Skills

What’s the single key advantage that start-ups consistently hold over big businesses? One which allows them to move faster, and change course quicker than large corporations? It isn’t talent or creativity, and it’s certainly not resources. Start-up nimbleness comes from employee empowerment – a culture where people at all levels of the organization feel free Read more »

As a product manager I’m sure you will have found that prototypes can be hugely useful for visualising requirements and revealing hidden risks. Lengthy, 50-page requirements are not reliable ways of conveying all the subtleties of a digital product. In my experience, readers quickly get bored and even worse, misinterpret what is written. But prototypes expand Read more »

There’s tight focus on finding and addressing customer pain points in product development. I believe there needs to be similar focus on their passion points. By passion points, I mean moments of profound or unexpected emotion: the joy that ensues results not simply from having a problem solved, but from a visceral, passionate reaction to Read more »

General Skills As a product manager, you are at the epicentre of the wider product team, the glue holding all the pieces together. What I’ve realised in my years of managing product across multiple sectors is that this role does not deviate or change significantly, regardless of industry, whatever product you produce, or for whatever Read more »

Anne-Lise Waal strips us product managers down to our skivvies! As the Managing Director of Attensi and former Director of Funcom, she knows a thing or two about the business savvy skills that product managers need to manage the commercial needs of your product. Be metrics driven—but make smart metrics Live and breathe your metrics Read more »

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 »

Take a look at the job offers for technical people that are out there right now. Senior Javascript Expert, Junior Django Backend Developer, Full-Stack Python/JS Developer… It’s the same pattern over and over. An optional “seniority” adjective, a fancy technology name plus the “Developer” or “Expert” word appended at the end. I think we’re doing Read more »

We are confused and speechless (in the literal sense) when it comes to leadership. Or shall I say management? After all, we generally call ourselves “product managers”, not “product leaders”. Maybe “product directors”? Or “product owners” who need to lead laterally, as they don’t really have the power to call the shots (contrary to those Read more »

The importance of design is a common refrain these days in the tech industry — to the point of almost being a cliche – but how can your skills create added value through great design? Whether in the consumer (Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox) or enterprise (Slack) space, examples abound of companies creating immense value through great Read more »

Mid last year, Janna, my co-founder at ProdPad, and I were having trouble understanding where ProdPad was taking us, so we sat down and came up with a narrative and storyboards for our product. Having this narrative for ProdPad has helped immensely and I only wish we had written it down earlier. Product managers need Read more »