insights blog
Product Strategy – Insights
Continuing with the product strategy series, in this article I’d like to discuss my favorite, yet the most difficult, aspect of product strategy, which is to generate, identify and leverage the insights that will provide the foundation of the product strategy. You’ve...
Product Strategy – Focus
To continue with our series on product strategy, in this article I’d like to focus on, well, focus. The importance of truly “picking your battles” as an organization. And I don’t just mean deciding what to work on and not work on, but picking the few things that can...
Product Strategy – Overview
Ultimately, empowered product teams are all about giving teams hard problems to solve, and then giving them the space to solve them. But, how do we decide which problems they should solve? Answering that question is what product strategy is all about. Remarkably,...
The Coaching Series
Article: The Coaching Series Over a year ago I published an article on Empowered Product Teams that described the main focus of my work for the next couple years. As many of you know, most articles I write begin their life as a hope-to-be chapter in a future book. I...
Coaching – Ethics
In this final article on the series on coaching, I’d like to discuss one of the most sensitive, yet potentially most important topics, and that is the subject of ethics. As readers of these articles know, the four big risks that every product team needs to consider...
Coaching – Happiness
This article may seem an odd topic. You may be thinking that it’s not the manager’s job to be responsible for her team’s happiness. However, pretty much anyone that’s worked in tech for any amount of time knows that a manager can easily be responsible for a product...
Coaching – Strategic Context
To continue with our series on coaching, in this article I will be covering a different aspect of coaching, which has to do with ensuring the product manager has the necessary understanding of the broader business context in which her team is operating. I refer to...
Coaching – Decisions
In the last article I discussed the importance of integrity, and how it is the basis for decision-making in an empowered product team. In this article, I’d like to focus on how I coach product managers in making good decisions. Remember that in feature teams, most of...
Coaching – Integrity
Returning to our series on coaching, this article and the next are tackling two of the toughest yet most crucial aspects of successful product management. In this article I will address integrity, and in the next we’ll discuss decision-making. These two topics are...
Inside SVPG
This article is a bit different because I want to provide some insight into how SVPG works, and why we have chosen to set up the way we have. I also have some pretty significant news which I’ll share as well, once I’ve provided some context. For those that don’t...