The Blog
The latest articles by Department of Product program leads and product thinkers to help you learn new skills and build winning products.
Explainers
DevRel Explained for Product Managers
Developers are, and always will be, a critical part of product development. Not just because engineers are the ones actually building the products we use, but also because getting the engineering community on board as evangelists for your product can make or break your success.
React Explained for Product Managers
Everything you need to know about the...
Web3 For Product Managers: A Guide For The Crypto-Curious
If you're open to taking risks and love working...
How to Create a Product Vision Statement
It goes without saying that your product vision should ultimately link back to your product’s overall value proposition. Sure, it doesn’t have to be explicitly obvious that your vision fits within a specific industry domain, but it makes no sense to come up with a vision so random that people feel confused by the mismatch between the vision statement and the company.
DevOps Explained for Product Managers
Transition from tragile to agile...
Payment Terminology for Product Teams
Payment gateways, tokenisation, PCI compliance...
Strategy
Product Principles – Examples for Product Managers
Product principles are used by product teams to help guide decision making. They may initially feel like a nebulous corporate waste of time, but once you’ve invested some time in developing them, you’ll rarely wish you didn’t.
How to Conduct a Product Health Check
Product strategy isn’t simply about clear decision making; before you can even begin to make any decisions about the direction of your product, you need to spend some time in diagnostic mode where you try to build a big picture snapshot of the health of your product.
Product Positioning for Product Managers
Why an understanding of how your product is...
How to Structure your Product Org to Optimise for Growth
If your company’s success depends on growing...
How to Keep on top of Trends that Matter to Product Managers
Of all the different trends that product managers need to be aware of, technical trends are some of the most difficult, since the space is constantly evolving and no one is ever sure whether a new technology is actually going to become widely adopted, or whether it’s just another flash in the pan.
SaaS Pricing Models for Product Managers
6 ways to price your SaaS product using leading...
Process
How to Structure your Day Using Energy Levels as a Product Manager
With product management often requiring a diverse bunch of different skill sets, it can be overwhelming to try to structure your day in a way that optimises each of the activities these skill sets are used for. What’s the best way to manage the tasks a PM might typically be required to do in a day? Let’s find out.
Product Development Processes You Might Not have Heard of
What are the alternatives to scrum and kanban you ask? Here’s 3 different product development processes that modern product teams are using that you may very well have never heard of.
How to Build Products Quickly
If you’ve ever had the joys of working in both an early stage startup and a large corporation, you’ll understand the difference between a company with an operating cadence of ‘run’ and a company with an operating cadence of ‘stay afloat before the quicksand of corporate bureaucratic sludge kills you’.
Accessibility Checklist for Product Teams
Why accessibility can no longer be treated as an...
Why Product Teams Should Hire Tech Leads
Realising the power of the product management...
How Product Managers and Sales teams can work effectively together
Mastering the delicate relationship between the...
Skills
What Product Managers need to know about Product Marketing
Product management is concerned with deciding what to build, for who and why. Product marketing is concerned with figuring out the most effective ways of telling potential customers about what’s been built.
Practical Ways to Earn Respect as a Product Manager
As a Product Manager, it can be difficult to justify your own existence. Luckily, earning respect from your peers can be a powerful way to fight off these feelings and misconceptions.
Negotiation Skills for Product Managers
Negotiation is a fundamental part of a product manager’s life. So it’s probably worth spending a bit of time understanding the different types of negotiation and how you can excel as a negotiator in day to day product management.
How to Read API Documentation
Equip yourself with the ability to speak...
Modern ways to create Product Requirements Documents
It’s helpful to think of your requirements as contextual vs. functional. For the purpose of this post, we’re going to focus on mainly functional requirements, assuming that your product strategy and roadmap are agreed. But that doesn’t mean that your functional requirements documents won’t acknowledge – and link to – your wider strategy, too.
5 Visual Design Principles for Product Managers
This summary is for product managers and tech workers with no formal design skills who want to brush up on their design sense and learn some basic design principles, so that they can have more confident conversations when working with design teams.
Podcasts
Product Stacks – Episode 9 – Vishal Kapoor at Shipt
Vishal Kapoor is the Director of Product at Shipt where he leads two mission critical product groups: Order Bundling, and Shopper Earnings, which together manage billions of dollars of P&L annually.
Product Stacks – Episode 8 – Vik Bharadwaj at Wayfair
Vik Bharadwaj is a Senior Product Manager for Wayfair Mobile apps leading engagement and retention initiatives along with optimizing for conversion. Prior to joining Wayfair, Vik was a senior product manager at Peapod Digital Labs, an Ahold Delhaize USA Company.
Product Stacks – Episode 7 – Mohana Cherukuri at EA Games
Mohana Cherukuri is a product manager at EA games working in the developer platform team, responsible for building tools that can be used inside EA games. Prior to EA Games, Mohana worked at Booking.com and Amazon, and has a background in software engineering.
Product Stacks – Episode 6 – Aishwarya Murali at Amazon
Aishwarya Murali is principal product manager at Amazon where she builds products to support the ecommerce seller experience. Prior to Amazon, Aishwarya worked as a Technical Product Manager at Expedia and spent time in management roles in Expedia and Dell.
Product Stacks – Episode 5 – Camilla Fisco at Uber
Episode 5Camilla Fisco at Uber Product Stacks...
Product Stacks – Episode 4 – Diego at Google
Episode 4Diego Rivas Product Manager, Google...
Resources
Visual Communication templates for Product Managers
Holding people’s attention is difficult. But adding visuals into the mix will help.
Tools for making better product decisions
A good decision can lead to bad results, but so long as the steps you took to make that decision were sound, you can sleep safe at night knowing that you took the best action based on what you knew at the time.
Product Roadmaps – an Essential Guide
Let's talk about product roadmaps What is a...
Metrics that Matter to Product Managers
What are the metrics that matter to your...
6 Unconventional Trello Board Templates for Product Managers
We take a look at 6 less common ways you can use...
Career development
Unconventional advice for transitioning to Head of Product
From Product Manager to Product LeaderThis is...
All articles
How to Structure your Day Using Energy Levels as a Product Manager
With product management often requiring a diverse bunch of different skill sets, it can be overwhelming to try to structure your day in a way that optimises each of the activities these skill sets are used for. What’s the best way to manage the tasks a PM might typically be required to do in a day? Let’s find out.
Product Development Processes You Might Not have Heard of
What are the alternatives to scrum and kanban you ask? Here’s 3 different product development processes that modern product teams are using that you may very well have never heard of.
Product Principles – Examples for Product Managers
Product principles are used by product teams to help guide decision making. They may initially feel like a nebulous corporate waste of time, but once you’ve invested some time in developing them, you’ll rarely wish you didn’t.
How to Conduct a Product Health Check
Product strategy isn’t simply about clear decision making; before you can even begin to make any decisions about the direction of your product, you need to spend some time in diagnostic mode where you try to build a big picture snapshot of the health of your product.
What Product Managers need to know about Product Marketing
Product management is concerned with deciding what to build, for who and why. Product marketing is concerned with figuring out the most effective ways of telling potential customers about what’s been built.
DevRel Explained for Product Managers
Developers are, and always will be, a critical part of product development. Not just because engineers are the ones actually building the products we use, but also because getting the engineering community on board as evangelists for your product can make or break your success.
How to Build Products Quickly
If you’ve ever had the joys of working in both an early stage startup and a large corporation, you’ll understand the difference between a company with an operating cadence of ‘run’ and a company with an operating cadence of ‘stay afloat before the quicksand of corporate bureaucratic sludge kills you’.
Accessibility Checklist for Product Teams
Why accessibility can no longer be treated as an afterthoughtAccessibility is the practice of improving the usability of your products for a broad audience. When product teams hear the word “accessibility” they may think first of people with physical conditions: low...
Product Positioning for Product Managers
Why an understanding of how your product is positioned is criticalA key responsibility for Product Managers is to define how their products are positioned in the market. Pricing, user experience, features, performance, branding, customer service and partnerships...
How to de-risk your Product Strategy
Ultimately, you’ll never know if what you’re going to build will succeed until you’ve built it. But there are some sensible steps to take before committing to building your product that will help you to increase its likelihood of success – and de-risk your likelihood of failure.