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86 Stories To Learn About Product Strategy

by Learn RepoFebruary 20th, 2024

Too Long; Didn't Read

Learn everything you need to know about Product Strategy via these 86 free HackerNoon stories.

featured image - 86 Stories To Learn About Product Strategy

1. Principles of Product Management [NEW BOOK]

In 2019, I decided to write a book to help new and aspiring product managers land a PM job and launch their careers. My Book, Principles of Product Management, is Now Available!

2. A Good Product/Market-Fit Needs a Good Roadmap

Tech products, whether digital features, products, or services, need to achieve product-market fit if they have any hope of succeeding.

3. Reverse-Discovery: The Best Way to Get Started With Product Discovery

In recent years, product discovery has become a growing priority for high-performing product teams. Here's how to get started.

4. 3 Startup Positioning Exercises for Differentiation and Purpose

Positioning is one of the most important steps after entrepreneurs finish their market, customer and competitive analysis. Knowing competitors plus their positioning, the target audience, the market trends along with the problems and challenges of the customers it becomes easier to position the product competitively in terms of value, audience and price.

5. How to Not Screw Up Your Product Strategy

Engineers often complain about product strategy, but this post goes through why it is so hard and how to avoid common pitfalls.

6. What Is Product Marketing, and What Do PMMs Do?

Product marketing function varies significantly from company to company and it sometimes even means different things at the same organization.

7. Apple Mail - Unmasking The Most Mysterious App In The World

Revealing the mystery behind the Apple Mail App and why the small app has a wider role to play in Apple's wider privacy-first strategy and fight for the market

8. How I ran a Successful Co-creation Workshop as a CEO

How do you build something that users really want? Perhaps you could assemble a few and ask for them to make it themselves!

9. How to Build High-Performing Product Teams

A product team is the backbone of any company with a digital offering. They're responsible for constructing goods or a service that not only provides value to users but is also a reflection of the organization they work for. Product teams spin many plates at once, spanning duties from product management, product marketing, user experience, and product analytics. In the below article, we talk through the 4 characteristics that make up a high-performing product team.

10. Shifting from a sales-led growth to product-led growth mindset

The transition from sales-led to product-led growth model: What are the benefits and challenges of the product-led growth model.

11. "Agile" is a product development tactic not a collection of techniques

Many tech businesses rely on a mix of process and platitudes to define how they work. Instead, they should focus on the tactics that inform their processes.

12. Product Experimentation Wonderland

In “Alice in Wonderland” we are invited to escape reality by tumbling into a whimsical world of nonsense. I found in this story a good analogy for PMs.

13. What Does It Mean To Be A Data-Driven Product Manager?

In this modern era where technological revolution is at its pinnacle, no business can afford to serve its customers without understanding their likes and dislikes, their preferences, and their innate feelings. Organizations today accept this fact openly: being data-driven top of the priority list; understanding the value they can draw out of storing, processing and analysing their customer data.

14. Making Better Product Management Decisions with Customer Feedback Analytics

While companies become increasingly customer-centric, PMs are still sitting in a gold mine of underused customer knowledge. This is how can we change that.

15. Have you Considered Becoming a Product Manager?

Product management is a specialized role with an intelligent blend of business, tech and user experience. A product manager is mostly tasked with the duty of successfully managing the development of a product from start to launch, above other tasks.

16. A Checklist of Questions to Ask as a New Product Manager

Start-ups are super exciting, fun and challenging. You have a notch above of all these when you join as a product leader/manager in start-ups where the product offering is unique yet interesting, the potential is high but the road ahead is less travelled and undiscovered.

17. An Intro to AI Powered Product Development

The global product development services industry was close to $8 billion in 2020.

18. How to Solve Real Problems so that Great Products Build Themselves

Natasha from hackernoon.com asks Product Strategist Dani Laity to unpack the sustainable tech product strategies and monetization models powering Aurora Sustainability—2020 Noonie Nominee in for Best Use of Tech for Good in hackernoon.com’s annual internet awards! 🚀

19. Setting Product Goals & Metrics

Defining Product Goals and Metrics for Product Managers. Solving Product Execution Problems and Cases for PM interviews.

20. What Three Features Should Houseparty Launch Next?

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” — Jeff Bezos

21. What Do Product Managers Do?

I no longer assume I know what someone actually does when they say they are a Product Manager. This year, I had a chance to have over 40 or so 1:1s with folks from outside of work in different stages of their product management journey. No two roles were the same. I distilled our conversations into one picture in an attempt to put a unifying model to the various flavors of product management discipline out there.

22. Netflix Business Strategy In 2022

A full immersion into Netflix's changing strategy as the market landscape for streaming becomes saturated.

23. Main 5 Uncommon Traits of a Product Manager Role

Believe most of us are already aware of what is expected of a Product Manager profile in any internet company, starting from being a mini CEO of the product to be the interface between business, UX & technology. Here in addition to those common attributes of a PM profile I am going to point out few not so common traits but important qualities a Product Manager should possess.

24. The Product-Led Approach: Principles, Benefits, Examples, Alternatives

Some of us in product take it for granted that a product-led approach is the way to operate. However, all too often our stakeholders – sales, marketing, our boss’s boss, even our own team – may need some convincing.

25. Product Manager: The Visionary Of Multiple Responsibilities

PM is not just a very important person from the C-suite. They play a crucial role in the live cycle of any product of the company and they are really supposed to wear suits, but they don’t. Because product managers are responsible not just for the technical side of the product, but of its heart and soul. The main difference of PM from any management position is the necessity to be involved in the product creation directly. The manager is not about producing, but about understanding the techniques and showing the direction for all the teams, as the PM should have the final image of the product.

26. Building the bank for startups: Immad Akhund of Mercury [Interview]

Fintech startups have become undeniably attractive in the last few years, receiving a lot of attention from media outlets and VCs. I spoke with Immad Akhund, co-founder and CEO of Mercury, to understand the vision for his new company that aims to define the future of banking for startups.

27. Improving Software Development Productivity

Software development takes time and effort and requires patience, but if it’s taking too long it can hurt the business. That’s why it’s important to always consider what you can do to improve your software development productivity.

28. Maximizing Product Success: The Role of Hypothesis Testing, Prototyping, and MVPs

Learn how to test hypotheses and create prototypes and MVPs to ensure the success of your product. Find out how methods like RAT and MVP can help product manage

29. How to Write Engaging Copy That Makes Buyers Fall in Love with Your Product

When I joined a copywriting agency, the first thing we did was learn how to use trigger words in our copy. One of my first projects was writing a product description for a sex toy. I had to write a copy that encouraged the target audience to buy “sex toys for couples.”

30. How to Plan your First 90 Days as a New Product Manager

There is always that new product manager who is wondering what the next 3 months will look like. The successes, learnings, adaptations, expectations, and the list goes on and on.

31. Metrics to Help You Measure and Improve Your Products

Here, I will introduce you to different categories of success metrics and how are they used in a broader sense.

32. 11 Lessons I Learned From Transforming a Product Organization

Key takeaways from transforming a monolithic team into three autonomous squads and much more.

33. How We Migrated From Software Factory into Product Development Studio

We were in college when we decided to start a company. At that time, it didn’t matter what type of company.

34. Engaging with Customers in the Early Stages of a Startup

In the early stages of startup development, teams run the risk of advancing too quickly as they obtain limited data about their early customers.

35. How We Carved A Niche For An Rx Delivery Service

Few years ago, I consulted for a small Rx delivery startup in HongKong where I focused on strategy, go-to-market and built out their product direction from the

36. NAB’s API: The Big Reveal

We’re working on a more detailed follow up to the high-level research we did into APIs and the ASX100. As part of the follow-up, I’m looking into the APIs offered by ASX100 companies and, for no scientific reason, chose to start with an analysis of NAB’s developer portal.

37. 10 Common Product Management Mistakes that Could be Slowing Your Progress

We see hard-working product teams struggling all the time, even under the best of conditions. Often, it’s not due to a deficiency or lack of skill within the team. Rather, the team has fallen into one—or more—of the most common dysfunctions in product management.

38. What Product Managers Can Do to Minimize Technical Debt

Product managers are able to help in tech debt closing. Is it myth or reality? In the article, we'll discover what it may look like under the hood.

39. We Got to #1 on Product Hunt in 2022 - Here's What Happened After

Getting number one spot on Product Hunt gives your product unprecedented exposure and legitimizes your release as one worth watching.

40. How to Find Market Fit for Data Products

By the time I entered the bar on that rainy spring afternoon, Justin had already started on his cocktail. It had been a few months since I saw him last; after his product design firm ended their work with my previous healthcare technology employer, he had taken on some new projects and it was tough to find time to connect. I had recently left that employer myself to take on a new job that ticked all the boxes- pay raise, prestigious company, work from home, great boss. Plenty of changes to catch up on.

41. Building a Successful Product: Why User Experience Matters

What your customer will remember is how they felt while using the product, not how unique/different it was.

42. Product Positioning: 5 Easy Steps to Strategic Storytelling

A 5 step framework for strategic storytelling and how to position product.

43. Why Start a Bank? Interview with Mercury CEO Immad Akhund

44. 11 Cognitive Biases Useful in Product Design

Key biases, heuristics and cognitive effects that can be used for designing products.

45. How to Hack the Product Adoption Process

Last Thursday, I was lucky to interview Warren Schirtzinger during a live webinar, one of the co-creators of the “Chasm” framework in the 80s, later polished and popularized by Geoffrey Moore in the book “Crossing the Chasm”.

46. I Took Ownership of a Major Product Feature as a PM Intern

This post will cover Denis’ workflow from planning to execution around the Preferences project as well as his experience working with the Courier team.

47. Innovation Validation Without a Product

A Startup Model for Corporate Innovation

48. Stone Soup and Super Power 🦸‍♂️

I recently read The Pragmatic Programmer — By Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas. The book introduced me to the Stone Soup story which is as follows.

49. Make it Sticky, then Acquire: 4 Pricing Lessons From My First 0-100 Users

In an ideal world, the goal of any business starting up is to make money. In most cases, the profitability of a product is closely tied to how you as a product manager choose to price your product. Apart from building a product that provides real value to its customers, profitable monetization is the second most important aspect of running a successful business.

50. QA + Marketing: Can Testers Help Marketers and Vice Versa?

What can testers do for marketers? And how does this unusual alliance help business?

51. What I Learned From 3.5 Years as a Product Leader at a VC Backed SaaS Startup

I first heard of Elium, formerly known as Knowledge Plaza, in 2011. I was attending a very small startup event where Gregory Culpin presented the company and its market vision.

52. 5 Tips For Launching a Successful Product

Many new products get launched in the market every day. But not every product is a hit.

53. A Failed Trip in the MVP World: 'I Thought I Knew Relativity, but Reality is Different'

Entering your first towards an MVP (minimum viable product) can cause confusion if you focus on outcomes as planned. Plan to learn with the trip instead.

54. How is Product Management in a Tech Startup Different Than a Large Company?

I’ve been asked many times what is product management in a tech startup and how the job differs from product management at a larger company with a more mature product.

55. How Doing Product Discovery Can Help You Build A Truly Invincible Company

Many teams and organisations jump into build mode too early. Then they build something that customers reject, they miss the mark, or they need extra budget to get it there. When you suggest a Product Discovery as a way to help get better results it gets rejected. This article is a way to answer the question: “Why do Product Discovery?”

56. Ten Pillars of Every Product Roadmap

Your product roadmapping is a viable means to depict how this product is prone to develop, to adjust the stakeholders, and to procure a money related arrangement for this product. In any case, making a powerful guide is difficult, especially in agile development, where changes happen as often as possible and often out of the blue. In this way, there are things never to overlook while making your roadmap and sprint backlog. Remembering them will help you in making an intense agile product using scrum sprint backlog, the roadmap template and other powerful product management tools.

57. Five Steps to Positioning Your Product

If building products is hard, positioning your product is harder. No matter what you build and sell, how you position your product dictates what you do. How you prioritize, marketing campaigns, sales strategy, it all changes based on how your product is positioned.

58. Spontaneous Togetherness: The Magic Dust That Made HOUSEPARTY a Huge Hit

With the sudden outburst of COVID-19, while most companies tanked, a few became viral and shot to fame. As a Product Manager, whenever I see yet another product in the market facilitating a service / use case that already is being fulfilled, I feel this unquenchable thirst to find out why it is doing well.

59. 5 Proven Ways To Speed Up Digital Product Development

The faster you can develop a product, the sooner it gets to market and the more sales you make. Your brand improves its market position and credibility by beating competitors to the punch.

60. 5 Best PIM Software To Add To Your Web Stack

Product information management (PIM) software is necessary for eCommerce businesses to manage their customer-facing product strategy.

61. UX Takeaways From An Indian Food Delivery App That Serves 1.4 Million Orders Everyday

“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible,” ― Don Norman

62. My Story Within The Privacy War

I am developing a product with data privacy as the highest priority. It is hard (and maybe costly too).

63. 3 Benefits of Low Touch SaaS from a Product Manager's Perspective

I am a Stripe fanboy. Back in 2014, I remember being mighty impressed at the ease with which we were able to implement a seemingly complicated thing - the billing infrastructure at Zinrelo - using Stripe. Right from the discovery to on-boarding, the API docs to the error messages, everything with Stripe was a cakewalk. And not a single time did we have to interact with a human being at Stripe’s end. After a couple of years, I had a similar experience with another product - Intercom. Integrating Intercom and the whole product experience in general was exceedingly simple requiring no human interaction.

64. Does Your Product Keep its Promise?

The JTBD framework introduced me to the idea that customers don’t “buy” products. Instead they “hire” products or services to help them overcome an obstacle and better their lives. Products that deliver on this promise of upgrading the customers’ lives are loved whereas the ones failing to do so are dumped.

65. RCA for Tech Managers : How to approach a Product Issue

Root Cause Analysis for Managers

66. Tech Enablement in Management Consulting: Best Practices and Common Mistakes

Historically, management consulting companies have relied primarily on human capital to solve complex business challenges of their clients.

67. How To Create An Action-Inducing USP That Connects With Your Target Audience

The unique selling proposition, or USP, for any product, must inspire a potential customer to take action.

68. Significant Updates to Popular Kanban Software in 2019

How Jira, Hygger, Asana, and Others Surprised Their Users in 2019?

69. Interview with Google Product Marketing Manager Vincent Xu

Product Marketing is the art and science of bringing a product to the right market and establishing a sustainable positioning for the product.

70. The rise of Virtual Fashion and the very first Crypto-Fashion week

The first crypto fashion week just happened, making way for a new wave of fashion but without the materiality.

71. How to Grow a Business and a Digital Product [Founder Interview]

Find here answers to the key questions often asked by novice entrepreneurs and product developers. The bare truth about entrepreneurship, a bitter taste of failures, the sweetness of triumphs, and first-hand experience - everything is blended here into a cocktail of product design and development insights.

72. 8 Lessons Product Managers Need to Learn From Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen is one of the greatest business minds of our time. His recent passing caused me to reflect on all I learned from him. His life was dedicated to his family, his faith, and the theories he taught. He personified servant leadership.

73. Reddit's Origin Story and Persistent Path to Product Market Fit

Welcome to the first edition of Product Stories. The first product that I have chosen is Reddit — a company that thousands of startups have tried to emulate but always failed to do so. Let’s look at why that is and what’s so special about Reddit.

74. Using Proof of Concepts (POCs) To Develop New Software Products

A Proof of Concept (POC) is a small exercise to test the product idea or assumption. The main purpose of developing a POC is to demonstrate the functionality and to verify a certain concept or theory that can be achieved in development.

75. Hacking Your Product Hunt Launch [A How-To Guide]

If you still don’t know what Product Hunt is and why you should do your launch on this platform, I suggest you read this article, this is the official Product Hunt post, a must read.

76. How to Launch a Product Successfully

The phone balanced high-end quality with a mid-range price tag, offering a top of the range smartphone on the level of a flagship Samsung Galaxy for half the price. When word got out — through social media and tech sites who marvelled at the quality to price ratio — consumer interest spiked.

77. 8 Things a Co-founder Can Start Doing When Others Are Busy With Product Development

Find out what you need to do as a co-founder during product development when you have little to do but still need to contribute to the success of the startup.

78. The Early Start-up Fallacies and Identifying Your Alphas

However educated you may think you are, you aren’t doing it enough.

79. 53% of People Think We Buy New Tech, Not Progress. They're Wrong.

I did a Twitter poll to see what people think is the best approach to developing new products/services. The poll has been featured among people with startup or entrepreneurial interests. After looking at the results, I was surprised.

80. The Case for Why Tech Giants Bundle Products and Services: A Case Study on Apple

Why do companies bundle products and services? A case study on Apple

81. A Practical Setapp Guide For Measuring Product-Market Fit

If you Google anything around "product - market fit", you're going to find hundreds of articles saying why this is so important for startups and software companies. Without it, the experts claim, you can't scale your idea. Won't have a viable company. But there isn't much on how to implement this theory.

82. ...And This Is Why Your Next Business Needs To Be Focused On Developers

Over the last twenty years, Saas and Cloud have been the two emerging technology sectors.

83. Good Strategy, Bad Vision? Product Management Paradoxes — Part I

There is a recurrent thread going on in tech circles that contrasts 1) the philosophical approach of companies that have adopted the lean startup practice of rapid customer development cycles, and pivoting with your learnings, vs 2) companies that are thesis-driven, have a big mission and are relentless in pursuing it, bending reality to their will — using examples of product visionaries like Jobs, Gates and Musk.

84. How to Optimize Your Product Copy for Search Engines

No one will buy your product if they can’t find it. Making your products visible to people who need your offering is a key aspect of selling to online buyers.

85. Scoping Out The Elements Involved In Effective Product Management

Product management has seen a lot of takers in the last few years. This field is so varied and versatile that putting bounds to it is a daunting task. Nevertheless, based on my experience and knowledge gained from the circles of product community; I have listed down different fundamental elements of product management.

86. Scale Economies, Network Effects, Branding, and More: The 7 Powers of Product Strategy [Part II]

In the last post we looked at what strategy is and the false contradiction between planning for strategy and letting your product emerge through rapid experimentation and fast feedback loops, which often combine and compound in unforeseen ways. We talked at how writing it down can help you clarify your future thinking and crystallize your product definition and the strategy that underlies it.