Dear Manager: When An Employee Fails It's Your Fault
No matter how flat organizations are today they still have structure and with structure comes power — and often the abuse of it. I have wanted to take this topic on for…
Aha! Blog
Run, Don't Walk To Your Next Product Management Job
If you ever spent time around a pool as a kid — someone yelled at you “walk don’t run!” I was reminded of that yesterday while on vacation in Kauai, Hawai‘i. I watched…
You're Agile — But You Still Need a Product Roadmap
Agile software development is effective, but it is not designed for setting strategy and product direction. Learn how to be a strategy-drivien agile team.
When It’s Time to Walk Away
If you are reading this — you probably are not the type of person to give up easily. Either am I. You are ambitious and skilled and continue to push forward regardless of…
5 Steps to Get a Product Marketing Job at a Startup
I keep finding myself telling people that marketing has profoundly changed. In the last few days, I have told the same story at a fundraiser to an attorney, at a soccer…
Manage Tasks, Assign Features, and Track the Product Team's Work
A product manager is nothing without a strong product team and capable engineers. You may have the greatest product strategy and visual roadmap ever crafted — but if you…
Innovation Wasteland
Creating great products is invigorating. And employees who have a chance to be creative should be the happiest people on earth. But your company probably never fully…
Stop Calling Software "Enterprise-Grade"
The strategy-of-the-day seems to be to slap the word “enterprise-grade” on a product and then think that the product is miraculously ready for large businesses to buy.…
You Don't Want This Perfect Job
I have the perfect job to offer you — but you do not want it. You actually do, but cannot communicate how you could stretch to fill in the areas where you have limited…
Trust the Engineers — Do Not Put Bugs on Your Roadmap
A very bright product manager at a startup asked me this morning. “Should bugs exist on my roadmap?” This is a fascinating question and one that does come up every few…
