Product Management Skills

Is the world more distracting than it used to be? It certainly seems that way. Not just when we’re walking down the street, but at work, and with our families and friends as well. Have you ever sat down at your desk to do some important work, but found yourself unable to escape email or Read more »

Last year I marked my fifth year of working with private equity firm Better Capital and its portfolio companies. Today, however, I’m the Chief Product Officer of a small digital advertising startup, making difficult product decisions and helping the company to grow. This is the story of why I traded private equity for product. I Read more »

I recently came across a piece by Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of Mule Design, titled Design’s Lost Generation, in which he makes the case that designers should require a licence to do their job. Mike got me thinking; should product managers also require a licence do their job? After all, we’re a sizeable Read more »

“The hallmark of successful scaling is knowing when to hit the brakes so you can scale faster later,” according to Bob Sutton, organizational behavior expert at Stanford’s School of Engineering. I couldn’t agree more. Finding the right moment to enter the growth phase is crucial. Startups are quite vulnerable to focusing too much on scaling Read more »

Failing is an eventuality in software development. Not only do we fail, we are encouraged to fail iteratively. Let’s do it over and over again! And yet, the job of the product manager comes with a level of accountability and scrutiny that is unique. Product managers are asked to look after all facets of a Read more »

The final keynote of this year’s MTP Engage came from Paul Adams, VP of product at Intercom. In the preparations leading up to the conference, Paul had warned me that he would challenge some common beliefs in the audience. We were excited, because we wanted to end the conference by giving our audience something to Read more »

John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China” is a 1980s masterpiece, and easily one of the silliest action movies you’ll ever see. It’s remarkable for a very simple reason: Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) may be the film’s lead character – he’s front and centre on the poster — but he’s not actually the hero of Read more »

Lateral leadership describes the art of efficiently influencing others around you without formal authority. It is essential for succeeding in the implicit leadership position that product managers find themselves in. In this talk from this year’s MTP Engage in Hamburg, I share some advice on how product people can use lateral leadership in managing agile Read more »

This second post on the methods we use at Onfido to help us think commercially and strategically looks at State of Product meetings. (You can read the first post here). This meeting is an exercise in strategy, an opportunity to take stock of where your product is, where it fits within the wider market, and Read more »

Kevin Trilli joined Onfido as our chief product officer last year and brought with him some great experience, tools, and techniques. His methods have got us much more in tune commercially, and thinking strategically. It’s made me want to share how we work, so others can try it too and let us know how they’ve improved some Read more »