Product Management & Roadmapping Best Practices

Read about ProductPlan’s culture, product releases, and thought-leadership. For product education check out the Learning Center.

Why Strategic Product Teams Focus on Outcome-Based Roadmaps

When product teams use roadmaps as checklists, they reduce roadmaps to a formality, not a strategic tool. They make mechanical updates or even abandon roadmaps altogether. But strategic product teams that focus outcome-based (or ‘outcome-driven’) roadmaps have, uncoincidentally, better long-term outcomes. Instead of checking boxes as work is done, these teams align on long-term objectives. […]

Roadmapping with an IMPACT Mindset

Learn the power of creating meaningful roadmaps with IMPACT for prioritization, setting themes, and even determining the timeframe.
Why Gender Diversity Leads to Better Products

In the 2021 State of Product Management Report, our annual collection of data designed to bring to life the trends driving product management, we found gender diversity,…
Meaningful Product Processes with IMPACT

After reading a blog or a book or attending a conference or talk on product management, I’m always excited to try out the new processes and frameworks…
How to Hire with an Impact Mindset

Finding good talent is tricky—but can be even more impactful than some product decisions. Learn how to apply impact in your hiring process.
An Alive Strategy vs. Dead Strategy

Building a product strategy is not enough; make sure the strategy is alive and aligned not just with the market and the customers but also with the…
Why I Switched From Spreadsheets to a Roadmap Tool, Featuring Product Director Jay Hum

Not every product manager is lucky enough to work with a purpose-built roadmapping tool. The benefits outweigh other roadmapping options such as spreadsheets and presentations.
5 Ways ProductPlan’s Table Will Make a Product Manager’s Work Easier

TLDR: The Newest Version of ProductPlan’s Roadmap App, with an Enhanced Table Can Be Your All-in-One Roadmapping Solution With the new and improved table, roadmap owners can…
The Evolution of Product-Led Growth

The evolution of product-led growth may seem to be a recent trend at software companies, but the underlying concepts have been in full force for years. Being…
Is It Time to Dump Your Product Frameworks?

Great products come from great product teams—not from frameworks. Using the right product framework can help guide a team’s work. But the product will be only as…
Taking the Leap: Why Product Managers Make Better Entrepreneurs

I’ve spoken with so many product managers who have a dream of becoming an entrepreneur or launching their own product one day. Every one of those conversations…
Zapier: My Personal Product Management Assistant

As a product manager at ProductPlan, I’m particularly proud of our new integration with Zapier because of the impact I know it can make. My appreciation of…
6 Rules of Product Design According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In this blog, we will discuss the applications of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs to the world of product design and tips to use this model most effectively…
Why It Is Essential to Put Customers First with a Customer-Led Product Strategy

At its most basic level, a customer-led product strategy means that your customers are the top priority at all times. Sounds pretty obvious, right? But creating a…
How Leadership Can Foster an Authentic Virtual Event for Your Employees

When you think of company-sponsored events, a few scenes may come to mind. There’s the holiday party where coworkers schmooze over food and drinks, be it in…
3 Tips to Make Your Product Manager Resume Stand Out From the Rest

According to LinkedIn, interest in product management has doubled in the United States in the past 5 years. ProductPlan’s State of Product Management Report revealed that 72%…
A Product Manager’s Guide to Roadmapping as an Essentialist

This article tackles one of the areas that gets the most interest from product managers: how can they use an essentialist approach to create and communicate better…
The Key to Driving Alignment is Remote Collaborative Exercises, Featuring Isabelle Berner VP of Product

Collaboration” and “remote work” may not seem like a perfect match. But teams can’t skimp on group work because the days of everyone being in the same…
ProductPlan vs. Roadmunk

Comparing the two roadmapping softwares, ProductPlan vs. Roadmunk. Which is the best for functionality, feature set, design, and price?
If You’re Hitting All the Dates on Your Roadmap, You’re Doing It Wrong

Imagine a product team out for dinner and drinks. They’re celebrating a big win. The product manager, development team, product owner, maybe even a couple of company…
Shifting Your Business and Product Strategy During a Crisis, Featuring Adrienne Tan

In March 2020, many organizations found themselves suddenly plunged into crisis. A global pandemic sparked radical, immediate shifts with lasting effects. Companies had to shift their product…
Growing Sales in a Product-Led Company

The move towards product-led growth is on the rise, in part because potential customers increasingly prefer to experience a product or service first-hand before committing rather than…
How Do You Know You’re Hiring a Good Product Team Member?

Product leaders don’t often get many chances for hiring product team members. It’s not overstating things to label bringing on new talent as critically important. Additions to…
Strategy is Important But It Isn’t Everything

In an ideal, data-driven world, every product, project, and program would come gift wrapped with its own precise set of goals, objectives, and KPIs. There would be…
The Roadmap Revolution: A Chance to Hit “Reset”

It’s that time of year where I’m both overwhelmed and excited to work on my roadmap. Maybe it’s the feeling of a fresh start and an empty…
Lean Market Validation: 10 Ways to Rapidly Test Your Startup Idea

This article outlines the advice I gave students and includes updates on some of the concepts to my current thinking on lean market validation. For many first-timers…
The Role Roadmaps Play in Managing Product Design

In modern software development, product designers tend to be embedded on a cross-functional squad or scrum team. That team’s collective work is often represented, at a high…
How to Shift to Product-Led Growth, Featuring Wes Bush

Making a shift to product-led growth sounds pretty appealing, especially to product managers. Knowing your baby is the driving engine behind the entire company’s success puffs up…
Declaring Roadmap Bankruptcy

Is it Time to Declare Roadmap Bankruptcy? Whether your product finds a market or falls flat, your team needs to understand why this outcome occurred. That way,…
Getting to Know Jim Semick

I met Jim Semick the first day I started ProductPlan. We took a walk outside the office to talk about the values that drive the company directly…
The 5 Top Trends in Product Management to Watch in 2021

The year 2020 shifted the world in fundamental ways. It changed the way we work, learn, play, travel, and socialize. It catapulted some industries into dominance (video…
Gathering Feedback From Unengaged Customers, Featuring Brian Tan

Customer feedback is the lifeblood of customer-centricity. It’s impossible to create and improve products without understanding customers’ experience, especially when customers have unengaged and do not provide…
3 Reasons You Should Hire a Senior Product Manager

Once you’re blessed with the opportunity to expand your product management team with a new hire, you have options to consider. You can hire a senior product…
Building Your Sphere of Influence, Featuring Roxanne Mustafa

When you’re new to a product management role, you enter the situation with minimal credibility, name recognition, or trust beyond your hiring manager. When your entire job…
The Journey from Customer Success to Product Manager

There are many roles where your career path is clear. But, product management is a different story. People have transitioned to successful careers as product managers (PM)…
Getting Real about Customer Delight: The Strategy of Emotional Outcomes

It’s all the rage, and is often the reason we get out of the bed each day – we want to delight our customers in everything we…
Top 7 Reasons You Need to Conduct a Squad Calibration With Your Product Team

Ocean’s 11. “The A-Team.” All those Fast & Furious movies… US popular culture is littered with examples of assembling all-star teams to overcome the odds and combine…