Product Management Skills
Martin Eriksson defines product management as the intersection between business, technology, and user experience. He believes that a good product manager must be experienced in at least one of these areas and passionate about all of them. But what exact skills does a product manager need? From communication and strategic thinking to prioritisation and analytical skills, the list is long. This content looks at product management skills in different ways.
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How to Gain Agency - or Outrun a Bear
When I lived in British Columbia, Canada, I used to go running in the forests behind our house. My housemate (appalled at the idea) insisted that I run with his dog to keep the grizzly bears away. At the end of one run I was chatting with a neighbour, a retired Canadian mountain guide with Read more »
Evaluating Product Teams: Mind What You Measure
It is well accepted that outcomes – such as product adoption, customer satisfaction, user experience, and product performance – rather than outputs and tactical tasks should be used in evaluating product managers. However, in practice, these outcomes are at least influenced by – and often determined by – external factors. What are these external factors Read more »
7 Big Things we Learned at #mtpcon 2017
Where did your team go on their first big outing? For the recently-formed group-wide product team at Tes, our first major excursion as a group was to MTP 2017 – Europe’s largest gathering of product managers with more than 1,500 attendees. It was a total blast with a healthy mix of learning, networking and partying. Read more »
System Thinking for Product Managers by Johanna Kollmann
In one of the keynotes of this year’s MTP Engage Hamburg, Johanna Kollmann reviews established system thinking concepts and applies them to the world of today’s product management. Read more »
The Parable of Frank de Boer - Evolution, not Revolution in Building Product Teams
The Parable On June 26, 2017, English football team Crystal Palace enthusiastically announced the appointment of the great Dutch defender Frank de Boer as its new manager. Admittedly he was joining after a disappointing spell in Italy, but his success with the Dutch champions, Ajax, with whom he won the Champions League four consecutive times, Read more »
How we Saved our Funnel Drop-offs After They Happened
One of the biggest problems for e-commerce, demonstrated by about 74% of users worldwide, is cart abandonment. It means three out of every four shoppers in your online store walk away AFTER they’ve put their items in the cart. If you’ve ever tried to deal with cart abandonment, you might find our story interesting — we brought back 11% of Read more »
Turn Your Release Notes Into a Content Marketing Machine
If you’re in a product company the chances are that you’ve developed some process of informing your users about new features. This could be in the form of a blog post or as a notification within the UI. But it doesn’t have to stop there. Spending a bit more effort on the process can help Read more »
5 Product Leadership Lessons From the #mtpcon Leadership Forum 2017
Last week I joined the Mind the Product Leadership Forum in London. Among the speakers and panelists were Matt Walton, Julia Whitney, Roman Pichler, Arne Kittler, and Brant Cooper. It took me two days to get to London from Yogyakarta, Indonesia for the night before the sessions, but it was worth it. While I originally wrote Read more »
Negotiation in Product Management: the Pursuit of Compromise
When I was a student, I took part in a negotiation exercise. We were given imaginary countries and had to negotiate our rights to the surrounding sea. The whole exercise quickly descended down into what the lecturer politely described as a study in realpolitik. To try and help us curb any dictatorial inclinations we were given Read more »
Scaling Your Platform and Managing its Evolution
Examples of platforms are all around us. Businesses that have been successful at building platforms have disrupted traditional companies and scaled quickly. AirBNB, Amazon, Salesforce, and Uber are just some examples of platforms that have become massively successful in recent years. You’ll find platforms across many industries, from transportation to book publishing. For a product Read more »