I’m spending the week with my family in Glacier National Park as part of our quest to visit every National Park in the United States so I wanted to keep this week’s update short.
Here are some quick reads for product people that you may or may not want to read on your vacation.
Enjoy!
Kent J. McDonald
KBP.media
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I have a bad feeling about this…
If you’ve ever been asked “Why is this on the roadmap?” you know how uncomfortable it can be to explain bad ideas that get on your roadmap. How do you get to that point where you have caveats against multiple items on the product roadmap – and more importantly what do you do to mitigate it?
Do you really know what they want?
Listen to the customer. This is the advice given to many product managers. But what if you are listening — yet hearing all the wrong things? Customers cannot always explain the solution — but they can describe the pain they are experiencing. Here is a good framework for product managers to uncover what people want.
I’m not so sure… and that’s ok.
Accepting uncertainty is a recurring theme when it comes to Agile and agility. While it’s never stated outright as a “value” in either the Agile Manifesto or the Twelve Principles of Agile, the concept itself underlies many of the points made in those documents. Agile accepts that we don’t always know everything, and that new information will not only be discovered, but might alter the path. Here are a few specific reasons why accepting uncertainty is essential for teams to be successful.
Remember HiPPOs are Humans too…
Just about every tech or product management talk invariably has a slide about HiPPOs – standing for the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinions”. It’s a term used to describe a senior member of the organization who’s not attached to the delivery team full time, and expresses a perspective that the delivery team feels it has good reason to ignore. Product people need to build understanding of senior member’s perspectives, empathize with their positions and eventually we can respect their views and even have a trusting relationship.
And Data wants to be human…
In Product Management, the most important things are to be able to work with your team and understand who you are building for and why. How do you get to know your customers? And how do you develop the ability to communicate with everyone? The key is building up your skillset as much as possible. Here are five good reasons to add data to your skillset.
Please Share
Have you run across any quick reads for product people? Share the posts you like in the comments.
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I’m also putting the finishing touches on my ebook Product Ownership in the Wild, so watch the KBPUpdate for an announcement of when it’s available.