August, 2018

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Product Management Mistakes

The Product Bistro

Being in the role for in extremely long time, I have uncovered a lot of truths, and hidden aspects of the expectations for the product manager. Now, I would like to discuss some of the common mistakes, misunderstandings, and outright WTF things that I see over and over again. From assumptions that we make, or […].

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Strategic Options for Mature Products

Roman Pichler

What Maturity Means. A product is mature if it has stopped growing: The benefits it creates no longer rise. Instead, they have started to stagnate. In terms of the product life cycle model, the product has left the growth stage and entered maturity, as the following picture shows. To find out if your product is mature, you should track its performance.

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6 Guiding Principles for Effective Product Discovery

Product Talk

I’m co-teaching a design course at Northwestern with my friend Jeff Merrell. We are teaching business leaders and change agents how to prototype their way to viable solutions. In this context, solutions aren’t product solutions, but rather internal programs and processes that effect change within the organization. Our students work on challenges like improving employee engagement, encouraging knowledge sharing between teams, making meetings more effective, and so on.

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Choosing a team structure to achieve top efficiency

Lead on Purpose

Whether you are a small startup or an international corporation, HR management and organization presents an equally important matter. Choosing a proper team structure for your hierarchy and management isn’t as simple as it seems.

Startups 249
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Get Better Network Graphs & Save Analysts Time

Many organizations today are unlocking the power of their data by using graph databases to feed downstream analytics, enahance visualizations, and more. Yet, when different graph nodes represent the same entity, graphs get messy. Watch this essential video with Senzing CEO Jeff Jonas on how adding entity resolution to a graph database condenses network graphs to improve analytics and save your analysts time.

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“I Have An Idea” – How I Evaluate Product Ideas

The Secret PM Handbook

People are always asking me “Hey, I have a product idea. May I run it by you and get your input?”. Of course, I say yes. They tell me the idea, and it’s usually “ a technical thing for some kind of team.”. And my response is, “Well, that sounds neat, but….” And then I ask some questions. The answers to those questions tell me if the idea is any good.

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Finding Your Product's Critical Event(s)

Product Management Lessons from the Trenches

Finding Your Product’s Critical Event(s) By now you have most likely heard the phrase “build it, they will come”. This was introduced in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams but gained popularity in tech in the early days of the dotcom boom when the players were limited and early adopters eager to experience all the web had to offer. Back then, entrepreneurs would regularly receive this terrible advice (myself included).

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Time in a Product Management Role

The Product Bistro

Recently, I was asked a relatively benign question: “How long should I stay in a Product Management role?” While the person asking it was relatively new in a position and another, more attractive offer is in the works, it caused me to pause and reflect. Not to make light of the young lady’s concern that […].

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Building a long tail of evergreen content

Intercom, Inc.

The first law of content marketing is that publishing is an expensive business. No matter how hard you try to circumvent it, the first law will always come back and bite you. One common approach is to outsource content production, which can be cheaper in pure monetary terms. But unless someone, preferably an editor or with some editorial skills, is closely managing that process you’ll end up paying more for it in the long run.

Events 182
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BASiS Speaker Series: Stop listening to your gut and start talking to your buyers

UserVoice

You’re building the wrong product, and that’s leading to some pretty dire consequences. While that’s not the most uplifting thing you can hear as someone working in product management, it’s also essential to both your individual success and the viability of your entire company. Got your attention yet? These words of warning are courtesy of Price Intelligently’s CEO and co-founder Patrick Campbell.

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Understanding User Needs and Satisfying Them

Speaker: Scott Sehlhorst

We know we want to create products which our customers find to be valuable. Whether we label it as customer-centric or product-led depends on how long we've been doing product management. There are three challenges we face when doing this. The obvious challenge is figuring out what our users need; the non-obvious challenges are in creating a shared understanding of those needs and in sensing if what we're doing is meeting those needs.

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Persuasion Tips: Have A Goal

The Secret PM Handbook

Understand and articulate what you’re trying to achieve. (This article is a follow-on to my overview article on persuasion tips for product managers.). Every presentation or opportunity for persuasion has a goal, or possibly a few goals. Are you trying to get some executives to make a decision in your favor? Are you aiming to protect yourself from potential blowback from something that went wrong?

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Roadmaps are Dead! Long Live Roadmaps! by C. Todd Lombardo

Mind the Product

Do you ever feel like breaking up with your roadmap? In his talk from #mtpcon San Francisco, C. Todd Lombardo takes on a topic that is emotional to most of us as product managers – the product roadmap. Why do we Ship the Wrong Thing? In modern product management, we have multiple frameworks and tools designed to help us understand what to build.

Roadmap 171
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Shifting Markets, Shifting Strategy: Three Considerations

Product Management University

Shifting markets usually constitute a shift in product strategy for most organizations. For some, the current market climate presents a world of opportunity and for others it’s an exercise in survival. In either case, there are three key aspects of product strategy that matter most. The Playbook: 1. Target Market Focus. Your target markets drive every key decision in the organization.

Strategy 140
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Product Management – Simplified

The Product Bistro

Product Management in a nutshell Tons of ink has been spilled on the art (and science) of product management. About methodologies, strategies, and the like. Grumbling about how the role varies, depending on the organization. Yada yada yada. Let’s simplify this. Product management at its very core is: Identify a problem for some market segment […].

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Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

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Strategy over speed: How video games prepared me for life as a product manager

Intercom, Inc.

Growing up, I was surrounded by video games. In my house, we had the NES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy and a bunch of PC games. I would play video games for hours on end, only stopping for the odd toilet break. But as my love of gaming grew, it became obvious that I wasn’t drawn to the typically popular action or racing games. Instead of Half-Life or GoldenEye, I was drawn to simulation games such as SimCity , The Sims and Theme Hospital – titles that rewarded strategy over speed, patience over practic

Strategy 163
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Mobile Product Manager vs. Mobile Product Owner

Alchemer Mobile

Agile teams have a lot of moving parts, and it can be difficult to understand where product responsibilities fall across team members. And a mobile product manager or mobile product owner role can be difficult for only one person to take on. Mobile product managers spend time straddling two worlds: the external customer’s world and the internal team’s world.

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The Skills It Takes To Become a Product Manager

Product Management Unpacked

To become a great Product Manager, takes a lot of skills — business acumen, technical smarts and emotional intelligence. Many parts will go into your making. Once you put them all together in just the right way, you’ll be highly valued and very well rewarded. For more information visit ms-product-management.cmu.edu.

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7 Years of Amazing Product Talks

Mind the Product

For the past 7 years Mind the Product has run #mtpcon in London and San Francisco and #mtpengage in Hamburg – the biggest and best product management conferences in the world. We invite some of the top product thinkers and practitioners from all over the world to share their experiences, insights, and lessons, and now we invite you to watch the entire library of talks!

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Exploring PerfDog Whitepaper 2024: Unlock the Power of Performance Testing

Key Takeaways Robust Platform & Multi-System Support: Brief introduction to PerfDog's extensive compatibility across various operating systems and hardware platforms including Android, iOS, PC, gaming consoles and more. In-Depth Performance Metrics: Quick view of the extensive range of metrics for system, graphics and rendering, user experience, in-depth analysis, and more.

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The One Question You Need to Answer as a New Product Leader

UserVoice

Outline The One Question What Could Inhibit My Ability to Succeed? Is it people, process, policies, vision, etc? What do I have control over and what do I not? Do I have the influence i need to change things for the better? Prioritizing Potential Problem Areas Eisenhower Model – Urgency vs. Importance Avoid the time vampires and zombie efforts It’s not you, it’s me… Make a Plan to Tackle.

Vision 120
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Product Management Truths – Redux

The Product Bistro

One of my more popular posts has been on the unwritten truths of Product Management. Originally written over 5 years ago, that post covered many observations and self evident truths. Fast forward to 2018, and there are some additions to this list. Without further ado, I offer these observations: Whiz bang tools don’t make up […].

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The 3 Cs of cross-functional teamwork

Intercom, Inc.

The phrase “cross-functional” is most commonly used to describe a team made up of of people with different functions or skills. At Intercom for example, our product teams include designers, programmers and product managers , unique roles working together as one. Or you might hear the term used when teams from different parts of a business work together on a big project, like the launch of a new product or release.

Education 162
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Sales Presentations: Calculating Your Buyer Relevance Quotient (BRQ)

Product Management University

Nothing accelerates the sales process more than a presentation that simply “nails it.” Here’s a quick test to determine the B uyer R elevance Q uotient (BRQ) of your sales presentations. The Playbook: Go find a sales presentation you’d consider to be one of the best. Count the number of slides where at least 80% of the content on the slide is about the buyer’s business (not about the product).

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Product Management Careers: Job Prospects, Pathways, and Must-Have Skills (2024)

The product management job market in 2024 reflects the fast-growing and ever-evolving nature of the field. For product managers looking to future-proof their careers and take advantage of new opportunities, staying informed about the professional landscape is a smart move. In this comprehensive career guide from Regis College, you’ll learn about: The current job outlook for product managers in 2024 Six professional pathways and the average salaries for these roles in the U.S.

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Would-Be Product Manager’s Instruction Manual

Product Management Unpacked

People often describe a product manager as “CEO of the Product.” This sounds appealing, but the reality is that product managers don’t have a CEO’s level of authority over everyone who contributes to making a product successful. Being a product manager is actually more of a high-wire act — managing multiple disciplines and personalities — so you will need a cool head and a chill disposition.

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Mastering the Problem Space for Product/Market Fit by Dan Olsen

Mind the Product

The term Product/Market Fit was coined by Marc Andreesen back in 2007 and it’s been a key goal for any new product or startup ever since. But like any buzzword, it is often oversimplified and misunderstood. In this talk from Mind the Product San Francisco, Dan Olsen, the author of The Lean Product Playbook , tackles the key components of product/market fit and how to achieve it.

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“Agile” is More Than a Buzzword: Three Truths Behind the Manifesto

Clever PM

It’s become rather commonplace lately for people to dismiss “Agile” out of hand as an industry buzzword with no meaning or substance to it. And in some ways, the term has earned that reputation — mostly from people who use it regularly without really knowing what it means or how it changes an organization — […].

Agile 115
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The Exit Interview

The Product Bistro

Having 7 stops on my journey in Product management over the last 20 years, I have had several “exit interviews.” Today’s post is some sage advice that i have learned, and absorbed over this series of experiences. But, what is an exit interview, and why do they have them at all? From the employer’s side, […].

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Peak Performance: Continuous Testing & Evaluation of LLM-Based Applications

Speaker: Aarushi Kansal, AI Leader & Author and Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO at Aggregage

Software leaders who are building applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) often find it a challenge to achieve reliability. It’s no surprise given the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. To effectively create reliable LLM-based (often with RAG) applications, extensive testing and evaluation processes are crucial. This often ends up involving meticulous adjustments to prompts.

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Flying cars, chatbots and looking forward to the next small thing

Intercom, Inc.

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”. – Peter Thiel. People in tech commonly overestimate the impact of big things and underestimate the power of small things. We constantly talk about the next big thing that will change everything, the next revolution that will inevitably happen. In the past few years it has been AI, chatbots, VR, blockchain and whatnot.

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The Value of a Product Marketing Roadmap: It’s Like Deep-Sea Fishing for Sales

Product Management University

A product marketing roadmap for sales is like a popular technique used in deep sea fishing. The captain turns on the sonar to locate schools of fish, you put the appropriate bait on your line, drop it and start reeling in fish. Has product marketing taken your salesforce deep sea fishing this year? Your product marketing roadmap is the equivalent to sonar on a fishing boat.

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Where Does Product Management Fit?

Product Management Unpacked

Recently a CEO asked me if the marketing department should include product management and marketing communications. His concern was that internet/digital marketing had become so complex and such a huge task that having the responsibility of both marketing communications and product management would be difficult. It’s a good concern and a great question, one that underscores that the product management function has matured and become more essential, and as he pointed out, the internet has made bo