Communication

Product management is notoriously difficult to define. We are generalists, and we work with many others. We take responsibility for the lifecycle of our product. These statements apply to almost all product managers, but they paint an incomplete picture. It’s not Enough to be a Generalist It’s not enough to be a generalist or to […] Read more »

Do you start with a “No”?  Defining your process for feedback will save time and improve feedback quality. My seven-year-old son has the gift of positioning, a trait he comes by honestly as his mother is a sales professional.  He knows that, given the opportunity to present his case the likelihood of approval increases.  Lately, […] Read more »

Summary: A  ProductTank London talk that advises you accept that you are part of any failure that happens and be specific about the issues that you face. This helps you to work through them as a team and sets an example for others to follow. When success does come, make sure you expose the specific […] Read more »

A good product manager generally has a keen instinct for human behavior. However, the best product managers have learned how to incorporate the science of human behavior in a more rigorous way than just relying on instinct. This post (with a nod from Ben Horowitz’s seminal post) introduces the idea of a behavioral product manager (BPM) – a product […] Read more »

Joe Leech is an expert in product design strategy, UX and applying psychology in design. He’s recently written a book, “Psychology for Designers,” in which he focuses on recognising and using psychology as a design tool. He’s now a product consultant who works with a range of companies: “I plug into companies that have delivery […] Read more »

There’s an apocryphal tale that the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the last person to have read everything. Given that he died in 1834 and the vast increase of information there’s been since then, you can understand how the tale started. Even 200 years ago, it was still possible to be an expert in many […] Read more »

An ineffective product manager can leave a pile of waste behind – a waste of time, money, hope and enthusiasm by the time the product gets launched, if it ever gets launched. The only constructive byproduct is a learning experience worth communicating to save other products from succumbing to the same mistakes. From my experience […] Read more »

Product management is a cool job, arguably one of the most sought-after roles in business today. But, if you’ve been at it long enough, you inevitably end up hearing some version of this phrase at one time or another: God only knows when my product is going to be shipped!Frustrated Business Person (or product manager) […] Read more »

When I lived in British Columbia, Canada, I used to go running in the forests behind our house. My housemate (appalled at the idea) insisted that I run with his dog to keep the grizzly bears away. At the end of one run I was chatting with a neighbour, a retired Canadian mountain guide with […] Read more »

A friend, who’s recently become a product manager, asked me that recently. She’d inherited a technical product where the engineers already had a view of the direction and deliverables required. Even though it had been broken into phases, each phase was large in scope and involved a number of unconscious assumptions. During planning workshops the […] Read more »