Technology Skills for Non Technical Product Managers
The most useful technical concepts to understand when working with engineersHow technical should product managers be? As with most things in life, the answer to the question of ‘how technical should product managers be?’ is ‘it depends’. It depends on the type of...
Unconventional advice for transitioning to Head of Product
From Product Manager to Product LeaderThis is not going to be your typical ‘how-to’ article for moving up into a Product Leadership role. I’m not going to cover the things you normally hear, like advice telling you to be a better PM, to be a better leader, to think...
Why product features matter
Feature factories is the term people use when they’re working at a company who’s idea of product strategy is putting a spreadsheet together with a shopping list of items that need to be delivered with a few dates slapped next to them. But as real as these frustrations are, it’s also worth asking: what if features actually do matter?
Component Oriented Thinking for Product Managers
Components mean many things to different members of a modern product team. For a product manager, using components means building reusable pieces of value which cut down future development time and leads to shipping more value faster.
5 Ways to use Post it Notes as a Product Manager
They’re a tech company cliche. And here’s 5 ways you and your product team can use post it notes effectively.
How to Agree Ways of Working as a Product Team
Things feel a little stale. You’re stuck in a bit of a rut. The team’s energy isn’t quite what it used to be. And you’re not able to quite pinpoint exactly what has led you to feel this way. This can – and probably will – happen to all product teams at some point. A ways of working session might be just what you need to get you back up and running, feeling energised and rebooted.
Radical product strategy
In 2011 when I founded Likelii, we had a clear vision: To make it easier and fun for wine enthusiasts to find wines they were likely to like. But despite having a clear vision, I had caught what I now call the Iteration Epidemic where we try to copy the success of companies that found their success through iteration, trying one strategy after another to find the nirvana of product-market fit.
How to measure product market fit
As we look to challenge ourselves to make the best decisions possible, we often judge our decision making skills on the outcomes we achieved. This isn’t quite right since the outcome itself will always be unpredictable; the results achieved are different to the decision making process which led to a decision being taken. This is known as ‘resulting’ – where you assess the quality of your decision by the outcome it achieved.
Managing UX debt
Why tension between product designers and managers is healthyI was recently asked by a colleague what I found to be the most challenging aspects of product management. Without much thought, I blurted out a response which surprised me a little. ‘Managing the...
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.
How to run Product Strategy Workshops
Practical ways to get the most out of workshops Creating (and sometimes attending) workshops can be both a fun and stressful experience. When a group of humans are put into a room full of post it notes with no structure for hours on end with no set agenda or purpose,...
Crafting Ecommerce Product Strategies
How the customer lifecycle can help structure your product strategy The business of ecommerce With Amazon gobbling up almost 50% of ecommerce sales in the US, traditional high street retail in steady decline and paid online customer acquisition...
Why Products Fail
Agile and the fail fast culture prioritise failing as a means of learning as quickly as possible and moving onto the next experiment. It rewards failure – and actively encourages it as a mechanism to learn what works and what doesn’t. Not everyone is a fan.
4 Meetings to Master as a Product Manager
Whilst there are a number of different meetings we have to deal with on a day to day basis, some meetings tend to be more stressful than others. Here’s our guide to optimizing your meetings.
3 Ways to Develop a Metrics Oriented Mindset
Get yourself into the habit of continuously asking yourself, the product team and the wider business how you will measure feature requests and upcoming product developments.
Making Sense of Usability Test Results
Perhaps the biggest challenge product teams face is not necessarily how to conduct the usability tests in the first place but rather how to make sense of the wild variety of results your tests have produced.
DevOps Explained for Product Managers
Transition from tragile to agile with strong devops cultures So what exactly is Devops anyway? You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘devops’ used by your engineering team but you may not be sure exactly what it means. Sure, you know that is has...
How to Think Strategically
A classical definition of strategy applied to product thinking The problem with strategy Ask someone what their strategy is and you’ll often get vague responses relating to operational effectiveness, items from their to do list or a proclamation that their company is...
5 Useful Diagrams for Product Managers
Practical diagrams for when words alone don't quite cut it Why is diagramming useful? The ability to draw and produce clear diagrams are powerful skills for product managers. Here’s a few reasons why: Articulate your point of view / ideas -...
How to Differentiate Your Product
Fighting the forces of product inertia Overcoming the fear of thinking differently Suggesting different ideas or challenging conventional wisdom requires a certain level of tenacity. It also requires you to bulldoze through the fears that often beset the management...