Product Management & Roadmapping Best Practices

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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. […]

Aligning Your Roadmap Themes to the Customer Journey

Much has been written over the last few years on the idea of the featureless roadmap, which challenges product teams to present their plans grounded more in…
My Experience Transitioning From Engineering to Product Leadership

When I started my career as an engineer, I didn’t set my sights on becoming a product manager. Flash forward fifteen years later, and I’m the Director…
Your MVP is Not the Minimum Product

If you’re a product manager or part of a startup, you’ve likely heard about the Minimum Viable Product concept for getting products to market faster. In my…
4 Useful Real-Life Customer Interview Email Templates

Communication is a vital skill for product managers. We spend lots of time thinking about the best way to deliver our product roadmaps, give presentations, run effective…
What Does a Lead Engineer at ProductPlan Do in a Day?

I’m writing for the first time on the ProductPlan blog! Long-time reader, first-time writer. I’m currently a remote Lead Software Engineer at ProductPlan, where I head up…
5 Ways Product Teams Can Drive an Exceptional Customer Experience Strategy

I’ve worked exclusively on digital products for over 14 years, primarily in product and design-centric roles. Thinking back, it’s surprising that it was only about five years…
Product Strategy Doesn’t Work in a Vacuum, featuring Hadrien Raffalli

rIn our webinar Product Managers: Treat your Strategy as a Product, Hadrien Raffalli discusses the importance of tracking market activity and tweaking plans accordingly. He has experience…
6 Tips to Creating Roadmap Accountability with Your Team

As a Customer Success Manager at ProductPlan for the past two years, I’ve worked with hundreds of our customers on establishing their roadmapping processes. Throughout my time…
Why Distributed Product Teams are Here to Stay

There is no going back to “normal” for product teams. The idea of simply translating what we did in the office can’t be matched in our distributed…
Your Scaling Team Needs Product Ops, featuring Melissa Perri

“If you’re a growth stage company then you have to be able to make strategy decisions very rapidly. If you don’t have the data then you can’t…
Resilient Leadership During Challenging Times

A crisis can bring out the best (and worst) in people. Throughout my career, I’ve seen a spectrum of responses from leaders that have shaped my views…
My 9 Lessons Learned for Remote Success from Across Time Zones

I joined ProductPlan in the summer of 2019, excited to sink my teeth into creating product management content. However, joining the team came with one small twist…
The Ultimate Motivation: What Gets Product Managers Out of Bed Every Morning?

No matter how much we love our career, we all have some days when we’d rather stay in bed. So what motivates product managers to get out…
The Essentialist’s Way to Building Better Products

“Am I working on the right things?” “How can I fit it all in?” I find myself asking these questions almost daily, both in my personal and…
6 Things Product Managers Can Do with Qualitative Research

We are excited to welcome guest writer Carlos González de Villaumbrosia to the ProductPlan blog. Carlos González de Villaumbrosia has over 10 years of experience building teams…
How I Learned to Embrace Uncertainty: Tips for Product Managers

I’ll admit it, in the past, I’ve wrestled with needing to control uncertainty. For years I thoroughly planned most everything and felt the need to know the…
I’m Predictable in an Agile Environment

“Being Agile” and “being predictable” may seem mutually exclusive, at least when it comes to product management. A good sprint cadence creates a predictable frequency of software…
Patterns of Pain: How Product Managers Solve High-Value Problems

The most successful product managers think of themselves as finders of pain, not finders of products. In my experience launching ProductPlan and prior products, I’ve learned that…
When to Declare Backlog Bankruptcy

A few years ago, I was the acting product manager at a startup, developing an enterprise software product. Building the product was hard: it was taking longer…
The Key to Defeating Analysis Paralysis on Your Roadmap

Thanks to the Internet, there is no unfindable fact. As information is always at the ready, there’s no excuse not to check sources, find corroborating evidence, and…
The Most Under-Appreciated Product Management Skill

We write a lot about the skills that product managers need to be effective. The skills are wide-ranging, from ruthless prioritization, the ability to build consensus with…
Product Management 2019: Year In Review

What a year. There are so many changes happening in product management as I write this, and the evolution only seems to be accelerating. Our ProductPlan community…
What Your Executives Want to See When You’re Presenting Your Roadmap

As a product manager who now sits on the other side of the table as an executive, I’ve had lots of experience both presenting executive-facing roadmaps and…
How I Overcame Imposter Syndrome as a Product Manager

No matter how far into your career you might be, you’re never too old for imposter syndrome to make an appearance. Imposter syndrome is a feeling of…
4 Phases of a Successful One-on-One with Your Product Team

We are excited to welcome guest writer Carlos González de Villaumbrosia to the ProductPlan blog. Carlos González de Villaumbrosia is the Founder of Product School, originally based…
Grounding Your Product Roadmap With Themes and a North Star

We are excited to welcome guest writer John Cutler to the ProductPlan blog. John is a product coach with Amplitude, where he collaborates with internal teams, customers,…
Top 5 Ways to Mine Your Digital Customer Experience to Strike Insight Gold

As a product manager, you spend a lot of time trying to dig into the minds of your customers and unearth exactly what the experience of using…
Product Managers: Learn to Let Go

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of something after discovering it no longer works as you expect. Especially if it’s something you were passionate about. All of…
Feature Flags: A Product Manager’s Best Friend

Today, software development is all about the need for speed. Feature updates, UI changes and bug fixes are all done in near real time, and the frenetic…
7 Takeaways from ProductCraft 2019

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the ProductCraft conference, a one-day event for product managers in San Francisco. For those of you who are unfamiliar,…
3 Useful Analytics Hacks for Mobile Product Managers

Product managers are also problem managers. Crashes after a new version launch? It happens. Users dropping off after initial download? That happens too. Rather than waiting for…
How to Get Budget for Product Management Tools

You can be a successful product manager without any tools. Unlike a maintenance worker, a carpenter, a lumberjack, or a chef, you don’t require any specialized equipment…
3 Things Product Managers Owe to Internal Constituents

If you’re a product manager, then you probably have a lot on your plate. Meeting deadlines. Making customers happy. Keeping your team on track…all while trying to…
The Rise of Product Ops: the New Discipline Powering Product Excellence

As product management continues to evolve, many new practices have been put in place to optimize product teams. Agile, Kanban, and similar methodologies have helped shape the…
3 Questions to Ask About Every Potential Product Feature

If you’re a product manager, then you know that demands for new features come from all directions. Sometimes these demands come from key customers asking for a…
Why Business Teams Need to Start Together, Work Together, and Finish Together

The most successful products I’ve been involved within my career came about when the entire cross-functional team opened the door to the mission at the same time,…