One question I get quite frequently is “Google is making boatloads of money, so how can we do product management like Google?” Or another common variant is “Apple creates fantastic products. How can we do product management like Apple?” You...
If a great product is the result of combining a real customer need with a solution that’s just now possible, then it’s easy to see why the relationship between the product manager and the engineering team is so critical. The...
Earlier I’ve written about how important it is to clearly distinguish the roles of product management and product marketing (see Product Management vs. Product Marketing). But many companies suffer from a related problem, which is when the roles of product...
Probably the single most common question I get from CEO’s is where to find great product managers? I tell them that often they’re already in their organization, hiding under a different title – maybe a software engineer, designer, or an...
In my last article (Product Management vs. Product Marketing) I discussed why product management is very different from product marketing, and how critical it is to have capable product managers. The note seemed to strike a chord in that a...
Even in small companies, getting decisions made is often time-consuming and frustrating. Every product company needs a mechanism to get the key stakeholders and decision makers together to make timely and informed product decisions. My favorite way to ensure this...
Recently I’ve written about reinventing the product spec, and the reasons to move from a heavy-weight PRD to a light-weight high-fidelity prototype as the basis for your product spec. But where do these ideas come from, and how do you...
It’s funny how often I’m asked whether I am a “strategy guy” or an “execution guy.” I completely understand the reason for the question, as I think it’s true that most people prefer one or the other; in fact, they...
The single most frequent question I get from product leaders in companies both large and small, is where should product management live? The choices are most often engineering or marketing. While if you have the right personalities, it can work...
The New Year always gets me thinking bigger picture. For some that means reviewing the company mission statement. For others, it means coming up with your annual or quarterly objectives. For me, I’m partial to the Manifesto. A Manifesto is...
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – General George S. Patton, Jr. Patton was quite a character. From what I know of him, it sounds like...
What do the following people all have in common? – Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon – Steve Case, co-founder of AOL – Michael Dell, founder of Dell – Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle –...
Sometimes naming an important but nuanced concept can give that concept real power. I would argue that’s what happened when we named the concept of product discovery, and I’m seeing the same thing now with the product operating model. The...
I was speaking to someone recently that had just finished reading the new book TRANSFORMED, and a question she asked caught me by surprise. She was saying how her favorite part of the book was reading the case studies about...
Overview Since the first edition of INSPIRED was released in 2008, there have been occasional groups and book clubs that have reached out asking for some suggested discussion topics. These requests have gradually increased, but with the release of TRANSFORMED,...
