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
Unlocking the full potential of customer service with ChatGPT
ChatGPT is called a “Language Model” in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Language Models are not new. They were discovered in the beginning of the century and existed long before ChatGPT.
How to Design Permissions for SaaS products
In order to allow users of your product to manage the people who use it you’ll need to build some form of permissions system. But building permissions sounds a lot easier than it is.
Webhooks Explained for Product Managers
When you’re building products using webhooks, your engineers can write code which allows you to ‘subscribe’ to a specific event and also specify the location for receiving the event. This process of subscribing and waiting for something to happen is sometimes referred to as ‘listening’ for an event. If you ever hear your engineering team refer to this, you’ll now know what they mean.
Microservices Explained for Product Managers
One of the first introductions product manager might get into the world of architectural design is the concept of microservices. But what exactly are they?
Natural Language Processing – Practical Applications of NLP for Product Teams
As a product team, you have specialized needs that can be solved by NLP systems. For example, how do you offer your customers a customized search engine, in which they can quickly search items in your inventory? How do you build a chatbot that is just as smart as Siri, but can answer questions related to your own Customer Support needs?
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.
Strategy
Alternative Product Business Models
With ad-funded models increasingly looking like a risky strategic decision for some product verticals at least, consumers have shown more willingness to pay for digital products and services they feel are valuable enough to do so. And with that, let’s take a look at some alternative business models you might want to explore.
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.
Process
How to Plan Product Features Asynchronously
In my view, meeting-heavy processes totally detract the ability to have people in different time zones working together. Meetings also get in the way of deep work, which is needed in teams of builders such as Software Engineers, Designers, etc. Shopify recently banned meetings with 2 or more people for this exact reason.
How to Write Tasks for Usability Testing
The tasks in a usability test should be realistic activities that the user might perform in real life when they’re using your product. They can be very specific or very open-ended, depending on the research questions and the type of usability testing.
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...
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 (PRDs)
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 10 – Justin Blumenthal at Coinbase
Justin Blumenthal is product manager at Coinbase where he leads P2P crypto payments and the Coinbase Card. During his time at Coinbase, Justin launched new features including multichain send and receive. Prior to Coinbase, Justin was Lead PM at Square, leading the development efforts for Square Reader for Contactless and Chip and the Square Reader for Magstripe.
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...
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...
Weekly briefings
Product Briefing – August 17, 2023
Google Maps’ new rival and ChatGPT usage declines. Plus: NYT bans LLMs, a new tool for multi-user collaboration, TikTok shuts off its algorithm
Product Briefing – August 10, 2023
Slack’s major redesign and Square’s blockbuster earnings. Plus: a beautiful tool for knowledge, APIs explained and RIP Cortana
Product Briefing – August 3, 2023
Uber’s profitability and hidden blue checkmarks. Plus: a new tool for disputes, Meta’s Reels rakes in billions and retention benchmarks
Product Briefing – July 27, 2023
Shopify’s $1600 meetings and Netflix’s ad-funded success
Plus: a tool to free your mind, how to use developer tools and a summer reading list
Product Briefing – July 20, 2023
Microsoft fights AI fatigue and Roblox’s vision for a new economy. Plus: a new tool for task automation, TikTok’s new music app and Google Docs gets a notebook
Product Briefing – July 13, 2023
Gmail and Stripe punish no shows and Twilio’s new API. Plus: YouTube gets screen locks, DeepMind’s CEO talks and a note taking ‘studio for your mind’
All articles
Unlocking the full potential of customer service with ChatGPT
ChatGPT is called a “Language Model” in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Language Models are not new. They were discovered in the beginning of the century and existed long before ChatGPT.
How to Plan Product Features Asynchronously
In my view, meeting-heavy processes totally detract the ability to have people in different time zones working together. Meetings also get in the way of deep work, which is needed in teams of builders such as Software Engineers, Designers, etc. Shopify recently banned meetings with 2 or more people for this exact reason.
Alternative Product Business Models
With ad-funded models increasingly looking like a risky strategic decision for some product verticals at least, consumers have shown more willingness to pay for digital products and services they feel are valuable enough to do so. And with that, let’s take a look at some alternative business models you might want to explore.
How to Design Permissions for SaaS products
In order to allow users of your product to manage the people who use it you’ll need to build some form of permissions system. But building permissions sounds a lot easier than it is.
Webhooks Explained for Product Managers
When you’re building products using webhooks, your engineers can write code which allows you to ‘subscribe’ to a specific event and also specify the location for receiving the event. This process of subscribing and waiting for something to happen is sometimes referred to as ‘listening’ for an event. If you ever hear your engineering team refer to this, you’ll now know what they mean.
How to Write Tasks for Usability Testing
The tasks in a usability test should be realistic activities that the user might perform in real life when they’re using your product. They can be very specific or very open-ended, depending on the research questions and the type of usability testing.
Microservices Explained for Product Managers
One of the first introductions product manager might get into the world of architectural design is the concept of microservices. But what exactly are they?
Natural Language Processing – Practical Applications of NLP for Product Teams
As a product team, you have specialized needs that can be solved by NLP systems. For example, how do you offer your customers a customized search engine, in which they can quickly search items in your inventory? How do you build a chatbot that is just as smart as Siri, but can answer questions related to your own Customer Support needs?
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.