LATEST POSTS

Mental Models for Product Managers

BY Nils Davis on March 2, 2017

What are Mental Models? A mental model is any concept that helps explain, analyze, or navigate the world. As product managers, our mental models drive our decision-making, the way we communicate and collaborate with others, and how we prioritize. Without a good framework of mental models, you will be limited in all those areas. “What Read more »

Getting into Design Sprints - an AMA Interview

BY C. Todd Lombardo on February 24, 2017

I recently had the pleasure of taking part in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussion in the Mind the Product Slack community, where we talked about Design Sprints, how I take my coffee (a cortado), and my favorite board game (Chutes ‘N Ladders!). I’ve pulled together the Design Sprints bit of the conversation, as I Read more »

How Designers & Developers Can Work Better Together

BY Tremis Skeete on January 20, 2017

Jason Fleitz is Director of Web Operations at LivePerson, where they develop products such as LiveEngage- a platform that gives companies the ability to engage with their customers anytime on web sites, mobile and social networks. In this presentation at ProductTank NYC, he explains about how designers and developers can work better together on software Read more »

Idea clustering: the wisdom of crowds, or reversion to mediocrity?

BY Simon Elliston Ball on August 15, 2016

When you’re looking for new ideas, look beyond yourself. Collaboration and teamwork is a great way to generate new ideas. A popular way to do this is to brainstorm ideas, then aggregate them. Write a thought, whatever comes into your head, put it on a Post-It note. Now, stop. Let’s put them all together on Read more »

Collaborative Alignment - the ‘Auftragsklärung' framework

BY Marc Kadish on August 3, 2016

In this talk from Product Tank London, I make a case for the crucial role of alignment in product management. In particular, I present the new framework – ‘Auftragsklärung’ – which includes a nicely designed canvas as a tool to structure and guide this intangible process. ‘Autonomy through alignment’ is one of the catchy phases I used to describe that Read more »

Defining Roles: Keeping UX Happy

BY Lorian Leong on July 19, 2016

Tami Weiss gets to the nitty gritty and tells it like it is. If you’ve seen the Venn diagram, product managers overlap in many domains. Little did we product managers know, UX has one with them placed in the middle! In this talk, Tami, the UX Lead at Knowit, defines clear responsibilities between UX teams Read more »

11 Things Your Dev Team Wants From You

BY Lorian Leong on July 6, 2016

Christin Gorman kick starts Product Tank Oslo’s February event with an animated discussion of what product managers can do to help developers in their day-to-day work. Gorman is a programmer at Kodemaker and voted the most popular lightning talk from Javazone 2011. Here are some key highlights from her talk: Eye on the prize Ideas Read more »

Product Managers: Please Make Yourself Uncomfortable

BY Ken Norton on May 18, 2016

t’s February 13, 1960, and Ella Fitzgerald stands on a West Berlin stage, nearing the end of a stellar performance. On a whim, she decides to sing “Mack the Knife,” a popular song, but one she’s never performed live. The first chorus goes as planned, and then… she blanks and completely forgets the lyrics to Read more »

Overcoming the Product Management and UX Overlap

BY Chris Massey on May 18, 2016

Federico Selmi started his career as designer and now specialises in product management, customer validation and user centric design. Having worked at companies such as Education First, Shopa and Mindshapes, Federico has got a lot of experience with implementing best practices around lean customer development. In this warm and insightful talk from at ProductTank London Read more »

Product Managers: Don’t just Build Products - Build Bridges

BY Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré on March 16, 2016

As a product manager, your vision drives the heart of your company. You might be responsible for the product development roadmap, strategy and features, or even marketing and competitive market analysis. Because you wear so many hats, you’re the best person in your B2B company to form bridges between departments usually kept separate, including: product Read more »