One of the amazing things about doing web-based products and services is watching how quickly the service gets adopted internationally. With global access, and with good site analytics tools, we can see the service start to spread around the globe....
Quite a few companies that exist today began life as something other than a product or Internet software company. Perhaps your company began as a large brick-and-mortar retailer, or an airline, or a financial services company. While it is true...
In the last article I talked about the role of architects and engineers in the product discovery process. I explained that great products come from the collaboration of the product manager, user experience designer and architect/engineer. I often get approached...
I find that many companies remain stuck in old, failed models of product management, and don’t always realize how important role definition is to building effective teams and successful products. In several articles I’ve tried to explain what the role...
Contributed by Marty Abbott From the “C”-suite offices to the product manager’s desk, everyone seems to be frustrated with time to market as measured from the initial idea to the launch of the product. At one level, the frustration is...
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...
Many software product teams are either currently experimenting with Agile methods, or have recently moved. I have written elsewhere about the benefits of Agile methods, including Scrum and XP, but I wanted to highlight here the keys for product management...
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...
Product management is all about choices. Making decisions about what opportunities are worth chasing, which problems are worth solving, what features will provide the most value, what the best time-to-market trade-offs are, and which customers are most important. While you’ll...
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...
Continuing on the theme of sharing more of the lessons learned from companies that are embarking on transformations to the product model, in earlier articles we discussed transformation regrets, the problem of managing the transformation as a project, and then...
In my last article I discussed an anti-pattern where companies embarking on a transformation to the product model make the mistake of trying to run that transformation like a large project, instead of employing the product model to move to...
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...
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,...
By Lea Hickman and Marty Cagan Recently we’ve been writing about two very common and very problematic forms of theater: product management theater, and product leadership theater. We’ve been intentionally trying to shine a bright light on these behaviors, as...
