Blog
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Think Like An Investor When Building Products
Investors ultimately think of whether to buy, sell, or hold a company’s stock or some other asset. They consider alignment of investment opportunities with their goals, expected returns, costs to acquire and hold, and risks over the time frame and their conviction level. Thinking like an investor can help product teams dispassionately drive towards their…
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ESSENCE Of The Mind’s Wellbeing
Exercise, sleep, sunlight, emotions, nutrition, connection, and expectations are together the ESSENCE of the mind’s wellbeing. It was Thanksgiving 2023 when I posted this. This mnemonic, backed by science and philosophy, has helped me over the years, and I am still on the journey with this. We have experienced the benefits of exercise, sleep, sunlight,…
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Product Principles For Velocity And Empowerment
Product principles help accelerate decision-making and trade-offs across product execution stages. They are solution-agnostic and are not truisms. Aligning on principles early with cross-functions and leadership leads to higher velocity and empowerment. Product principles can evolve as problem definitions and solution definitions become clear. Accelerate decision-making for velocity Principles should be relevant to the product…
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Product Done Date
Customers and internal stakeholders care most about general availability dates (GA). The product team needs to care about key dates on the path to GA: Product Defined, Product Done, and Product Released. The definition of Product Done is dev complete + QA & polish + PM’s pre-release notes with FAQ & videos for enablement + …
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Effective Product Prioritization
Product prioritization is about taking the product “faster, higher, stronger”1 over a time horizon while allocating finite resources. Faster to market. Higher impact. Stronger through more differentiated value, lower risk, or lower costs. Resources are people and capital. Here’s my Product Roadmap Prioritization and Allocation Template. Step 1: Allocate and prioritize like an investment portfolio.…
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Views On OKR
When done well, OKRs are effective in driving focus and alignment.1 OKRs cascade down from the company level, and a single OKR can be shared across teams. Here is my OKR template. Drafting O for Objectives must matter for the customer and/or business, and are ideally inspirational. Objectives can be multi-quarter and cross-team. KR for…
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Effective Retros To Learn And Act
The goal of a retro is for a cross-functional team to write a crisp narrative of an issue, identify improvements, and an action plan. It’s one team having a candid conversation with a growth mindset. Typically the product manager writes it and shares it in advance of a retrospective meeting to seek input. Here’s my…
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Enterprise Product Requirements Checklist
Enterprise features/products need to support requirements that may not be directly related to the feature. These are known by many names: non-functional requirements, technical requirements, minimum requirements, etc. A new feature may impact other product areas, products, or product lines. Such features are also frequently found in RFPs issued by enterprise companies. I call these…
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Managing Your Boss, Huh?
“Managing your boss”1 was a memorable and counter-intuitive learning for me. This is not about schmoozing. This is about being effective in getting your job done. Understand all the boss’s goals. Many are clearly stated in the form of strategic goals and OKRs. Others need to be discovered and discussed with the boss. Recognize your…
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Project Charters For Cross-functional Alignment
Project charter docs drive early alignment with cross-functional teams on special projects, define goals and non-goals, specify RACI stakeholders, and outline high-level plans. Here is the Project Charter Template. The sections are: “At a glance” section must include the top things that the CEO must know: what, why, why now, and principles. Goals must be…
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