Helping founders and product people grow their business and craft.
Subscribe to ‘The PBL Newsletter’ for regular posts on Product, Business and Leadership.
Read previous posts of ‘The PBL Newsletter’
Break Outcomes Down, Not Initiatives
A common pattern I see in many of the product teams and companies I coach is that they’re doing a lot of incremental work but little-to-no iterations.
They have this big idea (often framed as an initiative) and become solely focused on breaking it down. The initiative becomes a series of epics, and that epic becomes a series of user stories, and so forth.
‘Niching’ Down
We’ve all heard the saying, “if you try to please everyone, you please no one.” This is especially true for startups and new products. Focus and being able to find a niche can be a huge unlock for products.
Asking Better User Interview Questions
A comprehensive guide to conducting user interviews covering: 1) How to structure a user interview for maximum impact and 2) How to design better questions to elicit high-quality responses.
A Feature is not 'DONE' until it's had IMPACT
If we can all agree that the outcome is important, not the output (i.e. a feature) then we shouldn't consider any item of work as 'done' until it's created the desired outcome.
The Messy Nature of Product Development
Building products is messy, uncertain, and non-linear. I’ve always found trying to explain this to someone who hasn’t experienced it difficult.
How to Find the Ideal Product Positioning with Perceptual Mapping
Perceptual Mapping is perhaps one of my favourite competitive analysis and Product Positioning tools. Product positioning as defining where your product fits in the market relative to its competitors as it is perceived by your customers.
How to Kickoff Product Discovery like a Pro
A step-by-step guide (with templates) to level up your Product Discovery. A common question I get when I coach Product Managers is, "I know what I want to do discovery on, but how do I get started?" Although there are many ways to start discovery, I have two tools that are my absolute go-to for kicking off and structuring Product Discovery.
Prioritization is about Confidence, not Value
“Defining value: the most ambiguous word in product development” was the title of a post by Jeff Gothelf at the beginning of last year. If there was the battle for the most ambiguous term in product I’d have ‘value’ take second place to ‘MVP’ but as far as single words go, ‘value’ takes the podium.
‘Product vs Design vs Tech’: A Partnership, not a Battlefield
This is something that comes up often for me — I get questions like:
“What’s the difference between a Product Designer and Product Manager?”….All valid questions but they all have one problem. They are all coming from an individual perspective, not a team one