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3 Best Practices for Adopting Continuous Product Discovery

It’s easy to think you already do continuous product discovery. Most of the teams that I work with come into coaching thinking that they don’t need help. They’ve read the industry books, they attend the popular product conferences, and they follow all the leading blogs. They’ve

7 Standout Moments From Mind the Product SF 2017

In April, we posted this list of conferences. Since then, I’ve been asked dozens of times what my favorite product conference is. There are a lot of great product events, but for my money, none are better than Mind the Product. It’s the only product conference where I

Managing Product Teams for Success

I’ve been thinking about the challenges of managing product teams by outcomes. Most leaders want their teams to have the autonomy to go after an outcome, but they struggle with trusting that their teams will do the right things. Most teams want that autonomy, but they struggle with communicating

2017 Product Conferences

I often get and see on social media questions about upcoming product conferences. So we compiled a list. I say we because my assistant, Karen did most of the heavy-lifting. This list is by no means exhaustive. If you know of a product conference that is not on the list

The Ladder of Evidence: Get More Value From Your Customer Interviews and Product Experiments

One of the best signs of an effective product team is a regular cadence of customer interviews and product experiments. But it’s not enough to simply check the box on these activities; we need to make sure that we do them effectively. Without a strong background in research methods,

The Evolution of Modern Product Discovery

Product management is evolving quickly. The days of gathering requirements from business stakeholders and documenting them in long product requirements documents are vanishing. We no longer take months or years to release value to our customers. Instead, product teams are experimenting their way to viable solutions. We are putting our

Why This Opportunity Solution Tree is Changing the Way Product Teams Work

I’ve found a visual aid that is profoundly changing the way teams work. It’s working so well that I feel compelled to write a book about it. But that’s going to take time and I want you to have it today. So I’m going to scratch

Why You Are Asking the Wrong Customer Interview Questions

I recently asked a woman what factors she considered when buying a new pair of jeans. She didn’t hesitate in her answer. She said, “Fit is my number one factor." That seems reasonable. It’s hard to find a pair of jeans that fit well. I then asked

An Introduction to Product Discovery

I continue to be surprised by how many product managers aren’t familiar with dual-track development. I don’t care if you know the buzzwords or if you can define the difference between product discovery and product delivery. But if you work in product management, you should know that a

The Rise of Modern Product Discovery

I love that Marty Cagan and Jeff Patton have long been advocates of dual-track development. Their efforts have helped to shape the ongoing conversation about the evolution of product discovery. If you aren’t familiar with dual-track development, it’s the separation of product discovery from product delivery. Cagan defines

How to Take Notes During Customer Research Interviews

For those of you following along, I’ve been conducting interviews to understand the life of a product manager. If you need to catch up, you can see my initial call for participants here and my breakdown of how I am selecting participants here. I’ll be blogging about both

Why You Are Probably Interviewing the Wrong People (And How to Fix It)

Last Wednesday I put out this call to product managers to participate in a research study about the life of a product manager. I am overwhelmed by the response. In the first 48 hours, I have 90 responses. I was initially thinking that I would interview 9–12 people. But

Are You a Product Manager? Let’s Talk

Long-time readers know that I value user-centered design. I advocate for constant contact with your customers. I encourage product managers to immerse themselves in their customer’s world until they feel like they are drowning in data. It’s only then that we can develop meaningful products. For the past

Video: How One Chief Product Officer Is Reinventing Product Management At Her Company

A few months ago, I sat down with Hope Gurion, Chief Product Officer at CareerBuilder, to talk about her team, how they work, and how she stays current in the fast-moving world of product management. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Hope for the past two years and I

Why Drawing Maps Sharpens Your Thinking

"Could it have been the drawing of maps that boosted our ancestors beyond the threshold which the other apes just failed to cross?” - Richard Dawkins Have you ever wondered why the Business Model Canvas spread like wildfire? To me, the answer is clear. It’s a simple, visual

Why You Aren’t Learning As Much As You Could From Your Experiments

I love that A/B testing has become so popular. It’s an important tool in our toolbox. But it frustrates me that we use it so poorly. Most teams make one of the following two mistakes: They either gate releases with an A/B test trying to understand whether

Product Managers, Level Up Your Problem-Solving Skills

I’ve never met a product manager who doesn’t want to get better at what they do. The challenge is not in the desire, but in putting that desire into action. Product management isn’t a well-defined function. It’s changed rapidly over the past two decades. Most of

Must Reads From My 2015 Reading List

I’ve read 74 books to date in 2015. What follows are my top recommendations from that list. Books with Strong Ties to Product Management The first four relate to product management - empowering autonomous teams, decision making, creativity, and the life of Steve Jobs. 1. Team of Teams: New

Goals, Processes, & Habits: A Recipe for Success

It’s December which means it’s time to reflect on the year and look forward to the coming year. Last week, I wrote about my annual retrospective and how I choose priorities for the coming year. Today, I’ll explain how I translate those priorities into goals, design processes

How I Use December to Super-Charge My Coming Year

December is one of my favorite times of year. I do my best to reduce my client load so I can spend about 50% of my time looking back on the past year and looking forward to the next year. I assess how the year went asking, what went well,

The Next Product Talk Experiment

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States so I’m going to keep this short and sweet. I’m trying a new experiment. I hear often from product managers that they don’t know what coaching is. Coaching isn’t a common model in the product world. Most

Be Curious, Not Critical

“It’s horrible!” I was mortified. That was the feedback I received in a client meeting where we were reviewing one of my designs. The client continued, “We have a perfectly good home page, why don’t we just use that.” I was confused. We weren’t redesigning the home

How to Choose Your Next Experiments

“I think we should use folders.” “I think we should use tags.” “I know. Let’s test them both.” Does this sound familiar? I bet it does. By far the most common mistake teams make when they are new to Lean Startup methodologies is they fall into the trap of

Happy Birthday, Product Talk - Thank You!

I was sitting in my doctor’s office after a harrowing couple of weeks. I can remember it like it was yesterday. On the prior Sunday, I had passed out in the shower. I thought I had the flu. I could barely crawl from the bathroom to my bed. It

Stop Wishing and Start Doing

"I wish my leadership team would pick one strategy." "I wish my engineering team would contribute ideas to our project." "I wish our user experience team would ask for my input earlier." "I wish our sales team would stop saying yes to feature