Category: Uncategorized
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How to Run a Customer Roadmap Call
What is your goal? Depends on the stage of the company… you might be working with a five year roadmap of value extraction activities, but if so I can’t really help. I’ve always left companies when they hit that stage. What I’m much more used to is active value creation.…
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Building The Habitual Year
As a new Product Manager, you’ve got a huge increase of demands on your time. You’re now the person responsible for answers about the product, and if you’re selling it globally or developing it overseas, that means you’ve now got a never-ending day. Additionally, it’s not just those tactical questions…
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How to Run a Standing Team Call
A standing team call is any call where a group of people meet regularly. Every time you notice that it’s coming up, try to take a few minutes to do these things: Figure out what type of call it is, then ask, does this call still need to exist? Some…
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Mission Statements
A good mission statement is an aspirational goal that helps everyone move in roughly the correct direction. It is not strictly descriptive of what the organization is currently like, but it should reflect the best moments attained. An aspiration that is not grounded in the possible is easily ignored, or…
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Supporting a Product’s Cluster Headaches
Cluster headaches are problem reports that make everyone else in the organization ask “are we seeing that too?” and pile on. Alice suspects a memory leak and files a report. Bob tags his customers to it as well. They start discussing general performance questions in a chat or a meeting…
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Planning R&D Time
Granted that reality will disrupt the plan, I still find it useful to do a quarterly planning exercise. I’m fond of doing this with a zero based budget of person-time that has already had maintenance requirements removed. So you’ve got N full-time equivalent (FTE) people. They’re going to be sick…
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Internal Transfers
Role, tech stack, and culture. A new hire for a role must come up to speed on all three areas, and will be coming from behind on at least one. Some organizations are lucky enough to have a broadly common set of cultural or role expectations so that people can…
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Executive Dashboards
Executive dashboards go through the Tuckman model… like team members, they have to be understood before they are accepted. Forming: a need for a dashboard is recognized and that dashboard is introduced to the executive staff. It may or may not be challenged, but its place is not certain. Storming:…
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Gambling or Groceries?
Following on the post about sustaining software, here’s an opposing argument. Go big or go home. Deliver shocking value. Focus attention on exponential results instead of linear ones. Leverage your investment into the biggest possible return. All of those exciting phrases are exciting because they mean increasing risk. Some are…
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When to use Design Discovery Patterns
People love one size fits all patterns and models, but it is usually better to use the correct tool for the job at hand. So you need to solve a problem. You’re going to build a solution to solve the problem with. It’s going to have users, who will configure…
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