A common suggestion from product development teams when asked how to improve their working environment, is to “spend less time in meetings.” I’ve felt this way personally when I was writing code – I just wanted to get back to it. I don’t believe I’ve worked with an organization where […]
Business Analysis / Communication / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Minimum Valuable Problem
Defining and building a good minimum viable product is much harder than it sounds. Finding that “one thing” you can do, which people want, is really about a lot more than picking one thing. It is a combination of solving the minimum valuable problem and all of the other things […]
Communication / Kano Analysis / Prioritization / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Software development
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Opposite Views of a Product Roadmap
Your product roadmap is a view of what you are building right now, in the near future, and in the more distant future. Or is your roadmap a view of why you are building whatever you’re building right now, in the near future, and in the more distant future? Your […]
Agile / Communication / Prioritization / Product Management / Product Strategy / Requirements gathering / Software development
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Whole Product Game
How can Theodore Levitt’s classic Whole Product approach help with defining a product roadmap? I’ve been revisiting his concepts and their use recently, thinking about how to revise them for some exercises I’ve been doing with product teams.
Communication / Marketing / Product Management
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The Conversation Economy
The industrial age is behind us. It was surpassed by the knowledge economy, rapidly evolved into the attention economy. Successful companies realize that attention comes as a result of conversation. We’re now in the conversation economy.
Book Reviews / Business Analysis / Communication / Product Management / Reviews / Writing
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Pictures and Ideas for Powerful Whitepapers
Pictures can convey messages much more powerfully than words. In a recent discussion about writing whitepapers, I suggested combining the idea-creation advice from Made To Stick with the image-creation advice from Back of The Napkin. Check out this article to see some concrete examples.
Book Reviews / Communication / Marketing / Prioritization / Product Management / Requirements / Reviews / Software development / UX
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Personas Make Blue Ocean Strategy Proactive
Blue Ocean Strategy provides an interesting reactive analysis of companies and markets. Personas are used to understand your customer’s needs. Combining the two provides powerful proactive insights when positioning your product for market success.
Communication / Presentation / Product Management / Slightly off-topic
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First Impressions
We spend a lot of time (rightly) on the capabilities of our products – identifying valuable problems and compelling solutions. This focus is ideal for addressing the needs of our users. But what if people abandon our products before trying them? First impressions matter – both for buyers and users.
Agile / Communication / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Software development
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Stakeholders in a Barrel
There’s really only one way to travel down a waterfall – in a barrel. A lot of people died this way, but some survived. Software projects have been predominantly waterfall projects since the start of software projects. And stakeholders rode down those projects, basically in a barrel. The people riding […]