By reducing maintenance cost I dedicated my last article to expose the pervasive effect of maintenance cost on product development speed. (I recommend reading it first to further understand the concepts discussed in this one) But it would not be complete without some recommendations on how to keep it as low as possible. Let’s review 5 […]
5 ways to dramatically accelerate your product development speed Read More »
There is a particular problem most companies struggle with: as time goes by, product development teams seem to get slower and slower. Why? Why those great developers that at first seemed to deliver tremendous value now take so long to make small changes? We can list many reasons: Dependencies: as the team grows, we split
The ugly truth about why your product development team is so slow Read More »
My last 2 work experiences were on companies that were trying to move from a project based organization to a product based organization. Being a “product person” I love this challenge. But I found out that there were many myths about what the Project vs Product difference really is about. For instance, I heard the
What is the real difference between Project and Product Organizations? Read More »
Alignment, Goal Setting and Bonuses Note: This is part 5 of a 5 part series, I highly recommend reading previous parts if you haven’t. You can read the first one here. One of the highest impact activities at management levels is goal setting. Defining an appropriate process and standards can create the right environment for teams
My Top 5 challenges of Product Management and Development — Part V Read More »
Roadmaps and stakeholder communication Note: This is part IV of a 5 part series, I highly recommend reading previous parts if you havent. You can read the first one here. I feel I’m cheating with this challenge because both Roadmap and Stakeholders can have their own separate chapters. But the combination of creating a useful, updated,
My Top 5 challenges of Product Management and Development — Part IV Read More »
Recruiting talent, defining career paths and maintaining “balanced” teams Note: this is part III of a 5 part series. You can find the 1st here, and 2nd here. I choose talent as my third big challenge. There are obvious difficulties in hiring the non-abundant technical talent: high salary demands, high “benefits” demands, having interesting and challenging technologies/products… and I
My Top 5 challenges of Product Management and Development — Part III Read More »
Fostering a culture of outcomes, discovery, and experimentation Note: this is the second part of a 5-part series on Product challenges. If you haven’t already read the first part you can find it here. My second biggest product challenge is related to aligning the entire organization towards a culture of outcomes, discovery, and experimentation. Let split
My Top 5 challenges of Product Management and Development — Part II Read More »
Measuring Product Development Note: this is Part I of an (I hope) 5 Part series Product Management and Development are quite hard. For the last few years, I have consolidated a few of the things that I struggle the most (and see others struggling as well). So I thought I might as well share it
My Top 5 challenges of Product Management and Development — Part I Read More »
And ideas on how to overcome them To drive results, alignment and transparency I’ve been using as goal setting tool the now popular OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for about 3 years, in 3 different companies. And I have repeatedly found similar challenges when setting them. I would have loved to found stories of people facing similar
10 Challenges in Setting OKRs Read More »
It is easy to understand why product teams with low autonomy, hard delivery-date pressures from stakeholders, and not-empowered product managers tend to end up in the “feature factory” anti-pattern. Note: I’m not sure about the origins of the feature factory term, but it basically represents those product teams who operate more like a software factory, getting
4 reasons why product teams can’t avoid the “Feature Factory” trap Read More »
