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Predicting The Impact Of Each User Story

On Tuesday, we looked at how to measure the impact of each user story, looking at both measuring the effectiveness of the mechanics of the feature and also the impact of the story on our overall product goals. Today, we'll look at how to predict the impact of

Measuring The Impact Of Each User Story

On Thursday, I wrote about how to use themes to stay focused on your product goals. But using themes is not enough. You also need to identify how you are going to predict and measure the impact of each user story. Let's return to our previous example and

Using Themes To Wrestle An Ever-Growing Backlog of User Stories

One of the biggest challenges with writing requirements as user stories is that with time your backlog can become an overgrown mess of assorted stories that seem to have no rhyme or reason. When writing a PRD, it's easy to keep the whole product in mind. After all,

User Stories Aren't As Simple As They Seem

In April, I wrote User Stories Are Better Than PRDs. To date, it's been one of my most popular posts. It covers the basic format of user stories: As a user role, I'm able to do some functionality, for some explicit benefit. It looks at each

So You Want To Be A Product Manager

Overwhelmingly, the top product-related question I see on Quora, LinkedIn, and Twitter is how do you become a product manager. Product managers come from all walks of life. There is no single path to your first product role. Seeing this question so often led me to write quite a

The Most Common Mistakes People Make In Product Manager Interviews

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. There are a ton of great articles about what you might get asked in a product manager interview. I refer you here, here, and here. I've also written about what I always ask

Dear Product Manager, Nobody Is Looking At Your Resume

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. Now that you have narrowed down a target list of companies, let's focus on how to get the attention of the hiring manager. In a perfect world, you would apply for a job,

You'll Never Be a Product Manager There: Choosing The Right Companies

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. When we talked with Colin Murphy a couple of weeks ago, he hit on a key element of a successful job search. Colin, looking for his first product role, said, "I realized early on

To Portfolio Or Not To Portfolio

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. Most product and design job requirements ask for a portfolio. What do you do if you don't have one? I'm not a big fan of public portfolios. They lead to poor

Moving From User Experience to Product With Laura Klein

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. We've heard from Oded and Colin who had some product experience from the context of account management type roles. We've heard from Zaz who switched to product from engineering. Today, we

Moving From Engineering To Product Management With Zaz Harris

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. I hear from a lot of engineers who want to move into product management. Typically, they like writing code, but they want to get more involved in the decision making and have a good perspective

Mastering the Product Manager Job Search With Colin Murphy

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. I have a few more interviews lined up for what's turned into an ad hoc series on how to find a product manager job. After that, I'll shift focus back to

Oded Korczyn: On Becoming a Product Manager

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. Over the past two weeks, I've talked about how you don't need experience to become a product manager and how you can gain experience right now. I regularly hear from folks

Gain Product Management Experience By Starting Right Now

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. Last week, I wrote about how you don't need specific experience to become a product manager. Too many people get caught up in the chicken and the egg problem of how can I

You Don't Need Experience To Become a Product Manager

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. What does it take to get into product management? What's the requisite experience? Are certificates worthwhile? Do you need an MBA? As a hiring manager, I've hired half a dozen product

Brainstorming: More Questions Than Answers

There's been a lot of confusion around brainstorming these days. First, there was the New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer claiming that brainstorming doesn't work. Scott Berkun wrote a rebuttal arguing Lehrer's logic was flawed. Twitter exploded with comments. I'm going to

4 Questions I Always Ask When Interviewing Product Managers

This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. As part of my consulting practice, I often help companies recruit product managers and interaction designers. As a result, I do a lot of interviewing. I've talked with a lot of folks who

Social Contagion: How I Went From No Mobile Gaming to Addicted in 36 Hours

I spent this past weekend with my siblings. Four of the five of us, plus my brother-in-law, spent a good amount of the weekend playing Words with Friends, Draw Something, and Scramble with each other. Now up until this point, I had mostly avoided mobile games. If I&

Even Knowing The Rules, Why We Still Can't Write Stories Like Pixar

There's been a lot of buzz this week about the Pixar story rules being tweeted by Emma Coates (@lawnrocket). But don't expect a whole new crop of Pixar-like storytellers to suddenly emerge. Knowing what makes a good story, and writing a good story are two

Why the BranchOut Decline Isn't Surprising

Earlier this week, ERE wrote this article about the rapid decline of BranchOut over the past 30 days. Peaking at 13.9 million monthly active users at the end of April, they are now down to 6.5 million monthly active users, losing 7.4 million monthly active users in

What a Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Can Teach Us About Building Great Products

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) I just finished reading "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman", a series of short stories or essays by Richard Feynman that reads like a memoir. Not only was this book a delightful read, but it

User Stories Are Better Than PRDs

In the previous post, we focused on how product managers share customer knowledge with engineers. We discussed how user personas are an effective way of  telling the customer's story. We also looked at how some teams share artifacts (videos, audio, written reports) from usability tests to help communicate

Sharing Knowledge: From Product Manager to Engineers

This is the second post in a four part series on Sharing Knowledge in Product Management. The first part looked at sharing knowledge from customers to product manager. This part examines from product Mangers to engineers. Part three will examine from engineers back to product managers. Finally, part four will

Sharing Knowledge: From Customer to Product Manager

This is the first post in a two+ part series. I have content in mind beyond the first two parts, but want to gauge interest before deciding whether or not to continue. These first two parts are sections of a paper I wrote in a class called, "Creating and

Interesting vs. Meaningful

About a year ago, I was struggling. I was the CEO of a technology startup. We were going through some tough times, but we were okay. I wasn't. Looking back, I realized that my struggle was that while I was interested in what we were doing, it simply