Tag Archives: product manager

Mindfulness Tips for Product Managers and Product Owners

| October 21, 2016

As product managers and product owners, we are busy people with a diverse range of responsibilities. This makes it all too easy to hurry from one meeting to the next, to try to accomplish several things at once, and to get lost in the busyness of our work. Unfortunately, this approach is not only unproductive, it also affects our wellbeing. Mindfulness offers a different path: becoming more aware of what we do and how we do it so we can make better decisions and be more creative. This post shares six practical mindfulness tips to help you work better and feel happier.

8 Tips for Collaborating with Development Teams

| July 11, 2016

The development team is a key partner for every product manager and product owner: the team designs and builds the actual product. But it’s not always easy to effectively guide and work with the team. This post shares eight tips to make your collaboration with the development team even more effective, thereby increasing the chances of creating a successful product.

10 Tips for Writing Good User Stories

| March 24, 2016

User stories are probably the most popular agile technique to capture product functionality: Working with user stories is easy. But telling effective stories can be hard. The following ten tips help you create good stories.

The Agile Product Owner Responsibilities

| March 24, 2016

In theory, the product owner’s responsibilities are simple: The individual should maximise the value the product creates according to the Scrum Guide. But what does this mean in practice? In reality, the application of the product owner role varies greatly, as products and organisations differ. But my experience shows that there are two key factors that determine the duties of a product owner: the scope and the depth of ownership. This blog post discusses these two factors to help you apply the role successfully.

10 Leadership Qualities of Successful Product Managers

| March 9, 2016

Learn how to develop 10 important leadership qualities that help you become a successful product manager and effective product leader. Grouped in pairs, the qualities balance and complement each other.

How to Choose the Right Product Management Leadership Styles

| January 12, 2016

Succeeding in product management requires more than having the right product expertise. While creating a valid product strategy, developing an actionable product roadmap, and effectively prioritising features are undoubtedly important, these skills are not enough. You also have to successfully lead others and apply the right leadership styles, as I explain in this article.

Why User Stories Fail

| October 22, 2015

User stories are a powerful agile technique to describe requirements from the perspective of the customers and users. Unfortunately, I find it not uncommon that user stories are applied unsuccessfully and fail. This post describes two common failure causes and discusses how you can avoid them.

Size Matters: Big vs. Small Product Owner

| June 23, 2015

Product owners come in different shapes and sizes. That’s only natural: The application of the role varies depending on the product and the company. Being a product owner of a brand-new product in a startup differs from looking after a mature offering in a large enterprise. But there are two common types: big and small product owners. Which one are you? And is your product ownership level right?

Which UX Skills should Product Owners and Product Managers have?

| January 20, 2015

Providing a great user experience is a must for many digital products, and user experience (UX) design has consequently become prominent in recent years. Does this mean that product owners and product managers should become UX experts? Who should design the UX and which UX skills should product owners and product managers have? Read on to find out my recommendations.

Working with the Product Vision Board

| October 11, 2012

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes,” says Morpheus to Neo in the movie “The Matrix”. This quote reminds me of the choice we face when dealing with a new product idea: Should we walk away from it, or should we implement it? To help you decide if and how to progress an idea, I have developed the Product Vision Board. In this post, I show how the board can be applied to kick-start the product discovery process and to create a new digital product.