Skills

When I was a student, I took part in a negotiation exercise. We were given imaginary countries and had to negotiate our rights to the surrounding sea. The whole exercise quickly descended down into what the lecturer politely described as a study in realpolitik. To try and help us curb any dictatorial inclinations we were given Read more »

Being a product manager encompasses many things, such as vision, organization, analysis, and communication. In my experience, there is one universal trait that permeates almost everything a product manager does, curiosity.  In product management, I define curiosity as a desire to fully understand a problem from all angles, to want to gather information from a Read more »

I was invited to appear before an audience of tech recruiters for a panel called: “Everything you’ve ever wanted to know from a technologist, but were too shy to ask.” I realized I needed a good way to explain what it had taken me a while to see in the world of product management.   Read more »

For the past two months, I’ve been conducting research and discovery to help establish some ground rules for the Mind the Product Training Program.  As an organization we’ve set some goals for what we want to accomplish with our training. These are: To offer the same best in class experience that our Mind the Product Read more »

This is the introductory piece to a series of interviews with product managers. I am on a quest to find out what different product managers do, how their role compares to product management theory, what their daily struggles are, and how I can become a great product manager myself. Why am I doing this? I want to become Read more »

Josh McWilliam is a co-founder and Vice President of Product at College Factual. Their mission is to help every student realize their full potential through the best fit education their money can buy. While their focus is on students with the College Factual brand, they also have other brands like Ed.ai (for advisors), Educate.ai (for Read more »

Building products is amazing. You take an idea – sometimes big, sometimes small – and with your team you make it real. Or at least you make a version of it come to life and then send it out into the world. Every day I find this creatively inspiring. To craft a product from scratch Read more »

Product managers are meant to be many things – visionaries, decision makers, leaders and much more. But what about negotiators? Negotiation is rarely mentioned outside an interview for a product manager – yet, in reality, being a product manager is a role that demands good political judgement. It’s all about setting and managing expectations. Here Read more »

There’s a lot of variation in how companies document product requirements. Some are moving away from detailed, written product requirements documents (PRDs), while others are using shorter write-ups, user stories, or jobs-to-be-done formats. Some product teams are moving away from written PRDs to visual artifacts like mockups and prototypes. It’s a change in approach that’s driven by demands for more agility Read more »

We tend to think of Chinese companies as imitators rather than innovators, but is this fair? App developers and designers may look at other apps for inspiration on new features, but most only look to well-known apps like Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. Take Messenger for example. We got excited about its Snapchat-like Messenger Day, Venmo-like Payments, Read more »