Jock Busuttil’s (@jockbu) series “100 Things I’ve Learned” is what he’s learned about product management over the years – usually the hard way.
Starting a new product manager job can be daunting, particularly if you don’t change jobs very often. I work freelance, so I find myself in a new organisation roughly every 3-6 months. Let me share with you my tips for your first few months in a new role.
When faced with all the things you could and should be doing, it can be tremendously hard to decide which to do, let alone which to do first.
A whole product is often a complex combination of several products and services. Some you create yourself, some are created by others. You’re responsible for the whole lot, even if they’re not all directly in your control.
I’ve been thinking about decision-making. What makes one decision better than another?
This week I learnt the phrase ‘black art’ comes from the world of printing presses. Eventually I found a product management angle.
I heard a story of an octogenarian who drove himself to the hospital for his eye cataracts operation. (Just let that sink in a bit.) On his surprisingly safe return home, his relatives queried the sense of his actions. He replied that what he lacked in sight, he made up for in driving experience.
The other day, I was asked how to launch a product successfully. Two competing responses sprang to mind: the way I would have answered a couple of decades ago and the way I actually suggested.
Okay, okay, so maybe likening the Project Management Office (PMO) to the Empire hunting down the Rebel Alliance is perhaps a teensy bit combative. But it’s how I feel sometimes. Just don’t let my desire for a weak pun give you the wrong impression. Let me explain.
In the UK government digital teams, you don’t see project managers or even Scrum masters. Why? Because they have delivery managers instead. In this article, I’m going to convince you why you need delivery managers on your teams.
I perhaps naïvely assume that a company’s stated product vision and corporate mission are what the organisation is actively working towards. Disappointingly, this is not always the case.
