line, with some novel, and useful ideas to help team dynamics and how to lead. 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
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
I talk to a lot of PMs and I ask them (and everyone who subscribes to my newsletter) the same question: what’s your biggest struggle as a Product Manager? I get back all sorts of replies, but by far the biggest issues are about prioritization, in some shape or form. MORE
When deciding how to invest in your product, you need to take into account the risks that your investments will not return the outcomes you desire. 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
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
In our continuing series on managing the risk in your backlog, we look at the risk of kidding ourselves. 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
FEBRUARY 4, 2019
When deciding how to invest in your product, you need to take into account the risks that your investments will not return the outcomes you desire.
Tyner Blain
APRIL 8, 2019
In our continuing series on managing the risk in your backlog, we look at the risk of kidding ourselves.
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.
Speaker: Dave Martin, Founder, Right to Left
How do you create sustainable growth? Do your product and feature releases achieve the desired results? In this talk, Dave Martin, founder at Right To Left, will explore how human bias repeatedly hinders product success and causes teams to miss out on their potential.
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
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
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.
Tyner Blain
JULY 22, 2016
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.
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.
Speaker: Ron Lichty, Consultant: Interim VP Engineering, Ron Lichty Consulting, Inc.
As a senior software leader, you likely spend more time working on the architecture of your systems than the architecture of your organization. Yet, structuring our teams and organizations is a critical factor for success. In fact, the impact of software architecture parallels the impact of organizational structure. We are excited to welcome Ron Lichty, co-author of a seminal book on managing software teams and a well-known speaker, he’ll speak to organizing for effectiveness, productivity and joy.
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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
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.
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?
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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
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?
Speaker: Beekey Cheung, Software Consultant, Professor Beekums, LLC
Estimates are a contentious topic in software development. Most of our development teams hate providing estimates and many managers are starting to view them as unnecessary. As senior software leaders, how can we determine whether estimates are helpful or harmful to our teams? We are excited to be joined by Beekey Cheung, a software consultant and blogger known as Professor Beekums, who has helped many leaders and teams go from fearing estimates to using them appropriately. He'll walk us through the value of estimates, how to overcome the hesitancy many have in giving them, and how to provide better estimates.
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 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.
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.
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.
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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?
Speaker: Michael Carducci, CTO, Mago:Tech
As senior tech leaders, we often fall prey to thinking that a “good idea” and logical case is sufficient to get the desired response and result. We might be trying to get our CEO on-board with investment in a new technology or a rearchitecture effort, or we might want culture or process changes by our team. Our “good idea” is simply the beginning. An idea must be communicated; a case must be made; and ultimately other people must be persuaded to get onboard. Michael Carducci brings a fascinating background to this webinar. He’s a technologist and regularly works to help senior leaders improve their results. He’s also a professional mentalist and has been a student of psychology, human behavior and the principles of influence for nearly two decades.
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.
The Product Bistro
DECEMBER 14, 2019
Christina Wodtke’s latest is a gripping read, combining a compelling story line, with some novel, and useful ideas to help team dynamics and how to lead.
Folding Burritos
DECEMBER 4, 2019
I talk to a lot of PMs and I ask them (and everyone who subscribes to my newsletter) the same question: what’s your biggest struggle as a Product Manager? I get back all sorts of replies, but by far the biggest issues are about prioritization, in some shape or form.
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bpma ProductHub
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
by Ellen Gottesdiener – The Product Canvas can help address a number of challenges as you transition to a product-centric organization. You may want to take a step back to rethink your product strategy.
bpma ProductHub
NOVEMBER 11, 2019
by Scott Hilton – On October 11, 2019, the Product Executive Forum(PEF) held another well attended meeting. This month’s topic was product launches. Many thanks to Steven Veneman and Julius Francis of Juniper Networks for serving as awesome hosts.
bpma ProductHub
NOVEMBER 16, 2019
by Charu Manglani – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has invaded nearly every sphere of our lives. It is the hidden force of math suggesting the best route on google maps or what to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Speaker: Alex Rasmussen, CEO, Bits on Disk
If you want to make your development team squirm, ask them about database schema changes or API versioning. Most development teams struggle with changing database schemas and updating API versions without breaking existing code. Alex Rasmussen is an expert in helping teams through these struggles. His talk will examine database schema changes and API versioning as two instances of schema evolution: how your systems respond when the structure of your structured data changes.
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