"You want to put the customer at the center of everything. This is very unnatural for most product companies, because we're thinking, 'What are we going to do to make more money?'
Read moreONE THING... How Far Should You Go (for Roadmaps)?
The length of your roadmap is a function of how fast you are learning. An established product in a mature market may release new and improved versions one per year, and will have a correspondingly long roadmap. A start-up with new capabilities every week may have a roadmap of no more than a few months.
Read moreONE THING... How Far Should You Go (for Roadmaps)?
The length of your roadmap is a function of how fast you are learning. An established product in a mature market may release new and improved versions one per year, and will have a correspondingly long roadmap. A start-up with new capabilities every week may have a roadmap of no more than a few months. They may even abandon dates altogether and use buckets like, "Now, Next, Later..."
Read moreONE THING… Contest! Best Product Vision Statement!
"To give everyone a voice and show them the world" - YouTube. "A high efficiency, low cost space travel vehicle that can carry passengers to Mars" - SpaceX. A product vision is a statement of the problem you're solving, or the change you want to see in the world.
Read moreONE THING... on Roadmaps with no Dates
"I prefer to keep roadmaps dates as vague as possible in order to maintain flexibility. If I don’t have sufficient confidence an item on the roadmap will be delivered by a specific date, then I don’t want to commit to it.
Read moreONE THING… on Why Power Is Overrated
"I try to be the world’s least powerful CEO." That’s from game maker Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen. He gives decision power to his teams and gets out of the way. Supercell is valued at $12 billion.
Read moreONE THING... Grounding Your Vision
"You can’t just do top-down roadmapping because then you end up just blindly building towards some vision that may or may not be actually informed by what customers want...
Read moreONE THING...Take your Roadmap on the Road!
Do you show your roadmap to your sales and customer support team? You should. My friend Sam Clemens, founder of InsightSquared, tries to make his roadmaps open and clear.
Read moreONE THING... on Flexible Work Arrangements
"Happy employees = happy customers = happy shareholders." That’s Aaron Skonnard, CEO of Pluralsight, which just went public last month.
Read moreONE THING... Productize!
Software companies are most successful when they Productize. They build once, then sell again and again. Facebook, Microsoft, DropBox, etc. They are not one-off shops.
Read moreONE THING... Quit Focusing on Features!
"'Here's what our product can do' and 'Here's what you can do with our product...' sound similar, but they are completely different approaches,” says Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp.
Read moreONE THING on a Rearview Mirror for Future Roadmaps
When presenting roadmaps, smart Product people build in a rearview mirror -- a summary of what's been delivered in the recent past.
Read moreONE THING... on Selling our Ideas
Wise Product people market their services around their organizations, as plenty of our coworkers don't know what we do. Product people are used to selling our ideas to sales and engineering, but UX can be a great connection as well.
Read moreONE THING on Small Teams
There is the famous “two pizza rule” created by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: you have to be able to feed your entire team on two pizzas. If your teams are as hungry as mine, that’s like 6 people. One of the crucial elements of product culture is small crossfunctional teams. It creates innovation and high productivity yet avoids bureaucracy.
Read moreONE THING... on Roadmap Prioritization
“Always assume you may have to stop work at any time,” says Eric Reis, of the Lean Startup movement. It’s wise advice for a startup…or even an established company. Your resources may be diverted, and you never get to every possible feature. So you have to prioritize when setting up a roadmap, with the most important tasks done first where their value can be demonstrated.
Read moreONE THING... on Project vs. Product
This is one of my favorite product culture articles, written by my friend Jason Scherschligt. The article has tips on how to make this transition from a project to a product mindset. Plus there are a bunch of pithy take-aways that should become mantras for product people, like “celebrate rather than bemoan a change in requirements: it means you know more."
ONE THING... on Technical Skills for PMs
Exciting Controversy: I believe it is more important to hire a product manager who is a leader and communicator than a good technologist.
Read moreONE THING... Product Peace
It's easier to discuss priorities and roadmap issues one-on-one with the head of sales, for example, than it is if the head of marketing is also in the room. Too many egos, too much politics. I make it a point to continuously "shuttle" between all my stakeholders gathering their input individually, discussing what's important to them, and trying out early versions of the plan on them en route to a final roadmap.
Read moreONE THING on Product Culture Manifesto
This week I've been thinking about quitting. I'm really good at it. I've left 3 jobs because of bad product culture. I wrote about one on LinkedIn a few months ago. It was that career experience that led me to the concept of product culture, and ultimately to ProductCulture.org and this nano-letter.
The product culture movement starts here. This group of passionate product people has inspired me and I need your help to codify our values, as in a Product Culture Manifesto. I think if we get this right we can help change the world.
ONE THING on PM as Quarterback
"I don't like when people say that the product manager is the CEO of the product. To me, it's more like the quarterback. The quarterback sometimes has to call the plays himself, but also will take plays from the offensive coordinator or the head coach on the sidelines, right?" That's from my friend Dan Lack, who has been a CEO and a VP PM. We can go further: Quarterbacks are in charge on the field, but they operate within the overall team strategy developed by the owner and the head coach.
Do you like this analogy?
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