Many people believe that AI might eventually take over our jobs. But is this really true? Can AI do everything as well as humans can?
Chief product officer is becoming one of the tech world’s most influential positions. According to our recent study, almost a quarter of product teams now report into a chief product officer (CPO), up from only 7% last year. 11-billion-dollar unicorn Okta poached a longtime Google executive to be its new CPO; Disney hired a Goldman exec as VP of product to guide its newest streaming offering; and Tinder nabbed a Facebook veteran to guide its rapidly expanding dating app. One of the world’s most powerful products, Facebook itself, lost its CPO Chris Cox earlier this year and the heads of its main products will now be reporting directly to Zuck himself.
Nothing compares to the value of opening yourself to inspiration by reading what others working in your field have to say. Looking up from your work to learn and stay updated on current trends is immensely important. New ideas don’t just pop into your head during meetings, you need to invest in seeking them out. And yet, taking the time to browse new titles is one of those things that always seems to get pushed to the bottom of the list. In a world of stressing deadlines and constant multitasking, actually sitting down to do “nothing but reading” takes some special effort.
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.
A relevant list of software-related concepts that every product manager should know to better understand a developer's point of view.
Who’s a product engineer, anyway? It’s sometimes hard to distinguish between a product manager and a product engineer. In this post, we’ll have a try to figure it out.
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.
Curiosity may have killed the cat but makes a better Product Manager. True to this statement, I recently conducted a study on Product Management hiring in the US. We’ve all heard hand-wavy statements about Product Management growing, I was curious to know, ‘How much is it really growing? What’s actually responsible?’ I looked at publicly available data from Indeed and LinkedIn using the Wayback Machine and Google Search respectively to answer these questions and what I found out was pretty interesting as well as surprising.
The role of Product Manager (PM) is listed as one of 2019’s most promising jobs in a recent LinkedIn article, and there are an increasing number of digital companies in industries such as Healthcare, Banking and Finance, and Media & Entertainment. But the survival of such large companies depends on great products and product managers. PMs are the connector between marketing, design, and engineering, and have emerged as a stand-alone business function within the tech world. Although there is debate about their role as “mini-CEOs”, PMs strive persistently to satisfy core business functions, and to bring emotion and ingenuity to a digital experience built merely on 0s and 1s.
Today, there are so many ways to learn how to be a better product manager. There are books, courses and articles which will teach you the various skills and techniques you need to know. But in this article, I don't want to talk about these. Instead, I want to share some ideas from other disciplines, like economics, psychology and manufacturing that changed the way I think and made me a better product manager. I hope they spark interest and do the same for you!
Structuring your thoughts as a Product Manager is imperative to help you make the right decisions. We've collated some tips to help you do just that!
Find the top 40+ product interview questions you must prepare for your next data science interview.
A comprehensive guide to Product Manager Interview questions asked in top Product companies (Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, Instagram). How to design a product ?
The role of a product manager varies across the startup spectrum, from early-stage to the expansion stage. And knowing the stage of a startup when taking on a product management role can help you set the right expectations.
How to be a product leader: the difference between product leadership and product management
Product management is more of an art than a science, and its unique deliverables depend largely on the personality of the product manager.
Expectations, surprises, and lots of learning.
There are many commercial Product Information Management (PIM) solutions available on the market. And there are 3 free open source solutions: Akeneo, Pimcore and OpenPIM that you can use to implement a PIM system in your company. I am going to compare these 3 solutions with each other.
Product managers are responsible not just for the technical side of the product, but of its heart and soul.
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. Product managers are responsible not just for the technical side of the product, but of its heart and soul.
From being transparent, validating assumptions and co-creating with users, here are some easy-to-execute ways to stay user-focused as a Product Manager.
A teary-eyed heartbroken kid, who once dropped his ice -cream cone, said to me — “never get attached to anything in life.” Truer words were never spoken before!
While product management enjoys unquestioned support in the world’s most successful tech companies, other organisations that could substantially benefit from product management are still yet to adopt and embrace the discipline. So, I want to go through why you need product management in your tech or digital organisation.
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.
Working as a product manager at a IOT startup, I realised that the IOT Product Management is a bit different from the Product Management of a typical Software / SaaS product. To equip myself better, I started scouting for product management books from a hardware / IOT standpoint. In that process came across this amazing book called Prototype to Products by Alan Cohen. This book clearly articulates what goes into IOT / hardware Product Management and what needs to be done additionally.
Explore the concept of the Bullshit job made popular by David Graeber – see how it applies to Product Management.
I, Taras Zherebetskyy, Product Owner at Tradalaxy international marketplace[1], talk about transferring from service business to work with products and launching a new one.
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.
If you have decided to transition into product management but do not know how to begin, you are definitely not alone. This career was ranked as the top 5 job on LinkedIn's Most Promising Jobs for 2019, and in extension has gained many enthusiasts.
In this post, I'll try to share my experience on learning product manager’s job as a software engineer. What the job is like, what’s involved, as an introvert can you be a become a product manager, and many other questions you might have. I am a technical co-founder of a product management app called Shipit and needed to put myself into the role of product manager to learn the intricacies of the job.
In this post, we will dig into the Google HEART framework: a simple way to ensure you take into consideration every aspect of the user journey.
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.
This article is Part 3 of the ongoing series From Zero to Product Manager. A set of articles that help you transition to a Product Management role. In this post, I provide tips to look for jobs and prepare for your interview.
(Image Credits: chiefexecutive.net)
I’ve just finished my first 30 days as a Product Manager moving from my previous Frontend Developer role in the Oberlo Growth team. I decided it’s also a good time to pause and reflect on all that has happened in my first month.
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.
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.
A Product Manager and a Software Engineer walk into a bar.
Learn how B2B and SaaS product managers solve business users problems by building features for enterprise solutions
Many product teams and startup founders buy into the theory of the Lean Startup, and want to “do lean” but don’t know where to start. In this blog series, I will provide a practical guide on how to apply these principles.
Three months ago I decided to immerse myself in the rapidly growing world of no-code development. This is what I’ve learned.
We discuss a framework for categorizing stakeholders. We also recommend different communication methods for each type of stakeholder to save you time and effort
Since the rise of the Agile Era, putting the user in the center of product definition process became the standard for most companies. User stories are one of the basic tools that help us keep the user in mind while defining the product and its features.
By far, the top reason startups fail is the lack of market need (42% of the cases). Many startups are founded based on unique technologies, or on problems that are interesting to solve, but don’t necessarily answer a real market need. Understanding what market you are serving, and the problem you are addressing is key. The basis for that is early, continuous feedback from the right people who fit the early adopter profile.
“So, what do you think?” — says the Product Manager after a product strategy presentation to his team
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.
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.
Product management is a crucial skill in demand at many large tech companies. As such this list reflects some of the more lucrative packages available.
Sunil Tej Gorantla is a product expert, growth hacker, and writer. He believes in solving for what people need and making data-driven decisions.
Ever heard about Johari Window? Psychologists Joseph and Harrington, in 1955, came up with this term when trying to help people become self-aware. While I would not want to get into too many details about it, here is just a simple explanation in case you haven’t heard about it.
Developer relations is a growing practice of engaging with external developers. In simple words, the job of a DevRel team is to make sure that developers working with the software or API are happy, which positively affects the image of the platform and leads to its popularity.
What BuyCoins can do better: My UX analysis of BuyCoins, a Nigerian cryptocurrency exchange platform
The Noonie awards have a way of finding both the best tech writers and the best people in their fields. Our next Noonie nominee is a veteran in product development and product management. Peculiar Ediomo-Abasi from Nigeria has been nominated two Noonie awards this year. Learn more about her below!
I currently work in a SaaS startup as a Product Manager. I’ve about four years of experience in the SaaS domain and have worked in various functions in my career.
In this blog, we shed some light on both MVPs and prototyping to help you understand their requirements and usage in the software development industry.
Resources that can help you transition into your new role as a Product Manager or UI/UX Designer.
The Social Dilemma appears to have triggered sensible topics (not new though) about privacy and how technology, that was not intended to endanger people ends up being used and perceived as a public enemy.
Work in a corporation can blind a product manager's eyes, due to the safety provided. Why it is necessary to gain more experience by building your own startup?
Startups are unpredictable, but there are a few common mistakes that every product startup is doomed to make! What matters more, is how you react to them.
This article is Part 2 of the ongoing series From Zero to Product Manager. A set of articles that help you transition to a Product Management role. In this post, I provide four essential steps to transition to a PM role
To become a product manager, I had to first ascertain what transferrable skills I had that would be relevant in product management and was ready to develop new ones that I did not yet have.
This article is Part 1 of the ongoing series From Zero to Product Manager. A set of articles that help you transition to a Product Management role. In this post I explain what a Product Manager (PM) is and how the role can differ across companies, I describe the best qualities of an excellent PM.
Product Managers (PM) are responsible for the growth of the product from the very first day. If the product succeeds, the whole product team gets the credit but if it fails, the PM takes complete responsibility for its failure. In this drive to make their product successful, PMs need to spend a lot of time with their product to make it simple and valuable for their users.
No affiliate links. No financial incentives. Just a simple product manager’s own beautiful biases for the best picks of 2020.
Over the past 7 years in Product, I’ve worked with a lot of Product Managers. Some were great at being unreasonable, many were extreme generalists, and most were great at saying no.
Machine learning (ML) is a technology or field of computer science that learns from historical data to make accurate predictions or decisions.
Products are developed, provided, and enhanced by people, and effectively leading them is crucial to achieve product success. But leading stakeholders and development teams requires overcoming six product leadership challenges that range from lacking transactional power to guiding self-organising teams. The description of the challenges below is an extract from my new book How to Lead in Product Management.
What becoming a Product Manager is really like and how you can adjust your expectations to survive your first days, according to the unfiltered view of 5 new Product Managers
“Difficulty is what wakes up the genius” has become my mantra of 2020 (thanks Nassim Taleb). If that's true then what follows should be pure gold: a collection of my best ideas for a challenging year.
This study shows what lets product managers enjoy their work: culture and company types, roles & responsibilities and team’s alignment, frameworks and methodologies to work with backlog prioritization and impact estimation.
In this post, we study the Survivorship bias — the danger to concentrate your data analysis solely on existing power users
How to switch successfully to a role in product management.
There are times when not listening to your customers is almost as important as listening to them.
A quick overview of no-code tools that can be useful for Product Managers, from Airtable to Retool.
As a product manager, I spent years relying on gut instinct rather than data. But in reality, both are needed for product success.
Every business that adopts a product-led growth model needs to deeply understand its users and customer journey.
The path of a product manager is influential through managing different projects with a team and forward-thinking to steer the company in the right direction.
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.
This article is on product leadership and how to lead your product, rather than just being a product manager. Transform requests into user stories and features.
During my career, I’ve seen dozens of SRS documents for projects ranging in size using both agile and waterfall development methodologies.
Whether you're managing stakeholders or just want to get a project out the door, good communication is essential to creating great products.
There are a hundred roads to becoming a Product Manager. This one involved working as an extra on The New Girl.
Learn what a product manager and the types of product managers are. Discover the roles and responsibilities of a product manager and how to become a PM
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.
Mirav Vyas has advised a multitude of product and innovation teams across the UK, US and Africa over the last 8+ years.
Teammates, not opponents. That’s how product managers and product designers are expected to work in product teams.
Product School community is where PMs discuss and navigate through hot topics in the Product world. Check out this take on handling feature requests 👀
We’ve all had arguments about whether customers are going to want this feature or that. Maybe it’s about how the feature might work or even what colour a button might be. It’s an important debate to have, but all too often an important follow-up question is left out: how many customers will this really serve?
Everything you need as a product manager to enter web3. Here is a list of trends and resources you should focus on to succeed.
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.
It's all about testing and reading market responses.
In this article, we’ll cover what notification preferences are and which ones you should include in your app. Read tips for advanced options you could build.
This post will cover Denis’ workflow from planning to execution around the Preferences project as well as his experience working with the Courier team.
Science has a problem.
Product Managers (PM) are responsible for the growth of the product from the very first day. If the product succeeds, the whole product team gets the credit but if it fails, the PM takes complete responsibility for its failure. In this drive to make their product successful, PMs need to spend a lot of time with their product to make it simple and valuable for their users.
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