Product Management and Ownership Made Easy
Tired of launching features that bring nothing to the customers and teach you nothing? Want to stop being a proxy for others?
From Product Vision, Product Strategy, Product Goals and Principles, down to Roadmap Creation, Prioritization, I can mentor/coach on a variety of topics, to help you and your organization.
As a Head of Product, or as an individual Product Manager, I've always strived to be a student and a mentor. These days I'm mentoring other product managers and leaders, with Product League. Would you like to improve your product management or product leadership skills?
Product Vision
Your North Star
The single most important aspect of a product is the vision. Your guiding compass and your most powerful sales tool (both for customers and potential partners/employees). Having a compelling, motivating vision, which you can "evangelize" throughout your organization (at any size) helps form the rest. We can discuss how to create and formulate a compelling vision, how to communicate it to stakeholders, and rework existing vision, if it's not up-to-par.
Product Strategy
Understand HOW you'll reach your vision
"Sequence of products or releases we plan to deliver on the path to realizing the product vision" (Marty Cagan, "Inspired"). Strategy is an overlooked component, or a misunderstood one. We aren't thinking about what sets us apart from our competitors, and go straight to features. Having a solid grasp on your product's strategy is vital to guarantee it can work for your customers and users, even if the features implementing it deviate from what you had (perhaps mistakenly) fallen in-love with, when you first envisioned your product.
Product Principles
The nature of the products you want to create - we're far more aligned along principles and values than anything else. Long-term cohesion and retention are based on shared understanding of the above, more so than a bump in salary, or a successful demo. This is the glue that holds everything in place, and creates a healthy product culture. It works along two axes - autonomy and alignment.
Maximum autonomy with no direction = chaos.
Maximum direction with no autonomy = micromanagement.
We're trying to align constraints, so people can act based on shared principles and achieve the goals we set, maintaining a great balance between autonomy and direction.
Product Objectives
Breaking down strategy into usable components, in a measurable way is vital to show a transparent picture to product teams, and set a clear direction, while allowing for maximum autonomy under all the above constraints (vision, strategy and principles).
This is where OKR (Objectives and Key Results) "live" for product. Product Objectives help empower and motivate people and to meaningfully measure progress, by adhering to General George Patton's quote: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity" and by allowing you to measure whether you're resolving the underlying business and user problems when you're releasing features. This will be your short-term bread and butter, and we'll learn how to set and manage OKRs.
Being a Product Manager is tough, and can be either a thankless slog, or an experience like no other. There's no single definition of what it means to be a product manager, and each company emphasizes different aspects of it. For example, organizations like Scrum.org worked to combine the experience of a product owner into a series of courses. With the help of thought leaders, organizations like Scrum.org and literature, I believe we can all get better at the product game.
Talk to me to learn for yourself.