Recently, I've been questioning the conventional product management playbook. The uncomfortable conclusion I'm coming to is a lot of the conventional ideas in product management don't work well in most contexts. Not because they are flawed in theory, but because they don't survive contact with the real world.
Funnel analysis helps product managers optimize conversion rates by analyzing user journeys and identifying points of friction. In this blog post, we explore how to conduct a funnel analysis and how to use it to improve your product. We also discuss the benefits of combining funnel analysis with segment analysis.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with some of the product managers at ThoughtWorks to put together a list of the ten best product management books. In this post, I’ll share the list I put together. If you’re new to product management, start at the top and work your way through, If not, jump around and pick what’s interesting to you. They are all fascinating reads that will help you become a better product manager!
Through my consulting work at ThoughtWorks, I see a lot of product roadmaps. I’ve seen many different approaches, but one format I’ve seen one to many times is the timeline roadmap. These roadmaps, which are full of features and delivery dates, still seem to be standard practice – but they are far from best practice. By continuing to use dates, we as product managers are setting our teams up for failure.
Over the years, I’ve coached and worked with some fantastic companies, but I have seen very few true product teams. Most companies are not yet at the stage where they can operate product teams like Amazon, Google or Netflix. People often say these companies lack a product mindset or don’t have the right ‘culture’. However, I think it is about having the organisational readiness to operate product teams that empower people to work as they need to.
Creating a product roadmap is not easy. Every company seems to have a different approach, and most miss at least one of the critical components that make a roadmap successful. Here is my step by step guide to creating the three roadmaps you need to deliver your company’s objectives.
Businesses that create customer habits gain a significant competitive advantage. The hooked model describes how to design a product experience that creates a customer habit in four steps. Through consecutive hook cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
Last week I led my first fully remote product discovery. This was a step into the unknown as I took our co-located workshop techniques and tried to translate them into a remote-first world. Through this article, I’ll share this experience and what I learned in the process.