Stakeholder management is one of the biggest factors in your success in product management. At the same time product managers frequently tell me that it’s one of their biggest challenges. The most powerful foundation for managing stakeholders is building strong, positive relationships with them. To help think about what this means in practice, I’ve developed […]
Rosemary King educates us on the importance of involving stakeholders (especially those in senior positions) in the research phases of your products. Collaboration Collaboration is important. As a product manager you enjoy being in control, but at times this control can be detrimental to a product. Rosemary cites a number of examples where collaboration with […]
Here’s a scenario nearly everyone finds themselves in at some point in this line of work: You’re psyched about a new product or feature in the works. You’ve got requirements, design vision, and even a development timeline. You’ve got feedback from potential buyers and they love it. You’re ready to roll, and then you’re asked, […]
Alexa Scordato is the VP of marketing at Stack Overflow. Her company is an online community for programmers, and one of the tops sites in the world. They see over 45 million visitors per month, seven visits per visitor every month, and each visit lasts about six minutes. The main focus of the site is […]
When you first start building a product you have a lot of decisions to make. You have to figure out what to build, what to build first, and know how to explain your decisions to both yourself and your team. As the ball starts rolling, keeping track of what to deliver and when as well […]
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 […]
Forward Partners look to help early stage ventures get to Series A or seed funding by working with them on getting to viable and sustainable business models within 12 months. As such, for their team of startup experts, communication is absolutely key. So how do they make it work? Dharmesh Raittatha walks us through it. […]
In this ProductTank talk I give a view of how being a contractor can change the types of roles, responsibilities, companies and skills required of (or available to) a product manager. This is based on my very personal experience (as a hiring manager and a product manager myself) and on conversations had with fellow contractors […]
In an inspiring talk, Andreas Thorsheim talks about information gathering and synthesis in relation to the product manager role, middle management, and stakeholder communication management. He points out that the product manager is a central keystone of information within the organisation, acting both to hold everything together and to channel energy to the parts of […]
Alex Watson (at the time of recording, Head of Product at The Telegraph) takes us behind the scenes of a complex, rapid and responsive re-platforming of one of the UK’s largest news websites (up to 1 million unique users per month!) What he reveals is that good story-telling is critical, as internal communication is essential when you’re […]
