As product people, we rely on the stakeholders to successfully progress our product. But effective stakeholder management can be challenging. It can feel like herding cats with every stakeholder going off in a different direction pursuing her or his individual goal. This episode offers tips to help you succeed in aligning the stakeholders, involving them in the right way, and securing their support for important product 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 is hard: It requires product managers and product owners to overcome six leadership challenges that range from lacking transactional power to guiding self-organising teams. This article—which is based on my new book “How to Lead in Product Management”—discusses the six challenges and offers practical tips for overcoming them.
Getting the product roadmap prioritisation right is a common challenge. Which items should be addressed first? Which ones can be delayed? This article answers these questions and helps you effectively prioritise your product roadmap.
Developing a successful product is not down to luck or trying hard enough. Instead, product success starts with making the right strategic decisions. But as product people, we are often so preoccupied with the tactics—be it dealing with an urgent support request or writing new user stories—that we sometimes no longer see the wood for the trees. In the worst case, we neglect the strategic work and end up with an unsuccessful product. To avoid this pitfall, you should establish an effective product strategy process, as I discuss in this article.
Being an effective product leader is not easy: It requires embracing people’s ideas as well as saying no, being neither too accommodating, nor too assertive. This post helps you recognise and overcome two common, ineffective leadership styles, feature broker and product dictator, and develop a balanced, successful leadership approach.
Ensuring that development teams and stakeholders are moving in the same direction is crucial to achieving product success. But aligning people can sometimes feel like herding cats. In the worst case, they go off in different directions and create work results that don’t fit together. In this article, I describe my framework for setting effective goals to help you guide and align the stakeholders and the development teams.
Product strategizing refers to the activities required to determine if and why a product should be developed. Carrying out this work makes it more likely to create a product that users want and need. In this article, I share my recommendations to help you improve your product strategy work.
The sprint review is maybe the most important Scrum meeting for product people. Applied correctly, it increases the chances of creating a successful product. But I find that the meeting is not always used effectively. My article addresses this issue and shares practical tips for getting the most out of the sprint review.
Experiencing disagreement and conflict is part of our job as product managers and product owners. We work with a broad range of people from different departments, and it’s only natural that we don’t always agree and sometimes clash. But constructively navigating conflict can be challenging. This article shares my recommendations for dealing with difficult people and successfully addressing conflict.
Unanimity is a powerful approach to take advantage of the collective wisdom of the stakeholders and development team members and generate strong buy-in and shared ownership of a decision. But it can be challenging to apply, and if used incorrectly, it can create mediocre results. This post helps you leverage unanimity to make successful product decisions. It explains when and how to use it, and it discusses common traps and how to avoid them.