When you start out as a head of product, you’ll probably need to create a community of product people. In this article I share my advice to help you get the ball rolling with your own community of practice.
There’s an ongoing debate about generalist product managers versus emerging product manager specialisms (such as ‘growth product manager’). I think there is room in our profession for both. Let me explain.
All product managers will need to stand up and present to others at some point. You won’t be helping yourself (or your audience) if your slide deck is atrocious. So here are my 6 tips for presenting slides that don’t suck.
Revenue growth is the ultimate vanity metric. It’s lagging and measures an output, not an outcome. That’s why it’s a terrible choice of OKR.
Because so much of product management is about working with people, it’s important to take time to reflect on the kind of first impression you make to those people. In this latest entry for my series of 100 things I’ve learned about product management, I pass on my coaching advice to help you make the best possible impression every time.
Engineering teams are choosing to work on projects that make them look busy, but which don’t actually move things forward. What they’re usually working on is a convoluted — and arguably doomed — attempt to replatform a legacy ‘cash cow’ product.
A recent tweet by John Cutler provoked some interesting reactions. It got me thinking about whether there are underlying principles of product management that apply in all contexts.
When companies set out to redesign a product or service, the results can sometimes be underwhelming. Instead of delivering service transformation, the team recommends only minor efficiency tweaks. If this has been happening to you, there can be many underlying causes. I’ve identified a few common problems and what you can you do about them.
“I’m 4 weeks into a new [product manager] job, having moved states for it, and I’ve recently become a parent for the first time. Currently, I am feeling overwhelmed.”
“I have a PM in my team who I regularly find digging into areas of the business that are unrelated to the initiatives they’re responsible for. [As a result,] they also have a track record of being extremely slow to bring anything to market.”
