Cauvin

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri  makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos...

Great product management requires a combination of learning, leadership, facilitation, and strategy skills.  To gain and maintain proficiency, new and experienced product managers alike can benefit from reading books on these topics.  My product management bookshelf includes a number of texts that never cease to benefit me.  I find myself referring back to the books to refresh my skills, rekindle my product management passions, and cite interesting passages to friends and colleagues. Here are some of the top books I recommend product managers read.  The books I'm listing aren't books on product management per se , but they cover skills essential for effective product management.  If you're an executive overseeing a product management or product team, consider buying these books for the team's product management bookshelf. 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk Al Ries and Jack Trout Follow @lauraries This classic book enumerat...

Recently, I've noticed a number of product managers on social channels claim that product managers "own" the products they manage.  On the surface, this claim seems rather innocuous and uncontroversial.  But the claim bothers me, for several reasons. Let's examine why anyone would make such a claim.  I can think of a few reasons.  (I'll get to the notion of "product owner" in agile development later.) First, a single point of accountability simplifies how we conceptualize the product management role.  It's understandable that product managers are tempted to find a simple definition of product management.  The responsibilities of the role vary greatly across different companies, and few people can articulate concisely what a product manager is or does.  So it's nice to boil it down to ownership of the product.  But what does it really mean to own the product? Second, many folks in the product management community are familiar with the deba...

Typical Conversation Between Product Managers Many conversations about product management and leadership have taken place in the blogosphere and Twitter.  The typical exchange goes something like this: Product Manager 1:  "Product managers have a lot of responsibility but no formal authority." Product Manager 2:  "Authority is something to be earned, not granted." Product Manager 1:  "But developers and sales don't listen to me, because they don't report to me and are in different departments." Product Manager 2:  "Great leaders work with cross-functional teams." Product Manager 1:  "Yes, but I don't get any support from executives when I work across departments." Product Manager 2:  "You shouldn't need support if you are a great leader." Leadership Myths Let's put to rest the two opposing leadership myths that underlie these types of exchanges.  The opposing myths are: A great leader's effec...

Does your company suffer from product paralysis? Product paralysis occurs when progress halts on improving or innovating a product. At some point, you've probably experienced: A product team can't agree on major product decisions, so they concentrate on minor bug fixes and enhancements that have little or no market impact. Bold product decisions are made (often by members of the team that just happen to wield the most influence at the time), but the decisions come under fire and are put on hold shortly thereafter. Team members don't buy into product decisions, so they undermine them, stall their execution, or just aren't motivated to be productive in executing them. The most effective product managers - to the extent that company executives empower them to do so - employ three approaches to prevent product paralysis: Base product decisions on market understanding and marketing principles . Teams will not buy in to major product decisions unless they can make a compe...