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In our a recent live stream from one of our mentors of The Product Mentor , Ian Moulton, lead a conversation around “Conducting User Research”. We are always looking for more product mentors from all around the world. Signup to be a Mentor Today! View the live stream…. About The Product Mentor. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals… Better Decisi
People from all over the company come to you with feature requests and ideas. From minor things like UI tweaks to major ones like a new Search feature. Depending on how pushy and persistent stakeholders are in support of their feature, you might be forced to eventually let it through. Once this happens, expectations are set. “My feature got into the product,” they think.
When is Scrum Most Helpful? A process like Scrum is a great fit for your product when it is brand-new or young, and when you extend its life cycle, as shown in the picture below. This means that not every product will benefit from Scrum: Products that are maturing or declining won’t benefit from Scrum—at least not to the same degree. The picture above shows the traditional, bell-shaped product life cycle curve with three key events: launch—the product first becomes available; achieving product-m
“What is your Product Strategy? YOU NEED A STRATEGY.” When I replay this scene in my head, I can hear the CTO very audibly yelling (slash pleading) with our product team. He was on edge. We had been experimenting towards a very concrete goal for two months, and had made a lot of progress. We had learned so much about what was preventing users from signing up on the site, and it was a lot clearer which direction in which we should be going.
Speaker: Ben Epstein, Stealth Founder & CTO | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO, Aggregage
When tasked with building a fundamentally new product line with deeper insights than previously achievable for a high-value client, Ben Epstein and his team faced a significant challenge: how to harness LLMs to produce consistent, high-accuracy outputs at scale. In this new session, Ben will share how he and his team engineered a system (based on proven software engineering approaches) that employs reproducible test variations (via temperature 0 and fixed seeds), and enables non-LLM evaluation m
I’ve found a visual aid that is profoundly changing the way teams work. It’s working so well that I feel compelled to write a book about it. But that’s going to take time and I want you to have it today. So I’m going to scratch the surface in this blog post. I suspect you are going to have one of two reactions. You will either skim this post, conclude it’s obvious and that you already do it, and miss the point entirely.
Brain Wiring (by Wellcome Images, CC licensed). In part 1 I introduced mental models and some reasons they are important. And I provided a few “general purpose” examples. In this part we dive into what you really came here for – product management-specific mental models. Why are product management-related mental models different? The mental models I’m going to talk about share two key characteristics: They are about about products.
Brain Wiring (by Wellcome Images, CC licensed). In part 1 I introduced mental models and some reasons they are important. And I provided a few “general purpose” examples. In this part we dive into what you really came here for – product management-specific mental models. Why are product management-related mental models different? The mental models I’m going to talk about share two key characteristics: They are about about products.
Bill Gates once famously said “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” While it’s a poignant quote, it doesn’t mean unhappy customers are your goal (there’s only so much positive spin Silicon Valley can put on failure). Prevention, as always, is the best medicine. With that in mind, here are 7 of the most common customer feedback nightmares Product Managers face and a.
A few weeks ago, I invited Mind the Product readers to take part in a brief survey with a simple goal: to identify the biggest challenges product managers face in their role. I’m sincerely grateful to the 47 of you who provided your thoughts, many of which were detailed and insightful in their own right. And while this wasn’t a scientific study, the results are directionally valuable and, for what it’s worth, consistent with my experiences and those of my colleagues.
Completely unrelated to my usual posting, I had an interesting discussion on Facebook today about the changes that consumers are experiencing. This discussion was about how some items prices remain the same, but the quantity you receive is less. Case in point: Toilet paper. On the right we see how the roll used to be. Smaller cardboard core, and more paper wrapped around it.
My son got to meet his heroes. Not sports players, astronauts, or Marvel comics characters. He met the people behind Youth Digital, his favorite source for online tech courses. We traveled to their headquarters in Chapel Hills, North Carolina. What they are all about is creating the next generation of creators, focused on kids ages 8 to 14. My son discovered their courses when he was 10 and he is devouring them as fast as he can, learning about Java programming, 3D graphics and animation, comput
Stand out in your product management interview with guidance from Priyanka Upadhyay, an experienced product leader and Stanford Online program coach. In this guide, Upadhay dives into five key competencies interviewers will likely want to assess. She provides sample questions with detailed answers spanning: Product strategy Product design Execution Market estimation Teamwork Confidently land the product management role you want by pre-empting what interviewers are looking for and demonstrating y
As the product management role has become far more popular here in Silicon Valley and at technology firms in general, we’ve started to see specialization in the role begin to emerge. While these specific product roles rarely have differentiated titles or formal separate requirements, savvy hiring managers are certainly looking for product managers with specific skill-sets and passion areas depending on the specific product stage and challenges they are solving for.
Guest Post by: Sean Echevarria (Mentee, Session 3, The Product Mentor) [Paired with Mentor, Dustin Levy]. Two years ago I threw myself into the deep end of the Silicon Alley tech scene here in NYC. I joined a growing user experience agency called Motivate Design, without having any real knowledge about UX and its function within product strategy. And I caught what some might say was the product bug!
No matter how much we’d like for our Product Management role to be solely focused around building great products and making customers happy, the reality is that we need to work inside organizations. We’re part of a larger team and that means interacting with a broader group of people with direct or indirect interest in the product: our stakeholders.
1 Focus on Goals and Benefits. Whenever you are faced with an agile, dynamic environment—be it that your product is young and is experiencing significant change or that the market is dynamic with new competitors or technologies introducing change, you should work with a goal-oriented product roadmap, sometimes also referred to as theme-based. Goal-oriented roadmaps focus on goals or objectives like acquiring customers, increasing engagement, and removing technical debt.
Effective risk management in product development balances safety, compliance, and opportunity. Risks can't be eliminated, but they can be mitigated through structured assessments, clear documentation, and expert guidance. Engaging specialists ensures efficiency, regulatory adherence, and product security while reducing costly oversights. A well-executed risk management plan includes frequent evaluations, defined assessment criteria, and a structured decision-making process.
“What is your Product Strategy? YOU NEED A STRATEGY.” When I replay this scene in my head, I can hear the CTO very audibly yelling (slash pleading) with our product team. He was on edge. We had been experimenting towards a very concrete goal for two months, and had made a lot of progress. We […].
I recently asked a woman what factors she considered when buying a new pair of jeans. She didn’t hesitate in her answer. She said, “Fit is my number one factor.” That seems reasonable. It’s hard to find a pair of jeans that fit well. I then asked her to tell me about the last time she bought a pair of jeans. She said, “I bought them on Amazon.”.
The future is hard to tease out, but here’s what will happen in product management’s future. (CC 2.0 by PunkToad). Earlier this year Janna Bastow of ProdPad put out a call for opinions on the future of product management. I quickly responded then. And realized later it would also make a good blog post. To understand the future of product management I started from the “present” of product management.
As your product management team grows, you will inevitably bring on some more junior product managers. Some may have a couple of years under their belt, while others may be fresh out of school or recent converts from engineering, design, analysis, or project management. It would be easy to view these new product managers as a distraction from your own daily grind, or even as competition, but this.
Savvy B2B marketers know that a great account-based marketing (ABM) strategy leads to higher ROI and sustainable growth. In this guide, we’ll cover: What makes for a successful ABM strategy? What are the key elements and capabilities of ABM that can make a real difference? How is AI changing workflows and driving functionality? This Martech Intelligence Report on Enterprise Account-Based Marketing examines the state of ABM in 2024 and what to consider when implementing ABM software.
It wasn’t too long ago that designers and developers were disciples of strictly separate crafts – but today, someone who can do both well is quickly labelled a “unicorn”, and sought after by many a unicorn-thirsty start-up. I believe the same synthesis of skill sets is occurring between marketers and product managers, but all too often, they’re treated organisationally as separate disciplines, broken up into siloed teams.
The concepts behind structured customer visits are powerful tools that allows the product manager or marketing team to quickly validate their assumptions, and ensure that the market matches the internal view. However, since you often must rely on groups that have an underlying agenda to select customers to visit, and also to coordinate the visits, there is a very real risk in this process.
You’ve likely heard of the curse of knowledge or sometimes it is called the curse of the expert. It occurs when our knowledge leads us down predictable paths, likely not considering other possible solutions to problems but only those that are familiar to us. This is cognitive bias and is the topic I asked my guest about, which lead to discussing open innovation and how to manufacture serendipity.
Ever since I committed to being an infinite learner , I've been executing on a daily one hour learning ritual. While it's easy to say that continuous learning is important to me, I knew that if I didn't proactively dedicate time in my day to it, it wouldn't become a habit. So I set aside an hour first thing in the morning with my morning cup of coffee (or two) to this ritual.
Speaker: Duke Heninger, Partner and Fractional CFO at Ampleo & Creator of CFO System
Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Duke Heninger, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.
In our a recent live stream from one of our mentors of The Product Mentor , Ian Moulton, lead a conversation around “Multiscreen Web Design”. We are always looking for more product mentors from all around the world. Signup to be a Mentor Today! View the live stream…. About The Product Mentor. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals… Better Decision
One of the biggest lies in product management is agile. That may sound like heresy, but hear me out… I actually love agile. It’s a great approach to reducing the risk of developing and shipping software. It’s a better software development methodology. But on its own it doesn’t solve the problem of providing a capital […]. The post As a product manager, you need to do just two things appeared first on Street Smart Product Manager.
What is Mindfulness? Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment, to what is actually happening. It helps us become more aware of what we think and feel, and how we are—content, tense, relaxed, stressed, happy, angry, indifferent, restless, worried, or calm. But what’s the big deal? Surely all of us know how we are. But do we really? I find I can be so busy and caught up in activities, thoughts, and emotions that I am not (fully) aware of how I am and what’s going on in my mind and
I’m finally going home from a long business trip and I’m very excited. But my experience with United Airline’s customer service this morning completely killed my good mood. They keep blaming me for their mistake. It’s a story I know well because I see it so commonly in Product Management too.
In 2024, B2B customers expect better quality and service with streamlined experiences that match consumer-grade simplicity—no long calls or meetings required. Our B2B eCommerce Trends Report, surveying 400+ B2B professionals in the US and Europe, reveals how eCommerce has become vital to top companies’ strategies. The report shows how leaders are leveraging eCommerce to break data silos, unify channels, and deliver the personalized experiences that customers demand.
For those of you following along, I’ve been conducting interviews to understand the life of a product manager. If you need to catch up, you can see my initial call for participants here and my breakdown of how I am selecting participants here. I’ll be blogging about both how I conduct the research and the trends and patterns that come out of it. One of the biggest challenges with qualitative research is capturing the overwhelming volume of data you collect throughout the process.
The importance of mental models. Model of the brain – in yarn (CC 2.0 by Linden Tea ). There’s been an explosion – at least in my feed – of folks talking about the importance of having a lot of good mental models to help you make better decisions. A lot of this goes back to a talk by Charlie Munger at USC Business School in 1994. He’s the other old white guy who works with Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway making lots of high-payoff investments.
While you might “own” the product, your product’s vision should be coming from the top of the house. It should be driving everything in your organization, not just product development. Sales, operations, technology… all of it should be working toward a common vision. So, if the vision isn’t the responsibility of the product team, what is? Let’s use a hypothetical example — a space travel.
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