The Product Manager Coach Blog

APRIL 30, 2025

And in 2025, that definition is looking a lot more hybrid. And when budgets are tight, leaderships not going to hire three different people when they can find one PM who can wear multiple hats. Could you manage a roadmap, run a standup, and charm stakeholders? A whopping 98% of new PM openings are for experienced hires.

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Productside

APRIL 30, 2025

But the definition of what makes a great product manager? But as Tom pointed out, real leadership starts when you ask: What outcome is this drivingfor our business and our customers? The takeaway: if you cant connect a roadmap item to a clear outcome, it doesnt belong there. Lets set the record straight. Thats evolving fast.

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Arkenea

MAY 12, 2025

However, when comparing all potential destinations, one country consistently emerges as the definitive leader: India. Arkenea’s unique position, combining US-based leadership with elite Indian development capabilities creates an unmatched advantage for businesses seeking quality, cost-effectiveness, and reliability.

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Folding Burritos

DECEMBER 4, 2019

I believe the main culprits are Mr. Roadmap and Mr. Backlog. Culprit #1: Mr. Roadmap. How should we balance technical debt vs our feature roadmap? My favorite definitions of strategy are the simplest I’ve found. Why is that? Chock-full of Themes, Epics, Releases and Features. Progress bars and Milestones. .

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Roman Pichler

JULY 8, 2024

The individuals whose buy-in to strategy and roadmap decisions is crucial are the players: They are interested in your product, as they, for example, will have to market and sell it. Smaller strategy updates and product roadmapping decisions, however, are not as critical. I refer to this group as key stakeholders.

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Mind the Product

FEBRUARY 15, 2018

Much has been written about the process of creating product roadmaps, not least the six great articles written by my own team. I believe the actions of a product leader all too often are the root cause of a “bad” roadmap. Without thoughtful leadership around them, it may not be in product manager’s gift to achieve a “good” roadmap.

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Roman Pichler

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

This individual leads the product team, not by being the boss but by exercising emergent leadership. 2] Use the Right Goals A team is, by definition, a group of individuals who work together on the same goal. Additionally, it is based on my leadership work, especially my book How to Lead in Product Management. [2]

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The Product Coalition

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Roadmaps require massive prioritization. It’s nice, but there is a much higher level of prioritization that needs to happen and would impact your roadmap much more. The same happens with your roadmap. Your roadmap must serve the company’s (business) goals , and therefore that’s where you need to start. Photo by Anete L?si?a

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The Product Coalition

FEBRUARY 4, 2023

But product management at the lower levels is still an individual sport, while product leadership at the highest levels is a team sport. They learned how to play the team sport called product leadership. The definition of a product strategy is not the strategy of the product department. Are you ready to make the shift?

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Roman Pichler

JUNE 1, 2020

While this definition includes users and customers, I use the term in this article to refer to the internal business stakeholders. Collaboratively set goals , for example, user and business goals on the product strategy and product goals on the product roadmap. The following tips will help you with this.

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Roman Pichler

MAY 4, 2022

I believe that the first definition is more helpful, especially in an agile context. Use a product vision ; a product strategy with user needs and business goals; and a product roadmap with product goals (aka. Tips for Forming Effective Product Teams in Scrum. Without sufficient trust, people will struggle to work together well.

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Melissa Perri

JULY 23, 2024

I review strategies and roadmaps. At the end of this review, I do a Product Leadership workshop with C-Suite and Product leaders, where I show them what good looks like, and they have a chance to reflect on where they are. Then we put together a roadmap for change, and I check in with them along the way as they transform.

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Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 1, 2020

On this episode of Intercom on Product myself and Paul Adams, our SVP of Product, take a look at roadmapping. Knowing how and when to define a roadmap, who to include and how long to plan for are key elements to finding the balanced approach that you need. As you grow functions, the audience for your roadmap widens.

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Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 1, 2020

On this episode of Intercom on Product myself and Paul Adams, our SVP of Product, take a look at roadmapping. Knowing how and when to define a roadmap, who to include and how long to plan for are key elements to finding the balanced approach that you need. As you grow functions, the audience for your roadmap widens.

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Roman Pichler

OCTOBER 5, 2021

Second, they can be completed in a sprint according to the Definition of Done. To prevent your product backlog from becoming a wish list, follow these two tips: First, select a product goal and align your product with a strategic plan like a product roadmap (as I discuss below). Product Roadmap, Product Backlog, and Product Goal.

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The Product Guy

MARCH 27, 2018

When I started my current product role last September, I had a textbook definition of what makes a great product manager. But on day one of the program kickoff, I already began to re-assess my initial definition! It is a statement that will become part of my refined definition of a Product Manager. Your followers choose you.”

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Alchemer Mobile

NOVEMBER 23, 2021

What strategies do you use to prioritize your product roadmap? Her passion is derived from igniting vision, commitment, innovation, and trust in leadership, development, and marketing teams. ?WATCH You can have beautiful roadmap decks and beautiful PowerPoints. What tools or methodologies do you use?

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Roman Pichler

JUNE 4, 2018

This helps the individuals embrace an agile mindset, take advantage of new techniques and tools—think of hypotheses-driven strategy validation, goal-oriented product roadmaps, and user stories—and effectively collaborate with the agile development teams. To get the roles definition right, start by identifying the company’s products.

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The Product Coalition

MAY 9, 2021

When I talk about roadmaps with younger product leaders, I often hear things like “we don’t need one, we are agile” or “why build a roadmap when things will surely change”. The roadmap sets the strategic direction of the company, and when built right it also doesn’t have to change that frequently, despite your agility.

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The Product Coalition

OCTOBER 30, 2023

So either we work together to understand your objectives, call them goals if you’d like, and the outcome you are looking for from the product, or we will end the discussion, and you won’t get a committed set of work on the roadmap.” We went away from detailed, long-term, feature-committed roadmaps. I explained this many times.

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Product Innovation Educators

APRIL 17, 2023

Paul acquired the breadth of experience through his leadership roles at San Francisco Bay Area startups and high-growth companies. If the leadership team doesn’t have a good understanding of how to engage with a product manager and what to expect from them, then any reason is enough reason to move on and find someone else.

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Johanna Rothman

JULY 22, 2021

That leads to large and unchangeable roadmaps and a lot of emphasis on predictability. In this post, I'll take a first pass at definitions, so we can separate the strategic from the tactical. This means you can create a product roadmap and a backlog. If you can't write that down, you can't build a roadmap or a backlog.

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Product Innovation Educators

AUGUST 2, 2021

1:34] What was going on at Roll20 that cased leadership to hire their first product person? It was a time of targeted growth, and leadership was excited about growing the platform. No one would have been able to pre-optimize a feature roadmap for 2020, because no one knew how the world was going to change.

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Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 28, 2019

A great partnership between product and sales needs to be based on shared definitions of success and an agreed upon process to collaborate. “If your product team isn’t taking roadmap input from your sales team, you’re not listening to the potential market” Second, sales and product need a way to collaborate on the product roadmap.

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Product Management University

DECEMBER 8, 2023

The word roadmap usually conjures up thoughts of a product roadmap for people in a technology product company. For customer success managers though, the intent of a customer account roadmap, while similar, is bit more surgical than a product roadmap when it comes to defining success and leading customers to it.

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The Product Guy

JULY 30, 2020

Product Managers (PM) need to effectively communicate product vision, strategic roadmaps and concepts to a variety of different stakeholders through the different stages of the product life cycle. Guest Post by: Inis Hormann (Mentee, Session 11, The Product Mentor) [Paired with Mentor, Paul Hurwitz].

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ProductPlan

AUGUST 7, 2020

I worked with the product leadership to plan out a product strategy. Then, I created a product roadmap to move that strategy forward, which ultimately drove a 15% increase in revenue and a 20% increase in retention. I believe in focusing on outcomes to power-up aligning your product strategy with business goals onto a roadmap.

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Product Innovation Educators

JUNE 12, 2023

Processes include forums to sync with different members of your team and other teams, forums to get leadership alignment, ensuring high quality of deliverables, and OKR planning. Planning includes the product vision, strategy, and roadmap. How do you set the vision, strategy, and roadmap? At what cadence do you do that?

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Sachin Rekhi

FEBRUARY 16, 2020

I find that a product walkthrough is often needed when you are trying to make the case to leadership to green-light a new venture based on the strength of your vision for it. Design: Product Roadmap. Probably the most visible aspect of the product manager role is driving the product roadmap. Design: Customer Discovery Insights.

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Roman Pichler

APRIL 5, 2022

For product strategy and roadmap meetings, I recommend involving the key stakeholders , for example, someone from sales, marketing, support, and finance, as well as development team representatives—ideally members who know about the user experience (UX), architecture, and technologies. 2 Involve the Right People. Close the meeting.

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Johanna Rothman

JULY 29, 2021

The managers want rigid roadmaps. However, the managers create a roadmap similar to the image above. That roadmap has large features and long “deadlines.” The managers created a Gantt Chart as a picture, not a roadmap. The managers might even think this is roadmap reflects an agile approach.

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Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 9, 2020

When we think of corporate leadership, we instantly picture CEOs and executive teams, but the role played by boards is often glossed over and underappreciated. Leadership during the COVID crisis. Balancing executive management and boardroom leadership. It’s definitely a big topic at Dropbox. Fostering diversity.

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Roman Pichler

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

Based on a live demo of the increment , you determine which product backlog items have been completed by using the definition of done, the quality criteria every product increment must fulfil. Once the new product increment is available, you know for sure how much the development team has achieved.

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Mind the Product

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

As a product leader, you are the product manager for a leadership team, and the tricks you learned in product teams remain valuable, they just need a little tweak. A leadership team that has all these types of work visible on its roadmap and in its strategy is in a good place. Definition of Done. Value Proposition.

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Mind the Product

AUGUST 1, 2019

When it does, you often end up in a constant game of “catch-up” or becoming perpetually beholden to a category definition defined by another company and rigged in their favor. Pendo’s recent State of Product Leadership survey found that 77% of product teams are evaluated based on the number of features they ship. Embrace the Sunset.

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Product Innovation Educators

JANUARY 13, 2020

Listen to understand the basic definition of marketing, marketing roles that may have resources useful to product managers, and how product managers can make better use of marketing resources. The Creative Cloud was a definite risk. She has two degrees from MIT and a ton of practical experience. 7:06] How do you describe marketing?

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Intercom, Inc.

MAY 20, 2019

The other path, the one I’ll focus on in this post, continues along the journey of individual contributor : to mastery of the craft of design, to leadership without the need to manage, to above all else shipping great work. Another dimension on which behaviors can be assessed is whether you are demonstrating leadership in your role.

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