In this Product Leadership podcast, we talk about the evolution of tech product management; empathy as a core skill of product leaders; that we shouldn’t be envious of the biggest or shiniest tech companies; and why product managers shouldn’t claim to be the CEOs of their products.
Employees can deliver ultimatums (“I’ll quit unless…”), even if that’s not their real intention. Poor communication meets unretractable threats. As managers, we need to avoid panic, listen for underlying issues, and identify solutions.
Occasionally building something unique and small for a single customer makes sense. But enterprise software companies can easily fall into the habit of including custom work in too many of their major deals… with disastrous results. This (long) post lays out root issues and possible solutions.
Eric Boduch hosts Pendo’s Product Love podcast. In this episode, we discussed enterprise vs consumer; roadmaps; organizations; chasing competitor features; DevOps; the need for product leaders to “merchandize” what product folks do; and being students of human behavior.
Rich Mironov joins Business of Software Conference in Boston on Oct 1-3 for “What To Do About Your Audience’s Real Roadmap Questions.” Other speakers include Jared Spool, Tania Katan, Peldi Guilizzoni, Claire Suellentrop, David Cancel and Bruce McCarthy.
Rich will give a talk on “Product Managers, Product Owners, and the need for Real End User Validation” at Agile Summit Greece, 21 Sept 2018.
Product leaders need to push their teams toward regular direct user/customer feedback, unmediated by sales or marketing or support. I’m suggesting one live user interview per week. But how can we find time for that, and make it important enough to compete with other urgent work?
Many infrastructure development teams don’t have a product manager. That forces an architect or senior developer to manage a range of responsibilities they are not best equipped to handle: settling conflicting business priorities; internally “selling” the value of architecture; tying technical decisions to business metrics; making connections between software and end user joy.
Product managers need to talk — often — with actual end users and buyers. We need to listen, interview, understand and empathize with paying customers. Unmediated by marketing, sales or researchers. What organizational barriers block this essential work, and can we remove some of them?
Product Anonymous Melbourne hosted Rich’s talk on building and scaling product management teams. We focused on initial product hires, division of labor as teams grow, and owning end-to-end bits of value.