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
GitHub Explained for Product Managers
Pull requests, merges, branching and all that...
APIs Explained for Product Managers
APIs are confusing. Make sense of REST, GET, endpoints, headers and payloads once and for all as we explain the 10 key things to know about APIs.
Strategy
The 5 types of Product Differentiation
How to fight your natural instinct to copy...
How to Create a Product Content Strategy
Content is perceived as something that can be slapped onto a design at the end of the product development process. But in the best companies, content is the design process, not an afterthought. A product that has invested in heavily integrating both design and content into the overall experience oozes quality. You can feel it.
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?
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.
How to run Product Strategy Workshops
Practical ways to get the most out of workshops...
Process
How to Write Impactful Release Notes as a Product Manager
High impact releases deserve high impact release...
How to Get the Most out of a Product Beta Phase
Why running a well managed beta program can be a...
5 Ways to Keep Teams Aligned as a Product Manager
Why building a shared understanding is critical...
5 No Code Automation Worklows for Product Managers
How to leverage no code automation tools to make...
How to Create a Culture of Product Innovation
You may have sat in a room or on a call where the agenda is innovation and whilst everyone is sharing ideas, one or two ideas sound so outlandish that the person sharing it laughs to themselves about it. These are sometimes just bad ideas, but they’re also often the source of true innovation.
How to Send Internal Product Updates Stakeholders Will Read
If you’re ever tasked with writing internal product updates, here’s a few ideas on how you can spice them up so that your stakeholders feel energised and excited the next time you update them on all the wonderful work the product team is doing.
Skills
Presentation skills for Product Managers
How to excel at the activity we dread the...
Technology Skills for Product Managers
The most useful technical concepts to understand when working with engineers.
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.
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.
Writing BDD Test Scenarios
How BDD scenarios can make your testing more...
How to Communicate with Engineers
Why communication with your engineering team is...
Podcasts
Product Stacks – Episode 3 – Suji at LinkedIn
Episode 3Suji Kim Senior Product Manager,...
Product Stacks – Episode 2 – Majed Chaaban at Venmo
Majed Chaaban is a Senior Product Manager at Venmo where he’s focused on the Venmo Debit Card – a product allows millions of users to spend Venmo balance funds everywhere Mastercard is accepted in the U.S. and in U.S. territories. Prior to Venmo, Majed was Senior PM at PayPal.
Product Stacks – Episode 1 – Christin at Shopify
Christin Karwatzki is a Senior Product Manager at Shopify where she helps millions of merchants offer competitive and reliable delivery experiences. Prior to Shopify, Christin spent 4 years at Amazon in both product and program management.
Resources
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Career development
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All articles
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.
How to Structure your Product Org to Optimise for Growth
If your company’s success depends on growing effectively, you need to get these things rightWhen a company grows quickly, it undergoes stress. The faster the growth, the more the stress. Structure can make the situation better, but only if it is designed correctly for...
Why Product Teams Should Hire Tech Leads
Realising the power of the product management tech lead partnership The composition of any product team will typically include a blend of: Software engineers UX / product design Product management The team may also include a UX content writer, a user researcher or...
React Explained for Product Managers
Everything you need to know about the component-oriented library“Building applications with React feels like building a Lego car. You use the blocks to build the parts you need, and then connect the parts together one by one to make the car that slides back and...
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 Product Managers and Sales teams can work effectively together
Mastering the delicate relationship between the builders and sellersIn my experience, product managers can often be quite snobbish when it comes to sales. I think it’s the cliche of sales people being Wolf of Wallstreet chest thumpers. But sales people don’t (always)...
Web3 For Product Managers: A Guide For The Crypto-Curious
If you're open to taking risks and love working in a fast-paced environment, Web3 PM'ing may be a good fitWeb3 has become one of the most talked-about concepts today. Just try to count how many times "crypto", "NFTs", or "DeFi" appear on your Twitter timeline. To...
How to Write Impactful Release Notes as a Product Manager
High impact releases deserve high impact release notesDo release notes matter any more? Back in the days when operating systems like MacOS or Windows used to get updated every few years I’d get extremely excited about what this next release might include. Fast forward...
How to Get the Most out of a Product Beta Phase
Why running a well managed beta program can be a lot of fun as a product manager There are typically 3 reasons why product teams decide to introduce a beta phase into their product development cycle: To soft launch new products To test new ideas To migrate from...
5 Ways to Keep Teams Aligned as a Product Manager
Why building a shared understanding is critical for building successful productsOne way to guarantee that your product will fail is to create a culture where nobody knows what they’re supposed to be building and why. Engineers build whatever they want, designers have...