Newsletter Archive

When I meet folks who work on internal products, I often ask “What product do you work on?” I’ve also used that question in workshops to get a feel for the backgrounds and experience of the participants. I frequently get puzzled looks in response to that question and thanks to some feedback from Adrian Reed, …

When I decided InsideProduct should focus on the trials and tribulations that come from working on internal products, I figured I should probably try to get into the heads of the people most directly affected. One group of those people are CIO’s those sometime members of the C- Suite who have struggled over the last …

A couple of weeks ago, I shared my favorite decision making guide – the decision filter. That tool is particularly helpful when you’re trying to decide what to build, and how to build it. It’s not so helpful when you’re deep in the throes of developing and delivering part of your solution and the crap …

Back in 2019, I was part of a team charged with rebuilding a pricing app for an agriscience company. We started our effort with a six week period of discovery sessions. Everyone on the team was new to the company and the industry, so those sessions helped us understand the business process, business rules, and …

In a perfect product world, you’d know the outcome you’re trying to reach, and you’d have a clear metric to guide your decisions to get there. At least that’s what countless product management articles would lead you to believe. Most of my experience has been in a not-so perfect product world – perhaps a big …

The business analyst title has an identity problem. If you ask 10 business analysts from 10 different companies you’re likely to get a few (up to 10) different descriptions of what they do on a day to day basis. You may hear things such as: Identifying business process changes Eliciting requirements for custom software development …

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with several different teams. Through all of those experiences, I learned that there are no best practices, but there are a few techniques that I’ve found helpful in just about every situation to figure out the best way to work with any given …

Last week I shared some tips for maintaining a manageable backlog, I made the following comment about describing “big” backlog items And ideally, you’d describe those items as problems to solve. Depending on your context, that may be easier said than done, which is a typic that deserves it’s own article (coming soon). As promised, …

Backlogs often get a bad rap because they become a dumping ground for an unorganized collection of things your product team could do. You can attempt to bring order to chaos by avoiding a long list. User Story Mapping is one attempt to organize backlog items that is helpful when you build out things to …

This week has been a bit hectic, so I thought I’d share a couple of potentially contrarian, and hopefully helpful, takes I posted on LinkedIn this week Both of these topics speak to common points of interaction amongst product teams. They are also practices that teams do in a certain way because they think that’s …

There are three aspects to product strategy. One you hear about quite a bit, the other two, not as much. All three are important for teams working on internal products. The first aspect is creating your product strategy. You hear about this quite a bit along with a healthy dose of frameworks and ad libs …

Starting off this week is a quote about problem solving often attributed to Albert Einstein, but may have come from the head of the Industrial Engineering department at Yale University: If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the …

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 …

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 …

The first week of October, I presented a session at IBADD about backlog refinement. Before the session started, I asked the attendees to write on post it notes what they hoped to learn. That activity serves a couple of purposes. It gives me insights into how people interpreted the intent of the session, it indicates …

If you’re familiar with retrospectives you probably think of them as a way for your team to pause, reflect on how the last couple of weeks went and make adjustments to your team’s ways of working. That’s usually how I think of them also. Then this week I had the chance to experience a new …

Recently a connection on LinkedIn asked me an interesting question: After working as a Business Analyst and Project Manager for several years, I’ve discovered that many of my previous tasks actually fit the Product Owner role perfectly. So yesterday I applied for a Product Owner role. I’m hoping you can provide a pros/cons overview to …

For the last few weeks, I’ve explored what prioritization looks like in a variety of different scenarios. This week finished up that series with a look at how you can go about prioritizing a bunch of stakeholder requests. This is a common scenario when you’ve already built software for your company (ie internal product) and …

As I describe prioritization approaches in different scenarios, I thought I’d share an example from my past – revising the search functionality on agilealliance.org. I wrote this when I was on staff at Agile Alliance, so there’s a chance it’s changed since I wrote this, but the approach is still valid. You can also read …

Last week, we talked about how to prioritize your new product development efforts when you’re trying to get to product market fit. Once you hit that sought after milestone, your product moves into the growth stage of the product life cycle and you switch into product optimization. So it makes sense that optimization is the …

Here’s the next in a series of issues on prioritization. This week’s issue looks at prioritization when you build a new product. Some people refer to this as going from 0 → 1. In the world of internal products, you can think of this as what you need to do to enable a brand new …

A couple weeks ago, I sent out an overview of key points product teams should consider when making prioritization decisions. In that overview I promised to explore different scenarios in more depth. So here’s the first scenario – replacing an existing product. Product replacements are a common activity these days, especially for organizations undergoing a …

Last week, I sent out an overview of key points product teams should consider when making prioritization decisions. And promised to follow up that issue with dives into specific contexts. I also encouraged readers to reply with questions and suggest scenarios. One of the emails I received had a great question about prioritization in a …

An Overview on Priority Prioritization, or more specifically deciding what you will and will not build, is a key product management activity. It’s equally important for a tech product that your company sells as it is for an internal product that enables your company’s business processes. You could even say that it is the most …

Do you work at a company switching from a project to a product approach (ie undergoing a product transformation)? If so, and that company is in an industry that doesn’t actually sell software products, you most likely work on ​internal products​, or you’re an IT Product Manager. You may also not really care what it’s …

If you’ve been reading InsideProduct for a while, you’ve probably picked up by now that I focus on solving the right problem and ignoring everything else. I’ve found that one, or a small series of discovery sessions are an excellent way to identify what that problem is and also understand the constraints you have on …

If you build your product roadmap based on outcomes, you have an idea of which problems you’re planning to tackle now, next, and later but you probably don’t have clarity on exactly how you’re going to solve those problems. And that is perfectly ok. You need to be able to identify different options for solving …

One of the interesting (challenging?) aspects of product management is how every organization seems to have its own interpretation of what a product manager actually should do. It gets even more jumbled in those organizations that are trying to adopt product management for internal products and in their IT organizations. I don’t think you’re ever …

A company I’m working with right now has a periodic product management book club meeting. For the last meeting, we discussed Sense & Respond, How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. I suggested Sense & Respond because it provides a great explanation of what organizations …

When organizations go through some form of transformation, they inevitably end up with people who they aren’t sure how they fit in the organizational structure. In other words… Move out or move over Sometimes, especially when organizations get transformation help from accounting firms turned consultancies, they get rid of just about everyone in a particular …

This newsletter is a little late this week because I’m with friends in Napa, celebrating my wife’s birthday. (It’s a significant one). As you might expect, we’re visiting wineries while we’re out here, and we’re trying to visit small, family run wineries. The experience is unique; the wine is pretty damn good, and stories of …

I suspect if you asked a collection of people who work in IT, you’d get just as many people who say that designers aren’t necessary as you do people who say they are. I’d suggest the former group is wrong. I’ve always had the impression that internal products can gain a great deal from the …

When you read an article on software product management, do you immediately think “that’s a great idea, I’m going to try it out right away!” Or do you think “that’s great for that type of product/company, but it will never work where I’m at?” If you frequently have the latter reaction, chances are you’re reading …

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a couple of interesting posts from some of my connections on LinkedIn. A large grocery store chain had suddenly laid off over 100 people ​in their communications and IT staff.​ While those types of layoffs are not unusual, some details in this story made me take a second …

I’ve talked before about how helpful creating examples can be to build a shared understanding of how your product should behave – example mapping. This week I had another reminder about how helpful examples can be. This time it was getting things back on track when I didn’t put examples together earlier. The team I’m …

Have you ever been in a meeting where the thought crossed your mind that “this meeting should have been an email.” There are plenty of meetings that fit that description. So many in fact that a cottage industry has grown up offering swag to celebrate the fact. (This is an affiliate link. Since I didn’t …

Customers are the people who give your organization money in exchange for some product (or service). In order for that product to appeal to those people, it should satisfy a need they have. If the product you work on for your organization is the thing you’re selling to your customers, the importance of understanding those …

Last week, I explained that you can use North Star Metrics to measure business value. During that discussion, I pointed out the North Star Metric is a leading indicator of revenue. As I was writing that letter, I heard this nagging voice in the back of my head. All this talk of revenue is great, …

For “business value” to be valuable, you need to use it to make decisions.

Last week I shared a way you can head off bad ideas at the pass. Yes, I know most of you are rarely involved in discussions that early. I can hear you know reading that last post and saying “that’s great Kent, but I’m never in that situation! What do I do when I get …

One thing that people who do product development constantly try to figure out is how to organize to deliver product. There is no one right way to organize the people who are doing product development, but it doesn’t stop teams from looking for that silver bullet product team structure. I’ve written about how product people …

Now that summer is upon us in the northern hemisphere and we’re halfway through the year, it’s a good time to stop for a moment and think about what you can do to advance your career in the rest of 2018. I’ve always found attending conferences to be particularly helpful. They expose you to new …

Up until recently, the focus of the agile community has been (rightfully so) on development and delivery activities. After all, the Agile Manifesto was written by 17 people who were trying to address issues that software development teams face. However, several of those problems arise because the teams don’t have a clear idea of what …

I know I have. My email inbox has been visited on a daily basis with emails talking about updated privacy policies and consent to continue receiving emails. I’ve also contributed to that flood of emails as I work on GDPR compliance for a non-profit organization. On the whole, I think it’s a good thing. It’s …

It seems as though in every discussion about product people I‘m involved with, the discussion inevitably turns to the topic of roles and responsibilities. People get hung up on what role does X and why role Y does not appear on the org chart. Organizations have a tendency to define specific roles differently, sometimes following …

There are a lot of paths people take to get into product manager, product owner or business analyst roles. There are as many product people with a marketing, accounting, or finance background as there are people with a software development background. People who didn’t develop software somewhere in their career inevitably ask some variation of …

It’s not quite spooky action at a distance, but if you’re a remote product owner you may find a bit of entanglement helpful to maintain that shared understanding you worked so hard to build with your team. On May 9th, Luke Hohmann and I will share some ways you can be a more effective product …

Ahh certifications… One of my least favorite aspects of the business analyst and agile communities. My view on certifications has evolved over the years from an absolute loathing to what you could call a pragmatic acceptance. The key thing is when you’re getting a certification, understand what they really certify, and understand why you’re getting …

As organizations attempt to operate in an agile manner, many business analysts wonder where they fit. Here are the most common roles I see business analysts playing in agile organizations. The main factors in determining where you end up include: Your background, experience, and interests The nature of the product you are working on (is …

If you are a business analyst, you have probably wondered at some point how to convince people at your organization about the value you provide and grow your business analyst career. I’ve been there, and have found that the best way to do that is to show, not tell. Don’t spend your time and energy …

Last week I shared the approach I took to do a personal retrospective to identify new habits I was going to start in the new year and other habits (addictions?) that I was going to stop. So far so good. Of course it’s only the second week of the year. How do I know so …

For my readers in the US, I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday and didn’t over indulge in good food, college, and professional sports. I’ve come to think that next to the last couple weeks of March, the week of Thanksgiving is my favorite week because there is a ton of good college basketball and …

Last week, I discussed how you can describe user stories using models, acceptance criteria, and examples as ways to aid your conversations and remember what you talked about. Using those techniques in the way I described allows you to define a solution in broad brushstrokes (identify the user stories you eventually want to deliver), and …

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash We’re halfway through 2017 and I have 6 months of producing the weekly KBPUpdate newsletter to reflect back on. One thing that always bugged me was the name. When I started I couldn’t come up with anything I liked better than KBPUpdate, so I just went with it. (Not …

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! …

This Friday (May 19) I’m speaking at the Iowa Business Analysis Development Day (IBADD) about product ownership. In honor of that presentation I decided to focus this week’s newsletter on product ownership and product management in practice. In my blog post for this week, I introduce three organizations that share (and probably influenced) my general …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@providence Shared understanding. It’s about communication and it’s about agreement. Not necessarily agreement that what we’re doing is the right thing, although that can be extremely helpful. I’m talking agreement that when someone mentions a term, everyone has the same picture in their head about what that term means and why it’s relevant …

I’m excited to speak at the Southwestern Ohio Business Analysis Regional Conference (SOBARC) 2017 this week in Cincinnati, Ohio. While there, I’ll examine the product owner role, and talk about socratic questioning. If you’re going to be at SOBARC, stop by and say hi. If not, I’ll be at IBADD May 19 and Agile2017 in …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@punttim I’ve noted previously that business analysis and product management are similar activities that exist in different contexts. Business analysis (as described by IIBA) tends to be used in internal product settings whereas product management tends to be used external product settings. The two practices use different techniques. Business analysis makes much greater …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@benchaccounting Last week we took a look at some things you could do to start work on a product. Once you’ve established a good rapport with your key sponsor and built a shared understanding with your team, you’re going to want to know more about the people who are going to use your …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@matthewhenry In the past few KBPUpdates I explored various product ownership models that exist in the wild. Starting with this issue, I wanted to explore what it looks like to be a product person working on an internal product. This issue takes a look at getting started on an internal product. I share …

Photo Credit: Martin Erickson http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2011/10/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/ I’m back home after a week in India speaking at Agile India 2017. While there I had some great conversations about various roles in product development, especially those that play some part in determining the right thing to deliver. That inspired the theme for this issue of the KBPUpdate – …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@dnevozhai Welcome to another edition of the KBP Update. This week I’m getting some things wrapped up before I head to Bangaluru next week to speak at AgileIndia 2017. I’m presenting three sessions there:Agile Leadership: Accelerating Business AgilityI’m honored to co present this full day workshop with Niel Nickolaisen and Todd Little. We’re …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@jdsimcoe “Ask the right questions!” is advice that product people, especially business analysts, get quite often. I know because I’ve been known to hand out that advice quite frequently myself. Except no one seems to follow that rallying cry with any helpful information such as what the right questions might be. I know… …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@punttim In this week’s newsletter, we take a look at the fourth product ownership model – one that includes a product manager, product owner and business analyst. As I mentioned in the post that described it, this is a variation on a couple of other product ownership models that separate the responsibility for …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@punttim This week’s newsletter takes a look at what happens when you split the responsibilities of product management and product ownership, and two models of accomplishing that split. I chose to describe two models this week (each model still gets its own post) because they are very similar, but they have a key …

I’m trying a little bit different format for the newsletter this week. Instead of sharing separate posts in each of the main topics I cover on the site, I thought I’d share five posts all about the same topic. The topic for this newsletter is the product ownership model where the product manager and product …

When I put together the posts for this week’s newsletter, I picked posts that take a bit of a contrarian view point. Although in some cases, the contrarian view point is the perspective that teams should have. The Outcome over Output section has two articles that highlight the disturbing trend among many organizations to loudly …

The start of 2017 seems like a good time to get into the swing of things with a weekly newsletter. Don’t consider it a new year’s resolution – that increases the chance that I won’t keep it up. Think of it instead as my way of getting more done by doing less. In this case …