Team Leadership

Building products is amazing. You take an idea – sometimes big, sometimes small – and with your team you make it real. Or at least you make a version of it come to life and then send it out into the world. Every day I find this creatively inspiring. To craft a product from scratch Read more »

There’s a lot of variation in how companies document product requirements. Some are moving away from detailed, written product requirements documents (PRDs), while others are using shorter write-ups, user stories, or jobs-to-be-done formats. Some product teams are moving away from written PRDs to visual artifacts like mockups and prototypes. It’s a change in approach that’s driven by demands for more agility Read more »

Every product comes with a tumultuous ‘origin story’. Ours is still unfolding, but I’ve been reflecting on what building a product business within a service agency has brought to the tale. We decided, about 18 months ago, that our consultancy business model, though growing and successful, could benefit from diversification — specifically, from creating something with tangible intellectual property. Six Read more »

Some years ago, I wrote a blog post noting that small teams are more creative and productive than big teams. I suggested that this might be because, like a band, they were self organising, communicated easily and informally and had autonomy over what they played. Band vs Orchestra I contrasted this to an orchestra, which Read more »

When I was doing my basic training in the military one of the things our instructors continually stressed was a sense of urgency. Nothing was to be rushed, but equally, nothing was to be done at a leisurely pace either. No need to take five minutes to shower when you are just as clean after Read more »

I still remember the day when I held my first one-on-one as a manager. I was nervous. I had read a dozen articles filled with advice from “let them lead the conversation” to “come prepared”. I had a list of questions in front of me, all carefully worded to spark great discussion. When I finally Read more »

Or “How to Manage Software Development in Teams who Think Nothing Like you“. Product management has two diversity problems. The first one is well-acknowledged: our industry must have more women, other ethnicities, and better representation from LGBTQIA. The second is more subtle: in those instances when we do achieve diversity, and especially cross-cultural diversity, we Read more »

There are no guides to Product Management As Ken Chin points out, the best way to learn about Product Management is to speak to people who have been doing it for longer than you. Unfortunately, because it is a relatively new discipline, there aren’t that many out there – and those that there are, are Read more »

In a world where the pace of change is constantly increasing and becoming more complex, can you really afford to stay still? Living and working in the United Arab Emirates, with its blindingly rich cities and unbelievably luxe lifestyles, I see that the value of innovation is obvious. After all, how does this crazy-wealthy region Read more »

Tony Ulwick is a pioneer of jobs-to-be-done theory, the inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process, and the founder of the strategy and innovation consulting firm Strategyn. In this talk at ProductTank San Francisco, he shares how jobs-to-be-done theory and the Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) process are being used to help startups, Fortune 100 companies, and others be Read more »