Tag: Product Management
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Product Management Interview Help
An interview is inherently stressful for a lot of folks, particularly early in career. It’s a short window to talk with a person about changing companies, changing roles, returning to the workforce, starting a career. You might not seal the deal in a given interview, but you can certainly close…
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The Monthly Progress Meeting
Prioritizing hurts. It’s not just ordering a list, it’s picking the ideas that will live. But there’s a strange difference between doing it, and communicating it. Prioritize by yourself on a Saturday afternoon with a clear head. Communicate on Monday morning to questions and challenges from everyone involved. Then every…
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Where do Product Managers Come From?
Product management is a relatively recent discipline, young enough that the definition is still a bit shaky and we see occasional reactionary questions. (“What would you say you do here?” was directed at a PM after all.) When my PM career started the only formal training was Practical or SVPG;…
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Building Products Isn’t Linear
You know that graphic about building a car that goes through steps from skateboard to car as the Right Way to Do It? I’ve always been bugged by something in that. To wit: each of the five steps is its own fully realized engineering project. They’re arguably smaller than the…
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Festina Lente
There’s been no lack of writing about development processes and engineering practices in software development shops (which arguably is everything now). The consensus of research and punditry stands firm: festina lente, or make haste, slowly. It’s like learning a complex riff on guitar: slow is smooth, smooth is accurate, accurate…
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How To Fix Medium Sized Problems
We can’t do all the things at once. In fact, good product management requires painful prioritization: working on this now, working on that later if at all. Some of the rocks get dealt with now. Others have to be deferred. Product ideas are a relatively easy problem to prioritize, mostly.…
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Haas Product Con 2024 Review
This was a 300 person conference put on by the Product Management Club at UC Berkeley’s MBA program. About half students, half professionals (heavy on UCB alumni). I heard of it through Rands Leadership Slack but most people that I talked with heard about it through Lenny’s PM List. I…
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Steering from the Engine Room
Let’s say you’re in disagreement with the leaders of your organization. It’s not unusual, especially for a product manager. You’re hired to be independent and creative, but only up to a point. And so a new owner comes in, or a new team, or a new priority… the business wants…
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Software Bubbles
You know what I love about software? For any problem, there’s a solution that will automate doing a half-ass job on the easy parts of the problem, and a bubble based on claims that it will solve the whole problem and a couple of ancillary problems along the way. There’s…
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Beta product releases
The team has worked hard, and milestones have been hit. It’s time to release, and a decision is made: do we call this done, or do we call it beta? I’m going to bundle all the betas together here, but it’s beta if any of these labels apply to the…
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