Product and Engineering Leaders: Shoulder to Shoulder (Talk)
In public — and when working with the rest of the executive team — VPs of Product Management and VPs of Engineering need to be fully aligned, aka “shoulder to shoulder.”…
Cross-Functional
21 posts
Product Coaching and “Show, Don’t Tell”
I sometimes find product management teams composed entirely of first-timers, where not a single person has any previous experience as…
Product Sprawl
There’s a pattern I sometimes see at software companies, particularly those targeting enterprises or on the long march moving…
Prioritization Beyond Algorithms
The problem of prioritization comes up in many of my coaching discussions with product leaders, and in almost every product…
How Product Can (and Can’t) Speed Up Development
Half of the calls I get from CEOs include requests for Product Management to boost productivity in Engineering (aka Development…
The Hungry Man Parable
I talk with lots of executives from the go-to-market side of the house who think that building serious software is…
I’ve abandoned “MVP”
After years of struggle, I’m advising all of my clients and product leader coachees to stop using the term…
Hiring a Head of Product
Over the last three decades, across 10 full-time jobs and 180 consulting clients, I’ve headed up product teams 18…
Starter KPIs for B2B/Enterprise
I’m often asked what KPIs B2B/enterprise product folks should use, or what OKRs they should choose. This is…
What Do Product Leaders Do?
My last post briefly listed some broad responsibilities of product leaders which are distinct from the direct work of managing…
“My CEO is a Finance Guy Stuck on ROI…”
(combining a series of similar conversations) Head of Product: My CEO is a finance guy*, and is pushing the product…
What Do Product Leaders Worry About?
I spend much of my time with product leaders – folks who manage teams of product managers – including at a recent…