I attended a talk several years ago by the CEO of a very successful software company, and afterward a current customer asked about a product enhancement. Most CEO’s would respond with something like, “It’s on our roadmap” or “That’s good feedback, we’ll take it under consideration.” Not this CEO! His response, “Our product is not …
Strategy
Table stakes in product management?
I sometimes hear the phrase “table stakes” used to describe a feature. Basically a shorthand for a feature we can’t possibly leave out because the competitors have it, and the customer expects it. As a product manager, this assumption of “table stakes” is dangerous because it assumes knowledge of our customer’s needs and leads to …
Ignore your customers?
Shouldn’t we always listen to our customers if we want to create great products? Yes and no. Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake. Clayton Christensen – The Innovator’s Dilemma Clayton Christensen goes on to outline the dilemma we face as product managers. …
Why is simplicity so hard?
Why do we produce such complicated products when most would with Ockham’s Razor that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity.” How do things end up so complex when we all want to have the simplest possible solution, design, or implementation that we can come up with? I believe there are a few reasons: We …
What is your product hypothesis?
What do you believe is true about your product that you’re actively trying to prove right now? Maybe it’s a new feature, a new subset of features, or even a whole new product, but you need to identify a hypothesis. The power in calling it a hypothesis, is that it declares to everyone around you …
Simplicity
We can be tempted to create complex models, processes, and solutions as Product Managers, but this is antithetical to the what it means to do Agile. As the Agile Manifesto points out – “Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.” Steve Jobs shared a similar idea when he said, “Innovation is …
Business and Technology
Was the iPod a successful product because it was the best MP3 player on the market in terms of specs and features? No, the iPod succeeded because it combined a great technology (iPod) with a great business model (iTunes). Being a great digital companies today means no longer treating software development as separate from the …
Cannibalizing Your Product
What would it look like to cannibalize your own business, your own product? Clayton Christensen said it well when he wrote – “The fear of cannibalizing sales of existing products is often cited as a reason why established firms delay the introduction of new technologies.” If we fail to disrupt ourselves, then we will allow …
Patterns
As we transition from a Waterfall to an Agile approach to planning and product management, there is fear that there will be no plan, no organization, and long term vision. In the book, A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander captures well though how we can use patterns, starting small and growing bigger to create a town …
Predictably Irrational
As leaders, it is important to recognize in ourselves and others just how “predictably irrational” we are. How, although we think we make all of our decisions based on sound logic and reason, we regularly make irrational decisions. A good introduction to this is Dan Ariely’s talk on this topic: And if you time, I …