Just in time resources for internal products
In a previous issue of InsideProduct, I shared the key points from our ProductTank Des Moines/Ames discussion about product discovery. Many of the ideas discussed were applicable to products in general, but mostly assumed products that an organization sells to people outside the organization. In this issue of InsideProduct, I thought it was about time …
Some experiences over the past few months have helped me realize that many problems product teams face do not require an upset the apple cart agile transformation, or overbearing new processes. You can often solve, or even prevent, many problems by being more intentional about how you communicate with people inside and outside your team. …
The term “best practice” is frequently used to describe a process, technique, or practice that was successful for one team, organization or industry and are copied by others who believe if it worked for them, it will work for us. Unfortunately, a practice that works great in one context may not work as well in …
This week, I’m taking a look at delivery as I defined it in the context of the 7D’s. As I’ve mentioned it before, I split it out from development because there is enough involved with getting your users up and running on your internal product that it warrants its own category. Delivery vs launch vs …
This week I want to tackle the activity of development for internal products. Specifically the actual work of developing and testing custom internal products, or configuring and testing off the shelf or SaaS products. Development shouldn’t be a second class activity For some reason, development has gotten a bad rap in the product management community. …
When folks who work in IT think about the various activities involved in developing internal products, one they may not think of immediately is design. And if you talked to product designers, many would probably express more interest in working on a exciting new B2C product rather than the more humdrum internal facing products that …
In the last 2024 issue of InsideProduct, I mentioned that I planned to write more about this in 2025: I figured the best place to start is to explain what this is, and then from there launch into a series of posts looking at each “D” in more detail (as well as a couple of …
Overview Better. Faster. Cheaper. Many IT organizations are constantly seeking the “best” practices that will deliver those characteristics, and the fact that they continue to search indicates they haven’t found them yet. It could be they are looking in the wrong place. Most efforts around achieving better, faster, cheaper center around becoming ultra efficient. Effectiveness …
Well December certainly didn’t start the way I’d hoped. Towards the end of my trip the week of Thanksgiving, I caught a wicked cold, that while it didn’t knock me completely out, it did limit the amount of time I could be truly productive. So for these past two weeks I had to make some …
First off, thanks to everyone for subscribing to and reading InsideProduct. Whether you’ve been here a while, or just recently subscribed, I appreciate you following along every issue. My family and I are spending the week in Hawaii for some college basketball and the other things you typically do when you’re in Hawaii. One of …
On Tuesday November 19th, ProductTank Des Moines/Ames held a fishbowl discussion focused on Discovery in Product Development. We stocked the fishbowl with Matt Crawford VP of Product at Mural and Catherine (Cat) Schoenthal-Muse, Senior Lead Transformation Coach at Wells Fargo, who bring unique perspectives and insights from their own discovery journeys. Following their introductions, we opened …
If you work in the IT part of your organization and want to improve your relationship with stakeholders, there’s a phrase you should eliminate from your vocabulary. No, it’s not referring to people as resources, although you shouldn’t do that either, unless you want them to act like unthinking automotons. I’m talking about the business. …
There’s been a lot going on this week, so I wasn’t able to set aside the time to write a coherent article about the topic I wanted to cover – ditching “the business”. So instead, I thought I’d provide a quick update into what’s going on and put a request out there. Working On InsideProduct …
If you regularly work with product teams in a business analyst or product owner role, I’m going to guess that you’ve struggled to figure out the proper level of detail for your requirements. It didn’t matter if you wrote epic requirements documents (which were probably too long and didn’t have the right detail) or a …
Next time you find yourself in a room of product people and agile coaches ask the question “should you have both product managers and product owners?” You’ll be sure to start a discussion with a lot of sound and fury that resolves absolutely nothing. InsideProduct is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support …
