You’ve just joined a new team, you’re being assigned to launch a product which is nearly ready, and from the moment you set eyes on it, something doesn’t feel right. You don’t quite get its value, you don’t see how others might want to use it, it doesn’t feel right… but then you don’t know … Continue reading Weeknote: how to get away with murder (of a product)
Category: Product Management
Weeknote: Performance review
Last week I had my performance review, and for the first time I actually enjoyed it and was grateful for the conversation we had. Until recently I would have described the performance review or annual review as the yearly awkward moment to talk with your manager about your achievements and skills. When I worked at … Continue reading Weeknote: Performance review
Weeknote: When you can’t solve the problem
I wrote this reflection a while ago, but as this week has been intense and my thoughts are all over the place, I thought I'd share this. ... It’s a drab drizzly day in January. I’m queuing at the post office. Courtesy of covid-19, we’re of course queuing outside. There’s also a queue system inside: … Continue reading Weeknote: When you can’t solve the problem
Weeknote: product communities and networks
This week I have been thinking about product communities. In my last organisation, there was a fairly active product community, both at cross-government level and within the organisation. However, in my new job, there is no such community, as our product team of 7 is integrated in the 'business' and fairly isolated from other PMs. … Continue reading Weeknote: product communities and networks
Weeknote: How do we know how much others need to know?
As product people one of our roles is to ensure people external to our team know what is going on and where we’re heading. That is simple enough as a principle, yet in practice, this is hard. The situation This week, I’ve trialed an email to share updates across all our products to send to … Continue reading Weeknote: How do we know how much others need to know?
Weeknote: the surprisingly good day
Ok, that's it, I'll try it out! For several years I've been seeing colleagues and people on Twitter write weeknotes, and I've finally reached a point at which I feel like I should do it and I have sufficient motivation and courage to do it. Something happened this week, which brought it home to me … Continue reading Weeknote: the surprisingly good day
Setting up a product practice part 3
Following part 1 and part 2 of this series which detailed my reflections on how we might set up a product practice, this post gives insight into the workshop I ran with the team. Below is a breakdown of the activities we went through Logistics 4 hours (2 sessions of 2h)1 facilitator - yours truly7 … Continue reading Setting up a product practice part 3
Setting up a product practice part 2
In my last post I talked about my ambition to work on our team’s product practice. I started by focusing on what problems we might solve within the organisation. As a next step, I needed something tangible that described a mature product team. Like a sort of toolkit that would help us agree on the … Continue reading Setting up a product practice part 2
Setting up a product practice – part 1
What does product practice mean to you? I have worked in organisations where product teams and product management were fairly well defined. We often had debates and discussions about the product role, but it was within an overall framework of expectations and understanding of what the product role did. A few months ago, I started … Continue reading Setting up a product practice – part 1
Building Knowledge Management products
You may want to start by reading part 1 of the series: What is Knowledge Management and why should you care? Our users are our colleagues. Whether they are working in games, human resources or IT, they require an entire ecosystem of products to help them access the knowledge they need. What are the products? … Continue reading Building Knowledge Management products
