How to Give Your Product Managers Negative Feedback (Part 1)

Product management requires you to master so many different skills, that there always seems to be a gap between what you do well and what you need to do well to succeed. As a manager of product people, it is your job to help them with this continuous growth, but it’s not always easy. Here is the complete guide on how to do it effectively.

Is Your Job to Keep Your Boss Happy?

As product leaders, our job is often the opposite: to highlight to everyone what we are doing wrong and what we are missing. But on the other hand, you still have a manager who wants things from you. How to keep them happy while staying true to your real mission? All the answers below.

Product Strategy 101: How to Continue When There Isn’t a Right Answer

Creating a product strategy is almost never a matter of answering a few simple questions and figuring it out. Moreover, it’s not like there is a right answer that is objectively true (and even if there was, you wouldn’t be able to know it). Sounds confusing? It is. But here are quick methods to take you out of the talking and into action.

Product Strategy 101: 3 Ways to Translate Strategy Into a Roadmap

Once you have a product strategy that you have confidence in, it’s time to translate it to execution. But execution tends to drown you in the nitty-gritty details until you lose sight of the bigger picture. Here are three effective ways to make sure your roadmap remains at the right level.

Product Strategy 101: The Quickest Way to A/B Test Your Strategy

Creating a solid product strategy is an ongoing process, not a one-time effort. Once you created a first draft that you are happy with, it’s time to bring it to the market and iterate according to the feedback you get. But how can you test a strategy? It’s actually simpler than you think.

Product Strategy 101: The Hard Thing About Strategic Decisions

Product strategy is hard because of many reasons. But eventually, when it comes to making actual decisions, there is one barrier that prevents many leaders from reaching any conclusions. This guide reveals what it is and how to overcome it.

Product Strategy 101: It’s About Depth, Not (Just) Vision

Product strategy is one of the most important tasks of the product leader, and definitely one of the hardest things to do. In the effort to bring the company’s vision into reality, the details matter, often more than the innovation and completeness of the vision itself. This should be your first step into product strategy.

4 Reasons to Disconnect Squads From the Formal R&D Org Structure

Most people think that squads are a formal org structure. They can be, although that requires a very specific setting and a number of supporting systems to work well. But they don’t have to be, and there are major benefits to leaving the formal R&D structure as is, and adding squads on top of it. Here are 4 reasons why you should work this way.

Post-Launch Guide for Product-Led Growth

Your journey to product-led growth starts way before you actually launch the product, but it definitely doesn’t end there. Realistically, this is just the beginning. Here are the things to keep in mind when your product meets the road.

How to Keep Your Team Excited on Long Projects

Getting everyone excited about the next project is always a challenge. But when projects last too long, let alone when they weren’t that exciting to begin with, it’s hard to keep the team motivated, which, in turn, leads to the project dragging even longer. Here are a few things you can do to end this vicious cycle.

How to Build a Roadmap for an Ultra Agile Team

When I talk about roadmaps with younger product leaders, I often hear things like “we don’t need one, we are agile” or “why build a roadmap when things will surely change”. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The roadmap sets the strategic direction of the company, and when built right it also doesn’t have to change that frequently, despite your agility. But there are times of real uncertainty that raise the bar on why and how to build a roadmap that will serve you well. Here is a quick guide to help you guide the team through the unknown.

Does the Product Leader Have to Be a Domain Expert?

Here is the bottom line: eventually, yes. And if you can find an amazing product leader who happens to be also a domain expert, of course you should hire them. But if you need to make a compromise, where should it be? On the product side or the domain expertise side? And which compromise to make? Here is my take on this common dilemma.