Knowledge shared by our community

Handling distributed development sites

This article discusses three common scenarios for distributed development teams: extended work bench, innovation center, and local branch. It emphasizes the importance of alignment processes and transparent communication between the site and the headquarter to ensure the company's strategy is not compromised. It also recommends that each business function missing on the site should have at least one weekly sync and a physical presence at least once per quarter.

How to Apply Good Design to Healthcare Technology

This article discusses the challenges of data management in healthcare due to HIPAA regulations. It explains how Leo rewrote the system by taking a full stack approach to create a platform that is flexible to support the information access requirements of patients and staff. It also outlines the top ten lessons learned about designing a successful healthcare technology, such as accuracy, real-time data availability, personalization, security, clarity, comprehensiveness, collaboration, portability, and historical accuracy.

Making Product Decisions Based on One Large Customer

A large customer represented 40% of a company's revenue, but their wishlist was not necessarily reflective of what other customers wanted. The company took steps to prioritize development based on wide customer research, requiring courage and communication with the large customer. This experience taught the company that listening to the one large customer can skew their view of what the general customer wants, and that it takes courage and communication to prioritize development in a way that is beneficial to the growth of the company.

How to Successfully Set Up Offshore Teams

A small to medium sized startup needed additional development resources, so they decided to build an offshore team in India. They hired a local company to handle the hiring and payroll, and sent their engineering managers to India for 6 weeks when new employees were getting started. They also set up an exchange program and provided the same incentives and rewards. They learned that having someone who knows how to operate in the offshore country is important, and cultural empathy is key. Offshore teams are cheaper and faster to scale, but require more management.

Using Incidents to Learn About Development Mistakes

This article outlines the steps to take to set up an incident process to identify and fix development issues. It suggests setting up a process to report incidents, communicate with the company and customers, and report the results of the investigation. It also suggests two roles that can help with fixing incidents: devops and QA. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root cause of the problem and avoiding blaming individuals for the mistake.

Apportioning Your Time as a PM

Product management is a cross-functional role with many tasks coming from different directions. To properly balance the workload, product managers should give clear guidelines about where they are going to spend their time, trust their team to do their jobs, and focus on the long-term strategy of 12-24 months down the road. It is important to find a balance that works for the individual and not be afraid to reorganize until that balance is found.

Successful Performance Management Means Frequent Conversations

This article discusses the importance of performance management for managers and provides tips on how to successfully conduct performance reviews. It suggests that managers should have frequent one-on-one conversations with their direct reports to ensure that expectations are aligned and that feedback is given and received. It also suggests that managers should focus on clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable impacts when discussing objectives and goals with their employees. Finally, it suggests that performance reviews should not be scheduled to a specific date, as this can induce anxiety.

Using Scoreboards to Create Data-Driven Roadmaps

This article discusses the importance of data-driven product decisions and how to use a scorecard to measure and address customer issues. It outlines the collection method and how to track metrics, as well as the importance of having a good relationship between product and engineering. It also emphasizes the importance of putting text files into Github to foster accountability and ownership. Finally, it suggests having a scorecard for each team, as well as a general scorecard for the entire team.

A Simple Yet Efficient Method to Managing More People

This article outlines the steps taken by an SRE at BBC to create an online broadcast. The leader needed to manage the cultural and technical challenges with their team, so they listened to the opinions, asked open questions, and presented a vision. They then put together working groups and facilitated them to make sure the vision was achieved. The lesson learned is that it takes a lot of effort to harness the appropriate feedback, but if done correctly, it can create an environment that is adaptable and determined.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

The first step of convincing is listening

When faced with a seemingly impossible task from a superior, the author chose to access their curiosity and ask questions to gain a better understanding of the situation. Through this process, they were able to come to a mutual agreement that the task was not necessary at the time and could be done later. This demonstrates the importance of being open to hearing what superiors have to say and using curiosity to gain context before making a decision.

From OKR to an Aligned O

When the author joined their current company as the first ever product manager for regulatory compliance, they were tasked with establishing relevant OKRs within a short time frame. After researching best practices and conducting problem-solving sessions with different teams, the author realized that OKRs were more about getting people aligned on the objective than measuring success against them. This insight led to the author focusing on aligning the teams around a shared set of objectives, rather than attempting to find the perfect metric. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to get aligned on an objective before quantifying it, to consider the purpose of OKRs, and to revise them as the company grows.

What do managers look for when hiring a new PM?

Product Manager roles are highly competitive, so it is important for candidates to stand out and for hiring managers to know how to interview them. The author has identified five qualities that are necessary for a successful PM: passion, resourcefulness, judgement, communication, and empathy. Examples of outcomes of having these qualities are provided, such as having an unreasonable passion for solving the problem, creative problem solving, and being a good listener.

Using storytelling to influence stakeholders

This article discusses the importance of storytelling in order to effectively communicate a product vision and get stakeholders on board. To help with this, we created a storytelling workshop that combines business acumen with performance theatre techniques. The workshop uses five tool-kits (Product Vision, Story Craft, Audience Archetype, Speaker Archetype, and Delivery Techniques) to help leaders take customers, employees, and investors on a compelling journey of their product story. These tool-kits help create alignment between internal and customer facing teams, define the core beliefs of the audience, and allow the speaker to tune their delivery for different audiences.

Formalizing Your Review Process

As organizations grow, it is important to put a process in place for fair and substantial performance reviews. This includes setting guidelines and expectations, giving feedback more often, and using a spreadsheet or performance management tool. It is important to keep the process lightweight, funnel up performance information, and be transparent about expectations.

Defining Roles as a Company Transitions out of the Startup Environment

Huli started as a flat organization without roles or competencies, but as it grew, it became necessary to create structure and responsibilities. To do this, Huli adopted a strategy from Spotify to define steps, disciplines, roles, and competencies. They also used a 360 review exercise to get feedback from the team and create a career path for each position. This process taught them the importance of having roles and competencies for clarity and to help people grow in their roles.

Improving Technology Through Teamwide Feedback

This article outlines the process taken to create a formal technical strategy for a growing company. The process involved gathering feedback from the entire team, curating the feedback into segments, and setting scores for each initiative. The lessons learned from this process included the importance of involving the entire team in the feedback process, focusing solely on technology, and setting scores in a session. This process enabled the team to be on the same page and make incremental efforts to reach the technological vision.

How to generate more innovation every day

In order to innovate, people need to enter into healthy conflict and collaboration. Design thinking, vision and strategy development, and software can help reduce the amount of disagreement by creating shared context. To bring more collaboration and innovation into daily life and work, one should set the intention to bring more healthy conflict and collaboration and notice the moments of disagreement and what happens afterwards.

How to Reorganize your Team Based on the Product Development Journey

This article discusses the importance of scaling an organization effectively by considering the people, process, and tools involved. It suggests constantly evaluating the organization and making hard decisions to ensure the right employees are in the right roles. It also emphasizes the need to build for the future, as technology is constantly changing and can affect plans.

Soft Skills Offer a Smooth Transition from IC to Management

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager without proper mentorship, the author decided to work for a new company in order to learn the necessary skills to be a successful manager. Through this experience, the author learned that management is about people and enabling the team to work together to achieve greater results than any individual could. They also learned the importance of mentorship, getting the trust of their engineers, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual on the team.

Handling distributed development sites

This article discusses three common scenarios for distributed development teams: extended work bench, innovation center, and local branch. It emphasizes the importance of alignment processes and transparent communication between the site and the headquarter to ensure the company's strategy is not compromised. It also recommends that each business function missing on the site should have at least one weekly sync and a physical presence at least once per quarter.

How to Apply Good Design to Healthcare Technology

This article discusses the challenges of data management in healthcare due to HIPAA regulations. It explains how Leo rewrote the system by taking a full stack approach to create a platform that is flexible to support the information access requirements of patients and staff. It also outlines the top ten lessons learned about designing a successful healthcare technology, such as accuracy, real-time data availability, personalization, security, clarity, comprehensiveness, collaboration, portability, and historical accuracy.

Making Product Decisions Based on One Large Customer

A large customer represented 40% of a company's revenue, but their wishlist was not necessarily reflective of what other customers wanted. The company took steps to prioritize development based on wide customer research, requiring courage and communication with the large customer. This experience taught the company that listening to the one large customer can skew their view of what the general customer wants, and that it takes courage and communication to prioritize development in a way that is beneficial to the growth of the company.

How to Successfully Set Up Offshore Teams

A small to medium sized startup needed additional development resources, so they decided to build an offshore team in India. They hired a local company to handle the hiring and payroll, and sent their engineering managers to India for 6 weeks when new employees were getting started. They also set up an exchange program and provided the same incentives and rewards. They learned that having someone who knows how to operate in the offshore country is important, and cultural empathy is key. Offshore teams are cheaper and faster to scale, but require more management.

Using Incidents to Learn About Development Mistakes

This article outlines the steps to take to set up an incident process to identify and fix development issues. It suggests setting up a process to report incidents, communicate with the company and customers, and report the results of the investigation. It also suggests two roles that can help with fixing incidents: devops and QA. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root cause of the problem and avoiding blaming individuals for the mistake.

Apportioning Your Time as a PM

Product management is a cross-functional role with many tasks coming from different directions. To properly balance the workload, product managers should give clear guidelines about where they are going to spend their time, trust their team to do their jobs, and focus on the long-term strategy of 12-24 months down the road. It is important to find a balance that works for the individual and not be afraid to reorganize until that balance is found.

Successful Performance Management Means Frequent Conversations

This article discusses the importance of performance management for managers and provides tips on how to successfully conduct performance reviews. It suggests that managers should have frequent one-on-one conversations with their direct reports to ensure that expectations are aligned and that feedback is given and received. It also suggests that managers should focus on clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable impacts when discussing objectives and goals with their employees. Finally, it suggests that performance reviews should not be scheduled to a specific date, as this can induce anxiety.

Using Scoreboards to Create Data-Driven Roadmaps

This article discusses the importance of data-driven product decisions and how to use a scorecard to measure and address customer issues. It outlines the collection method and how to track metrics, as well as the importance of having a good relationship between product and engineering. It also emphasizes the importance of putting text files into Github to foster accountability and ownership. Finally, it suggests having a scorecard for each team, as well as a general scorecard for the entire team.

A Simple Yet Efficient Method to Managing More People

This article outlines the steps taken by an SRE at BBC to create an online broadcast. The leader needed to manage the cultural and technical challenges with their team, so they listened to the opinions, asked open questions, and presented a vision. They then put together working groups and facilitated them to make sure the vision was achieved. The lesson learned is that it takes a lot of effort to harness the appropriate feedback, but if done correctly, it can create an environment that is adaptable and determined.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

The first step of convincing is listening

When faced with a seemingly impossible task from a superior, the author chose to access their curiosity and ask questions to gain a better understanding of the situation. Through this process, they were able to come to a mutual agreement that the task was not necessary at the time and could be done later. This demonstrates the importance of being open to hearing what superiors have to say and using curiosity to gain context before making a decision.

From OKR to an Aligned O

When the author joined their current company as the first ever product manager for regulatory compliance, they were tasked with establishing relevant OKRs within a short time frame. After researching best practices and conducting problem-solving sessions with different teams, the author realized that OKRs were more about getting people aligned on the objective than measuring success against them. This insight led to the author focusing on aligning the teams around a shared set of objectives, rather than attempting to find the perfect metric. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to get aligned on an objective before quantifying it, to consider the purpose of OKRs, and to revise them as the company grows.

What do managers look for when hiring a new PM?

Product Manager roles are highly competitive, so it is important for candidates to stand out and for hiring managers to know how to interview them. The author has identified five qualities that are necessary for a successful PM: passion, resourcefulness, judgement, communication, and empathy. Examples of outcomes of having these qualities are provided, such as having an unreasonable passion for solving the problem, creative problem solving, and being a good listener.

Using storytelling to influence stakeholders

This article discusses the importance of storytelling in order to effectively communicate a product vision and get stakeholders on board. To help with this, we created a storytelling workshop that combines business acumen with performance theatre techniques. The workshop uses five tool-kits (Product Vision, Story Craft, Audience Archetype, Speaker Archetype, and Delivery Techniques) to help leaders take customers, employees, and investors on a compelling journey of their product story. These tool-kits help create alignment between internal and customer facing teams, define the core beliefs of the audience, and allow the speaker to tune their delivery for different audiences.

Formalizing Your Review Process

As organizations grow, it is important to put a process in place for fair and substantial performance reviews. This includes setting guidelines and expectations, giving feedback more often, and using a spreadsheet or performance management tool. It is important to keep the process lightweight, funnel up performance information, and be transparent about expectations.

Defining Roles as a Company Transitions out of the Startup Environment

Huli started as a flat organization without roles or competencies, but as it grew, it became necessary to create structure and responsibilities. To do this, Huli adopted a strategy from Spotify to define steps, disciplines, roles, and competencies. They also used a 360 review exercise to get feedback from the team and create a career path for each position. This process taught them the importance of having roles and competencies for clarity and to help people grow in their roles.

Improving Technology Through Teamwide Feedback

This article outlines the process taken to create a formal technical strategy for a growing company. The process involved gathering feedback from the entire team, curating the feedback into segments, and setting scores for each initiative. The lessons learned from this process included the importance of involving the entire team in the feedback process, focusing solely on technology, and setting scores in a session. This process enabled the team to be on the same page and make incremental efforts to reach the technological vision.

How to generate more innovation every day

In order to innovate, people need to enter into healthy conflict and collaboration. Design thinking, vision and strategy development, and software can help reduce the amount of disagreement by creating shared context. To bring more collaboration and innovation into daily life and work, one should set the intention to bring more healthy conflict and collaboration and notice the moments of disagreement and what happens afterwards.

How to Reorganize your Team Based on the Product Development Journey

This article discusses the importance of scaling an organization effectively by considering the people, process, and tools involved. It suggests constantly evaluating the organization and making hard decisions to ensure the right employees are in the right roles. It also emphasizes the need to build for the future, as technology is constantly changing and can affect plans.

Soft Skills Offer a Smooth Transition from IC to Management

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager without proper mentorship, the author decided to work for a new company in order to learn the necessary skills to be a successful manager. Through this experience, the author learned that management is about people and enabling the team to work together to achieve greater results than any individual could. They also learned the importance of mentorship, getting the trust of their engineers, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual on the team.

Handling distributed development sites

This article discusses three common scenarios for distributed development teams: extended work bench, innovation center, and local branch. It emphasizes the importance of alignment processes and transparent communication between the site and the headquarter to ensure the company's strategy is not compromised. It also recommends that each business function missing on the site should have at least one weekly sync and a physical presence at least once per quarter.

How to Apply Good Design to Healthcare Technology

This article discusses the challenges of data management in healthcare due to HIPAA regulations. It explains how Leo rewrote the system by taking a full stack approach to create a platform that is flexible to support the information access requirements of patients and staff. It also outlines the top ten lessons learned about designing a successful healthcare technology, such as accuracy, real-time data availability, personalization, security, clarity, comprehensiveness, collaboration, portability, and historical accuracy.

Making Product Decisions Based on One Large Customer

A large customer represented 40% of a company's revenue, but their wishlist was not necessarily reflective of what other customers wanted. The company took steps to prioritize development based on wide customer research, requiring courage and communication with the large customer. This experience taught the company that listening to the one large customer can skew their view of what the general customer wants, and that it takes courage and communication to prioritize development in a way that is beneficial to the growth of the company.

How to Successfully Set Up Offshore Teams

A small to medium sized startup needed additional development resources, so they decided to build an offshore team in India. They hired a local company to handle the hiring and payroll, and sent their engineering managers to India for 6 weeks when new employees were getting started. They also set up an exchange program and provided the same incentives and rewards. They learned that having someone who knows how to operate in the offshore country is important, and cultural empathy is key. Offshore teams are cheaper and faster to scale, but require more management.

Using Incidents to Learn About Development Mistakes

This article outlines the steps to take to set up an incident process to identify and fix development issues. It suggests setting up a process to report incidents, communicate with the company and customers, and report the results of the investigation. It also suggests two roles that can help with fixing incidents: devops and QA. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root cause of the problem and avoiding blaming individuals for the mistake.

Apportioning Your Time as a PM

Product management is a cross-functional role with many tasks coming from different directions. To properly balance the workload, product managers should give clear guidelines about where they are going to spend their time, trust their team to do their jobs, and focus on the long-term strategy of 12-24 months down the road. It is important to find a balance that works for the individual and not be afraid to reorganize until that balance is found.

Successful Performance Management Means Frequent Conversations

This article discusses the importance of performance management for managers and provides tips on how to successfully conduct performance reviews. It suggests that managers should have frequent one-on-one conversations with their direct reports to ensure that expectations are aligned and that feedback is given and received. It also suggests that managers should focus on clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable impacts when discussing objectives and goals with their employees. Finally, it suggests that performance reviews should not be scheduled to a specific date, as this can induce anxiety.

Using Scoreboards to Create Data-Driven Roadmaps

This article discusses the importance of data-driven product decisions and how to use a scorecard to measure and address customer issues. It outlines the collection method and how to track metrics, as well as the importance of having a good relationship between product and engineering. It also emphasizes the importance of putting text files into Github to foster accountability and ownership. Finally, it suggests having a scorecard for each team, as well as a general scorecard for the entire team.

A Simple Yet Efficient Method to Managing More People

This article outlines the steps taken by an SRE at BBC to create an online broadcast. The leader needed to manage the cultural and technical challenges with their team, so they listened to the opinions, asked open questions, and presented a vision. They then put together working groups and facilitated them to make sure the vision was achieved. The lesson learned is that it takes a lot of effort to harness the appropriate feedback, but if done correctly, it can create an environment that is adaptable and determined.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

The first step of convincing is listening

When faced with a seemingly impossible task from a superior, the author chose to access their curiosity and ask questions to gain a better understanding of the situation. Through this process, they were able to come to a mutual agreement that the task was not necessary at the time and could be done later. This demonstrates the importance of being open to hearing what superiors have to say and using curiosity to gain context before making a decision.

From OKR to an Aligned O

When the author joined their current company as the first ever product manager for regulatory compliance, they were tasked with establishing relevant OKRs within a short time frame. After researching best practices and conducting problem-solving sessions with different teams, the author realized that OKRs were more about getting people aligned on the objective than measuring success against them. This insight led to the author focusing on aligning the teams around a shared set of objectives, rather than attempting to find the perfect metric. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to get aligned on an objective before quantifying it, to consider the purpose of OKRs, and to revise them as the company grows.

What do managers look for when hiring a new PM?

Product Manager roles are highly competitive, so it is important for candidates to stand out and for hiring managers to know how to interview them. The author has identified five qualities that are necessary for a successful PM: passion, resourcefulness, judgement, communication, and empathy. Examples of outcomes of having these qualities are provided, such as having an unreasonable passion for solving the problem, creative problem solving, and being a good listener.

Using storytelling to influence stakeholders

This article discusses the importance of storytelling in order to effectively communicate a product vision and get stakeholders on board. To help with this, we created a storytelling workshop that combines business acumen with performance theatre techniques. The workshop uses five tool-kits (Product Vision, Story Craft, Audience Archetype, Speaker Archetype, and Delivery Techniques) to help leaders take customers, employees, and investors on a compelling journey of their product story. These tool-kits help create alignment between internal and customer facing teams, define the core beliefs of the audience, and allow the speaker to tune their delivery for different audiences.

Formalizing Your Review Process

As organizations grow, it is important to put a process in place for fair and substantial performance reviews. This includes setting guidelines and expectations, giving feedback more often, and using a spreadsheet or performance management tool. It is important to keep the process lightweight, funnel up performance information, and be transparent about expectations.

Defining Roles as a Company Transitions out of the Startup Environment

Huli started as a flat organization without roles or competencies, but as it grew, it became necessary to create structure and responsibilities. To do this, Huli adopted a strategy from Spotify to define steps, disciplines, roles, and competencies. They also used a 360 review exercise to get feedback from the team and create a career path for each position. This process taught them the importance of having roles and competencies for clarity and to help people grow in their roles.

Improving Technology Through Teamwide Feedback

This article outlines the process taken to create a formal technical strategy for a growing company. The process involved gathering feedback from the entire team, curating the feedback into segments, and setting scores for each initiative. The lessons learned from this process included the importance of involving the entire team in the feedback process, focusing solely on technology, and setting scores in a session. This process enabled the team to be on the same page and make incremental efforts to reach the technological vision.

How to generate more innovation every day

In order to innovate, people need to enter into healthy conflict and collaboration. Design thinking, vision and strategy development, and software can help reduce the amount of disagreement by creating shared context. To bring more collaboration and innovation into daily life and work, one should set the intention to bring more healthy conflict and collaboration and notice the moments of disagreement and what happens afterwards.

How to Reorganize your Team Based on the Product Development Journey

This article discusses the importance of scaling an organization effectively by considering the people, process, and tools involved. It suggests constantly evaluating the organization and making hard decisions to ensure the right employees are in the right roles. It also emphasizes the need to build for the future, as technology is constantly changing and can affect plans.

Soft Skills Offer a Smooth Transition from IC to Management

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager without proper mentorship, the author decided to work for a new company in order to learn the necessary skills to be a successful manager. Through this experience, the author learned that management is about people and enabling the team to work together to achieve greater results than any individual could. They also learned the importance of mentorship, getting the trust of their engineers, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual on the team.

Handling distributed development sites

This article discusses three common scenarios for distributed development teams: extended work bench, innovation center, and local branch. It emphasizes the importance of alignment processes and transparent communication between the site and the headquarter to ensure the company's strategy is not compromised. It also recommends that each business function missing on the site should have at least one weekly sync and a physical presence at least once per quarter.

How to Apply Good Design to Healthcare Technology

This article discusses the challenges of data management in healthcare due to HIPAA regulations. It explains how Leo rewrote the system by taking a full stack approach to create a platform that is flexible to support the information access requirements of patients and staff. It also outlines the top ten lessons learned about designing a successful healthcare technology, such as accuracy, real-time data availability, personalization, security, clarity, comprehensiveness, collaboration, portability, and historical accuracy.

Making Product Decisions Based on One Large Customer

A large customer represented 40% of a company's revenue, but their wishlist was not necessarily reflective of what other customers wanted. The company took steps to prioritize development based on wide customer research, requiring courage and communication with the large customer. This experience taught the company that listening to the one large customer can skew their view of what the general customer wants, and that it takes courage and communication to prioritize development in a way that is beneficial to the growth of the company.

How to Successfully Set Up Offshore Teams

A small to medium sized startup needed additional development resources, so they decided to build an offshore team in India. They hired a local company to handle the hiring and payroll, and sent their engineering managers to India for 6 weeks when new employees were getting started. They also set up an exchange program and provided the same incentives and rewards. They learned that having someone who knows how to operate in the offshore country is important, and cultural empathy is key. Offshore teams are cheaper and faster to scale, but require more management.

Using Incidents to Learn About Development Mistakes

This article outlines the steps to take to set up an incident process to identify and fix development issues. It suggests setting up a process to report incidents, communicate with the company and customers, and report the results of the investigation. It also suggests two roles that can help with fixing incidents: devops and QA. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root cause of the problem and avoiding blaming individuals for the mistake.

Apportioning Your Time as a PM

Product management is a cross-functional role with many tasks coming from different directions. To properly balance the workload, product managers should give clear guidelines about where they are going to spend their time, trust their team to do their jobs, and focus on the long-term strategy of 12-24 months down the road. It is important to find a balance that works for the individual and not be afraid to reorganize until that balance is found.

Successful Performance Management Means Frequent Conversations

This article discusses the importance of performance management for managers and provides tips on how to successfully conduct performance reviews. It suggests that managers should have frequent one-on-one conversations with their direct reports to ensure that expectations are aligned and that feedback is given and received. It also suggests that managers should focus on clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable impacts when discussing objectives and goals with their employees. Finally, it suggests that performance reviews should not be scheduled to a specific date, as this can induce anxiety.

Using Scoreboards to Create Data-Driven Roadmaps

This article discusses the importance of data-driven product decisions and how to use a scorecard to measure and address customer issues. It outlines the collection method and how to track metrics, as well as the importance of having a good relationship between product and engineering. It also emphasizes the importance of putting text files into Github to foster accountability and ownership. Finally, it suggests having a scorecard for each team, as well as a general scorecard for the entire team.

A Simple Yet Efficient Method to Managing More People

This article outlines the steps taken by an SRE at BBC to create an online broadcast. The leader needed to manage the cultural and technical challenges with their team, so they listened to the opinions, asked open questions, and presented a vision. They then put together working groups and facilitated them to make sure the vision was achieved. The lesson learned is that it takes a lot of effort to harness the appropriate feedback, but if done correctly, it can create an environment that is adaptable and determined.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

The first step of convincing is listening

When faced with a seemingly impossible task from a superior, the author chose to access their curiosity and ask questions to gain a better understanding of the situation. Through this process, they were able to come to a mutual agreement that the task was not necessary at the time and could be done later. This demonstrates the importance of being open to hearing what superiors have to say and using curiosity to gain context before making a decision.

From OKR to an Aligned O

When the author joined their current company as the first ever product manager for regulatory compliance, they were tasked with establishing relevant OKRs within a short time frame. After researching best practices and conducting problem-solving sessions with different teams, the author realized that OKRs were more about getting people aligned on the objective than measuring success against them. This insight led to the author focusing on aligning the teams around a shared set of objectives, rather than attempting to find the perfect metric. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to get aligned on an objective before quantifying it, to consider the purpose of OKRs, and to revise them as the company grows.

What do managers look for when hiring a new PM?

Product Manager roles are highly competitive, so it is important for candidates to stand out and for hiring managers to know how to interview them. The author has identified five qualities that are necessary for a successful PM: passion, resourcefulness, judgement, communication, and empathy. Examples of outcomes of having these qualities are provided, such as having an unreasonable passion for solving the problem, creative problem solving, and being a good listener.

Using storytelling to influence stakeholders

This article discusses the importance of storytelling in order to effectively communicate a product vision and get stakeholders on board. To help with this, we created a storytelling workshop that combines business acumen with performance theatre techniques. The workshop uses five tool-kits (Product Vision, Story Craft, Audience Archetype, Speaker Archetype, and Delivery Techniques) to help leaders take customers, employees, and investors on a compelling journey of their product story. These tool-kits help create alignment between internal and customer facing teams, define the core beliefs of the audience, and allow the speaker to tune their delivery for different audiences.

Formalizing Your Review Process

As organizations grow, it is important to put a process in place for fair and substantial performance reviews. This includes setting guidelines and expectations, giving feedback more often, and using a spreadsheet or performance management tool. It is important to keep the process lightweight, funnel up performance information, and be transparent about expectations.

Defining Roles as a Company Transitions out of the Startup Environment

Huli started as a flat organization without roles or competencies, but as it grew, it became necessary to create structure and responsibilities. To do this, Huli adopted a strategy from Spotify to define steps, disciplines, roles, and competencies. They also used a 360 review exercise to get feedback from the team and create a career path for each position. This process taught them the importance of having roles and competencies for clarity and to help people grow in their roles.

Improving Technology Through Teamwide Feedback

This article outlines the process taken to create a formal technical strategy for a growing company. The process involved gathering feedback from the entire team, curating the feedback into segments, and setting scores for each initiative. The lessons learned from this process included the importance of involving the entire team in the feedback process, focusing solely on technology, and setting scores in a session. This process enabled the team to be on the same page and make incremental efforts to reach the technological vision.

How to generate more innovation every day

In order to innovate, people need to enter into healthy conflict and collaboration. Design thinking, vision and strategy development, and software can help reduce the amount of disagreement by creating shared context. To bring more collaboration and innovation into daily life and work, one should set the intention to bring more healthy conflict and collaboration and notice the moments of disagreement and what happens afterwards.

How to Reorganize your Team Based on the Product Development Journey

This article discusses the importance of scaling an organization effectively by considering the people, process, and tools involved. It suggests constantly evaluating the organization and making hard decisions to ensure the right employees are in the right roles. It also emphasizes the need to build for the future, as technology is constantly changing and can affect plans.

Soft Skills Offer a Smooth Transition from IC to Management

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager without proper mentorship, the author decided to work for a new company in order to learn the necessary skills to be a successful manager. Through this experience, the author learned that management is about people and enabling the team to work together to achieve greater results than any individual could. They also learned the importance of mentorship, getting the trust of their engineers, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual on the team.

Handling distributed development sites

This article discusses three common scenarios for distributed development teams: extended work bench, innovation center, and local branch. It emphasizes the importance of alignment processes and transparent communication between the site and the headquarter to ensure the company's strategy is not compromised. It also recommends that each business function missing on the site should have at least one weekly sync and a physical presence at least once per quarter.

How to Apply Good Design to Healthcare Technology

This article discusses the challenges of data management in healthcare due to HIPAA regulations. It explains how Leo rewrote the system by taking a full stack approach to create a platform that is flexible to support the information access requirements of patients and staff. It also outlines the top ten lessons learned about designing a successful healthcare technology, such as accuracy, real-time data availability, personalization, security, clarity, comprehensiveness, collaboration, portability, and historical accuracy.

Making Product Decisions Based on One Large Customer

A large customer represented 40% of a company's revenue, but their wishlist was not necessarily reflective of what other customers wanted. The company took steps to prioritize development based on wide customer research, requiring courage and communication with the large customer. This experience taught the company that listening to the one large customer can skew their view of what the general customer wants, and that it takes courage and communication to prioritize development in a way that is beneficial to the growth of the company.

How to Successfully Set Up Offshore Teams

A small to medium sized startup needed additional development resources, so they decided to build an offshore team in India. They hired a local company to handle the hiring and payroll, and sent their engineering managers to India for 6 weeks when new employees were getting started. They also set up an exchange program and provided the same incentives and rewards. They learned that having someone who knows how to operate in the offshore country is important, and cultural empathy is key. Offshore teams are cheaper and faster to scale, but require more management.

Using Incidents to Learn About Development Mistakes

This article outlines the steps to take to set up an incident process to identify and fix development issues. It suggests setting up a process to report incidents, communicate with the company and customers, and report the results of the investigation. It also suggests two roles that can help with fixing incidents: devops and QA. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root cause of the problem and avoiding blaming individuals for the mistake.

Apportioning Your Time as a PM

Product management is a cross-functional role with many tasks coming from different directions. To properly balance the workload, product managers should give clear guidelines about where they are going to spend their time, trust their team to do their jobs, and focus on the long-term strategy of 12-24 months down the road. It is important to find a balance that works for the individual and not be afraid to reorganize until that balance is found.

Successful Performance Management Means Frequent Conversations

This article discusses the importance of performance management for managers and provides tips on how to successfully conduct performance reviews. It suggests that managers should have frequent one-on-one conversations with their direct reports to ensure that expectations are aligned and that feedback is given and received. It also suggests that managers should focus on clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable impacts when discussing objectives and goals with their employees. Finally, it suggests that performance reviews should not be scheduled to a specific date, as this can induce anxiety.

Using Scoreboards to Create Data-Driven Roadmaps

This article discusses the importance of data-driven product decisions and how to use a scorecard to measure and address customer issues. It outlines the collection method and how to track metrics, as well as the importance of having a good relationship between product and engineering. It also emphasizes the importance of putting text files into Github to foster accountability and ownership. Finally, it suggests having a scorecard for each team, as well as a general scorecard for the entire team.

A Simple Yet Efficient Method to Managing More People

This article outlines the steps taken by an SRE at BBC to create an online broadcast. The leader needed to manage the cultural and technical challenges with their team, so they listened to the opinions, asked open questions, and presented a vision. They then put together working groups and facilitated them to make sure the vision was achieved. The lesson learned is that it takes a lot of effort to harness the appropriate feedback, but if done correctly, it can create an environment that is adaptable and determined.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

The first step of convincing is listening

When faced with a seemingly impossible task from a superior, the author chose to access their curiosity and ask questions to gain a better understanding of the situation. Through this process, they were able to come to a mutual agreement that the task was not necessary at the time and could be done later. This demonstrates the importance of being open to hearing what superiors have to say and using curiosity to gain context before making a decision.

From OKR to an Aligned O

When the author joined their current company as the first ever product manager for regulatory compliance, they were tasked with establishing relevant OKRs within a short time frame. After researching best practices and conducting problem-solving sessions with different teams, the author realized that OKRs were more about getting people aligned on the objective than measuring success against them. This insight led to the author focusing on aligning the teams around a shared set of objectives, rather than attempting to find the perfect metric. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to get aligned on an objective before quantifying it, to consider the purpose of OKRs, and to revise them as the company grows.

What do managers look for when hiring a new PM?

Product Manager roles are highly competitive, so it is important for candidates to stand out and for hiring managers to know how to interview them. The author has identified five qualities that are necessary for a successful PM: passion, resourcefulness, judgement, communication, and empathy. Examples of outcomes of having these qualities are provided, such as having an unreasonable passion for solving the problem, creative problem solving, and being a good listener.

Using storytelling to influence stakeholders

This article discusses the importance of storytelling in order to effectively communicate a product vision and get stakeholders on board. To help with this, we created a storytelling workshop that combines business acumen with performance theatre techniques. The workshop uses five tool-kits (Product Vision, Story Craft, Audience Archetype, Speaker Archetype, and Delivery Techniques) to help leaders take customers, employees, and investors on a compelling journey of their product story. These tool-kits help create alignment between internal and customer facing teams, define the core beliefs of the audience, and allow the speaker to tune their delivery for different audiences.

Formalizing Your Review Process

As organizations grow, it is important to put a process in place for fair and substantial performance reviews. This includes setting guidelines and expectations, giving feedback more often, and using a spreadsheet or performance management tool. It is important to keep the process lightweight, funnel up performance information, and be transparent about expectations.

Defining Roles as a Company Transitions out of the Startup Environment

Huli started as a flat organization without roles or competencies, but as it grew, it became necessary to create structure and responsibilities. To do this, Huli adopted a strategy from Spotify to define steps, disciplines, roles, and competencies. They also used a 360 review exercise to get feedback from the team and create a career path for each position. This process taught them the importance of having roles and competencies for clarity and to help people grow in their roles.

Improving Technology Through Teamwide Feedback

This article outlines the process taken to create a formal technical strategy for a growing company. The process involved gathering feedback from the entire team, curating the feedback into segments, and setting scores for each initiative. The lessons learned from this process included the importance of involving the entire team in the feedback process, focusing solely on technology, and setting scores in a session. This process enabled the team to be on the same page and make incremental efforts to reach the technological vision.

How to generate more innovation every day

In order to innovate, people need to enter into healthy conflict and collaboration. Design thinking, vision and strategy development, and software can help reduce the amount of disagreement by creating shared context. To bring more collaboration and innovation into daily life and work, one should set the intention to bring more healthy conflict and collaboration and notice the moments of disagreement and what happens afterwards.

How to Reorganize your Team Based on the Product Development Journey

This article discusses the importance of scaling an organization effectively by considering the people, process, and tools involved. It suggests constantly evaluating the organization and making hard decisions to ensure the right employees are in the right roles. It also emphasizes the need to build for the future, as technology is constantly changing and can affect plans.

Soft Skills Offer a Smooth Transition from IC to Management

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager without proper mentorship, the author decided to work for a new company in order to learn the necessary skills to be a successful manager. Through this experience, the author learned that management is about people and enabling the team to work together to achieve greater results than any individual could. They also learned the importance of mentorship, getting the trust of their engineers, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual on the team.

Handling distributed development sites

This article discusses three common scenarios for distributed development teams: extended work bench, innovation center, and local branch. It emphasizes the importance of alignment processes and transparent communication between the site and the headquarter to ensure the company's strategy is not compromised. It also recommends that each business function missing on the site should have at least one weekly sync and a physical presence at least once per quarter.

How to Apply Good Design to Healthcare Technology

This article discusses the challenges of data management in healthcare due to HIPAA regulations. It explains how Leo rewrote the system by taking a full stack approach to create a platform that is flexible to support the information access requirements of patients and staff. It also outlines the top ten lessons learned about designing a successful healthcare technology, such as accuracy, real-time data availability, personalization, security, clarity, comprehensiveness, collaboration, portability, and historical accuracy.

Making Product Decisions Based on One Large Customer

A large customer represented 40% of a company's revenue, but their wishlist was not necessarily reflective of what other customers wanted. The company took steps to prioritize development based on wide customer research, requiring courage and communication with the large customer. This experience taught the company that listening to the one large customer can skew their view of what the general customer wants, and that it takes courage and communication to prioritize development in a way that is beneficial to the growth of the company.

How to Successfully Set Up Offshore Teams

A small to medium sized startup needed additional development resources, so they decided to build an offshore team in India. They hired a local company to handle the hiring and payroll, and sent their engineering managers to India for 6 weeks when new employees were getting started. They also set up an exchange program and provided the same incentives and rewards. They learned that having someone who knows how to operate in the offshore country is important, and cultural empathy is key. Offshore teams are cheaper and faster to scale, but require more management.

Using Incidents to Learn About Development Mistakes

This article outlines the steps to take to set up an incident process to identify and fix development issues. It suggests setting up a process to report incidents, communicate with the company and customers, and report the results of the investigation. It also suggests two roles that can help with fixing incidents: devops and QA. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root cause of the problem and avoiding blaming individuals for the mistake.

Apportioning Your Time as a PM

Product management is a cross-functional role with many tasks coming from different directions. To properly balance the workload, product managers should give clear guidelines about where they are going to spend their time, trust their team to do their jobs, and focus on the long-term strategy of 12-24 months down the road. It is important to find a balance that works for the individual and not be afraid to reorganize until that balance is found.

Successful Performance Management Means Frequent Conversations

This article discusses the importance of performance management for managers and provides tips on how to successfully conduct performance reviews. It suggests that managers should have frequent one-on-one conversations with their direct reports to ensure that expectations are aligned and that feedback is given and received. It also suggests that managers should focus on clarity of vision, transparency, and measurable impacts when discussing objectives and goals with their employees. Finally, it suggests that performance reviews should not be scheduled to a specific date, as this can induce anxiety.

Using Scoreboards to Create Data-Driven Roadmaps

This article discusses the importance of data-driven product decisions and how to use a scorecard to measure and address customer issues. It outlines the collection method and how to track metrics, as well as the importance of having a good relationship between product and engineering. It also emphasizes the importance of putting text files into Github to foster accountability and ownership. Finally, it suggests having a scorecard for each team, as well as a general scorecard for the entire team.

A Simple Yet Efficient Method to Managing More People

This article outlines the steps taken by an SRE at BBC to create an online broadcast. The leader needed to manage the cultural and technical challenges with their team, so they listened to the opinions, asked open questions, and presented a vision. They then put together working groups and facilitated them to make sure the vision was achieved. The lesson learned is that it takes a lot of effort to harness the appropriate feedback, but if done correctly, it can create an environment that is adaptable and determined.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

The first step of convincing is listening

When faced with a seemingly impossible task from a superior, the author chose to access their curiosity and ask questions to gain a better understanding of the situation. Through this process, they were able to come to a mutual agreement that the task was not necessary at the time and could be done later. This demonstrates the importance of being open to hearing what superiors have to say and using curiosity to gain context before making a decision.

From OKR to an Aligned O

When the author joined their current company as the first ever product manager for regulatory compliance, they were tasked with establishing relevant OKRs within a short time frame. After researching best practices and conducting problem-solving sessions with different teams, the author realized that OKRs were more about getting people aligned on the objective than measuring success against them. This insight led to the author focusing on aligning the teams around a shared set of objectives, rather than attempting to find the perfect metric. The lessons learned from this experience were that it is important to get aligned on an objective before quantifying it, to consider the purpose of OKRs, and to revise them as the company grows.

What do managers look for when hiring a new PM?

Product Manager roles are highly competitive, so it is important for candidates to stand out and for hiring managers to know how to interview them. The author has identified five qualities that are necessary for a successful PM: passion, resourcefulness, judgement, communication, and empathy. Examples of outcomes of having these qualities are provided, such as having an unreasonable passion for solving the problem, creative problem solving, and being a good listener.

Using storytelling to influence stakeholders

This article discusses the importance of storytelling in order to effectively communicate a product vision and get stakeholders on board. To help with this, we created a storytelling workshop that combines business acumen with performance theatre techniques. The workshop uses five tool-kits (Product Vision, Story Craft, Audience Archetype, Speaker Archetype, and Delivery Techniques) to help leaders take customers, employees, and investors on a compelling journey of their product story. These tool-kits help create alignment between internal and customer facing teams, define the core beliefs of the audience, and allow the speaker to tune their delivery for different audiences.

Formalizing Your Review Process

As organizations grow, it is important to put a process in place for fair and substantial performance reviews. This includes setting guidelines and expectations, giving feedback more often, and using a spreadsheet or performance management tool. It is important to keep the process lightweight, funnel up performance information, and be transparent about expectations.

Defining Roles as a Company Transitions out of the Startup Environment

Huli started as a flat organization without roles or competencies, but as it grew, it became necessary to create structure and responsibilities. To do this, Huli adopted a strategy from Spotify to define steps, disciplines, roles, and competencies. They also used a 360 review exercise to get feedback from the team and create a career path for each position. This process taught them the importance of having roles and competencies for clarity and to help people grow in their roles.

Improving Technology Through Teamwide Feedback

This article outlines the process taken to create a formal technical strategy for a growing company. The process involved gathering feedback from the entire team, curating the feedback into segments, and setting scores for each initiative. The lessons learned from this process included the importance of involving the entire team in the feedback process, focusing solely on technology, and setting scores in a session. This process enabled the team to be on the same page and make incremental efforts to reach the technological vision.

How to generate more innovation every day

In order to innovate, people need to enter into healthy conflict and collaboration. Design thinking, vision and strategy development, and software can help reduce the amount of disagreement by creating shared context. To bring more collaboration and innovation into daily life and work, one should set the intention to bring more healthy conflict and collaboration and notice the moments of disagreement and what happens afterwards.

How to Reorganize your Team Based on the Product Development Journey

This article discusses the importance of scaling an organization effectively by considering the people, process, and tools involved. It suggests constantly evaluating the organization and making hard decisions to ensure the right employees are in the right roles. It also emphasizes the need to build for the future, as technology is constantly changing and can affect plans.

Soft Skills Offer a Smooth Transition from IC to Management

After transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager without proper mentorship, the author decided to work for a new company in order to learn the necessary skills to be a successful manager. Through this experience, the author learned that management is about people and enabling the team to work together to achieve greater results than any individual could. They also learned the importance of mentorship, getting the trust of their engineers, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each individual on the team.