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Blog Articles
Viewing entries tagged with 'product owner'
Product Management Then and Now
Occasionally in my work with technology product teams around the world, I run into product managers that are still practicing the role as it used to be defined back in the PC era of technology. These organizations are inevitably frustrated, as the role was not terribly effective and often not respected.
Product Manager vs. Product Owner
All too often I run into companies that have resigned themselves to having two different people covering the product role.
Product Evangelism
In my last article I wrote about the importance of product passion, and I said that one of the reasons this passion is necessary is for product evangelism.
Product Passion
One topic I’ve never written explicitly about is the need for product passion. I’ve referenced it at the top of the list of traits for good product leaders, but it’s easy to take this for granted especially since the people I surround myself with professionally are generally very passionate about products.
The Two Core Competencies
Good product teams must be good at product discovery, which means they must get good at learning quickly. They need to be able to zero in on the appropriate target customer, identify the key problems to solve for those customers, and typically the most difficult part of all, apply technology and user experience design to come up with good solutions that will solve those problems.
The Most Important Thing
There are several skills and activities that are important when coming up with great products. In my last article, I argued for the absolute necessity of having good data about how our products are actually being used.
Flying Blind
I know this topic is going to sound far-fetched to many of you, but I am finding too many product teams out there that either aren’t instrumenting their product or site to collect analytics, or they do it at such a minor level that they really don’t know what users are doing on their site or how their product is being used.
Preparing For War
Recently Ben Horowitz posted yet another very thought-provoking article, this time on the different type of leadership that is needed for when things are going along fine (“the peacetime CEO”) versus when things get rough (“the wartime CEO”).
Developing Strong Product Owners
In my last article I discussed the role of the leader of the product organization. I heard back from more than a few product leaders that it served to remind them that they weren’t doing as much as they knew they should be doing to build the strength of their product team, and I was asked if I could share some of the tools I use to help with this.
The VP Product Role
If you take a look at the list of open product positions at the end of my recent newsletter, you’ll notice a record number of VP/Director of Product positions. In part this reflects the growth we are experiencing in our industry. However, it also represents an increased recognition of the importance of strong product leadership.