The Inherent Tension Between Roadmaps and OKRs

Every roadmap is a plan, but a plan is worth nothing if not executed upon. Once the essence of your roadmap is ready, it’s time to put timelines on it. But how can you commit to results that would happen in the future? Honestly, you can’t. But there is still a lot you can do to help everyone understand where you are going and how.

A New Level of Freedom in Roadmap Discussions

Roadmap discussions often become about features and timelines. While this is an important step in the process, it shouldn’t be the first. As a product leader, you need to make sure you facilitate the right discussions – both with your product managers and with your management team. Here is the interim level that many product leaders miss.

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.

Product Strategy 101: The Full Guide for Product Leaders

This series of articles should help you structure your way from company vision to product strategy and then to execution

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.