The post Better Understanding Analytics, w/ Dan Olsen, Product Management Trainer and Consultant appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Product management tools: What should your product stack include? When you think of product management tools, you probably think of product analytics software, development tracking tools, and roadmapping software. But your job involves a lot more than gathering product insight, tracking the backlog, and reviewing the product roadmap. To identify some of those additional tools, Shaun Juncal put together this list of product management tools to help you excel in your role.

(via @productplan)

A curated list of tools and software for product managers in 2020. You aren’t always able to pick the team and product that you get to work on, but you can sometimes pick the product management tools you use. Roy Cobby put together this (not exhaustive) list of product management tools and software that can help you to achieve PM excellence in 2020. Its division in categories should help you think about your needs and identify a tool that will help you improve your productivity, communication, and results.

(via @productschool)

Which tools do product managers use? Back in the day, you had limited resources to help you lead a product from conception to completion. You used to (or maybe still do) rely on spreadsheets, presentation decks, and general project management software to create roadmaps, capture ideas, prioritize features and define requirements. Unfortunately, these tools were not created with product managers in mind. The folks at Aha! put together this list of tools to help make your job easier. The list includes tools that will help you set product strategy to the tactical side of building out features and creating wireframes.

(via @aha_io)

The best product manager tools.  Being able to use the right tool is important for any job, and especially for Product Managers. Sometimes you have a say in what tools your organization uses, sometimes you don’t. Thaisa Fernandes shared this list of tools PMs use on a daily/weekly basis, some of which you can start using on your own. The tools range from code repositories to roadmap creation to user research and email marketing.

(via @thaifernandes)

Best product management tools in 2020.  Clement Kao compiled this guide to product management tools based on conversations with hundreds of product managers who revealed the most popular product management tools and product management tools that they currently use on the job.

(via @prodmanagerhq)

The post Tools that help product people appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

How to translate customer feedback into action. Customer feedback is one of the most important and valuable sources of information for directing product development and accelerating business growth. Some customer feedback comes in the form of a score or a number, like with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey. Other feedback comes in the form of detailed, lengthy reviews. Guido Bartolacci explains how to aggregate all this feedback in its various forms and turn it into a tangible action plan for your product and your business.

(via @GBartolacci)

Customer feedback strategy: How to collect, analyze, and take action. Customer feedback provides clear benefits to product managers, customer service teams, analysts, marketers, and pretty much anybody in your organization. Despite this, a full 42% of companies don’t survey their customers or collect feedback. Graham Ó Maonaigh and Sian Townsend put together a guide that looks at the different types of customer feedback, the ways to collect useful feedback and analyze types of feedback that are most important to your business.

(via @gomaonaigh)

6 Experts Share How They Use Customer Feedback to Build a Better Product. When you’re trying to deliver an exceptional product, it’s easy to get lost in the constant deluge of customer feedback. Your users probably communicate with your company through multiple channels and it can seem like feedback gets lost in a black hole. Riana Upton talked to six product professionals about how they listen to and act on customer feedback. You’ll see that while each company’s process is unique, there are some common threads that tie them together.

(via @gainsighthq)

From customer problems to product features: how to use feedback to create a roadmap.  One of the things Mike Iampietro learned at Amazon was that customers are always “beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied,” and no matter what you give them, they’ll tell you why it doesn’t work for them. These customer requests or complaints—he calls them “product gaps”—are a true gift if you effectively capture and prioritize them. Mike describes the system that his current company uses where everybody in a position to talk to a customer can capture and categorize product gaps based on the impact and severity of the problem. This system helps them collect more customer feedback and build a better product. Find out how this system can help you collect feedback and inform your product roadmap.

(via @mixpanel)

The post Putting Feedback Into Action appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

First things first – What is the Product Life Cycle?

Are you focused on the right part of the product life cycle with your product? Are you sure about that? Nick Caldwell asks this question — and helps you answer it — with an overview of the product life cycle and its key components. From Introduction to Growth, Maturity, and Decline — it’s important to understand where your product fits in, as the ways to evolve it are dependent on the stage.

(via Hackernoon)

The PURSUIT product framework

Do you have an idea for a product you and your team can launch? Great! But, what to do next? Maryanna Quigless, a Product Lead at Facebook, developed a simple framework to help you think through this. As a part of the framework, it forces you to ask 7 questions that you can essentially use as a checklist. Plus, you’ll find other resources from some INDUSTRY alumni and the Stanford D-School included as well.

(via UX Collective)

Put your toolbelt on, product people!

Once you’ve launched your product — then what? INDUSTRY alumnus, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, highlights six different lenses that you can look at your product through in order to manage your product once it’s launched. 

(via Medium)

Get ready for some chaos

Even when you’re doing everything the right way, using the right frameworks with a proper understanding of where your product fits in, overall — things will be chaotic. Of course, it’s how you manage that chaos that separates product managers who feel like they’re thriving from those who feel buried. In this talk at INDUSTRY 2019, Victoria Kennedy, Product Manager at Axios, has a discussion with Michael Sacca, Co-Host of Rocketship.FM, on how product managers can be agile in the midst of chaos.

(via Product Collective’s YouTube Channel)

But beware – There’s an Empathy Gap in Tech

As you navigate your way, you should know something, though. There’s an empathy gap in tech — and it starts with diversity. Jules Walter, Product Manager at Slack, talks about living through times in his career as one of the only black people on his product team. But how can we be truly empathetic to our users when the makeup of our product teams don’t even look like our users? The short answer is that we can’t. And especially on a day like today — Juneteenth — a day that is so important, especially to black Americans, symbolizing true freedom… we ought to be thinking about how a lack of diversity on our product teams can actually be hurting our users.

(via Medium)

The post Navigating the Product Lifecycle appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

When should you schedule your product launch? When choosing a launch date. It isn’t just about getting your company’s product out the door—and then to have plans to “fix it” later. It’s about setting realistic expectations for delivering good products. Dave Daniels shares some things for you to consider when you schedule your product launch so that you can have more successful product launches and fewer train wrecks.

(via @pragmaticmkting)

Set the right release date. If you want to be a bad product manager, insist on arbitrary and inflexible release dates. If you want to be a good product manager, be realistic about the necessity of meeting release dates. Jeff Lash explains that you do need to set launch dates, but you also need to make sure you understand when it is essential to meet your original date and when you should have some flexibility to account for other factors.

(via @jefflash)

The one habit that will wreck your product management career.  Danny Archer believes the notion you should do away with release dates and instead create roadmaps focused on what’s coming or what’s next to be absolutely crazy. Based on his discussions with many different companies of a variety of different sizes, he came to the conclusion that dates are not just important, they are imperative. That’s why he believes choosing not to use dates will quickly wreck your career.

(via @aha_io)

Why release dates are irrelevant to product managers. Janna Bastow suggests that product managers who refuse to put dates on their product roadmaps do a better job than product managers who do. They adapt faster when plans derail. They drag-and-drop priorities so product teams don’t find themselves stalled. They run a tighter ship and they ship better products faster. Find out why Janna thinks that PMs that refuse to work with dates also end up with more successful careers

(via @simplybastow)

How sharing feature release dates turned us into liars.  Alex Turnbull’s company used to share planned feature release dates with their customers, until they realized the impact of missing those dates – their customers felt lied to. Alex explains that not sharing release dates is not dishonest, it’s honestly admitting that you can’t perfectly predict the future.

(via @Groove)

The post Setting Product Launch Dates appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Validated learning. “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” There’s no progress, no growth, no improvement without learning, so any development endeavor that seeks to be better/faster/more must include learning in its process. When you take a lean startup approach to developing your product, validated learning is that part of the process where you learn just how close your product is to satisfying your customers. Dave Foxall explains what validated learning is and how you can use it to know when your product is truly doing what you set out to do.

(via @boldarecom)

Hypothesis driven validation. Hypothesis driven validation helps your team validate your product by identifying specific risks with your product and addressing them. Nate Archer introduces hypothesis driven validation, describes how to do it, and explains why it is important to extract hypotheses as early as possible and use them to structure all other activities.

(via @natearcher)

Continuous validation: Staying in touch with your market. “Validation is always a temporary state. Your business can be validated only ‘for the time being.’ Competition, a changing regulatory landscape, human error, bad press, changing preferences can always derail a working business.” That’s why Arvid Kahl believes businesses should practice continuous validation. “Regularly and frequently, assess where you are in terms of still being in touch with the market. Are you still solving their most painful problem? Did that change? Are there new issues that you didn’t encounter before? That will keep you on your toes. And your customers happy.”

(via @arvidkahl)

How Uniregistry used smoke testing in product validation.  “More than two-thirds of software projects fail to deliver expected results. As a result, the team at Uniregistry decided to take a new approach to product validation in an attempt to avoid the same fate.” Bartosz Mozyrko explains how the team used smoke tests to validate their product and explore a new opportunity.

(via @bmozyrko)

9 Proven ways to validate your digital product idea in 2020. “Is there anything worse than putting your sweat and blood in creating a product that never takes off, fails to attract buyers, and turns your hard work into a laughing stock?” Before investing hours and hours of hard work into a new product, you should find out if people want it in the first place. Sam with WebGrowthBoss.com explains an approach to validate your product idea in the context of online courses. The advice in this article will (hopefully) help you avoid the horrors of a failed product launch.

(via @webgrowthboss)

The post When is Your Product Truly Validated? appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Techniques for product ideation: generation, selection, and implementation.  “Ideation is the composition of ideas or concepts. So what would you label as an idea then? An idea can be interpreted as a spark of light, revealing a new course of action. Fresh ideas are the heart of innovation and advancement. Without them, you are basically dead, you just don’t know it yet.” Christina Gkofa elaborates on product ideation, covering the main ideation steps, revealing some of the most successful ideation techniques, and providing tips that will enable you to successfully perform ideation within your organization.
(via @alphaondemand)

18 Best idea generation techniques. Good ideas come and go fairly frequently. Really great ideas usually spring unexpectedly in moments of inspiration. It’s easier to come up with great ideas when you free yourselves from the conventional thoughts that take up space in your brain. Martin Luenendonk explains the three stages of successful ideation and suggests 18 killer idea generation techniques.
(via @EntreInsights)

How to get a good idea: A compendium of creative exercises. As automation takes over more complex activities, using creativity to come up with big ideas becomes increasingly important. Fortunately, creativity is learnable. You just need to consistently use deliberate practice and actively exercise your idea muscle. To help make your practice easier, Brett Friedman asked over 30 experts for their creative processes and compiled the results.
(via brettgfriedman)

15 Best techniques to spark idea generation. Ideation, the process of generating and developing new ideas can often be the most difficult step of innovation. Fortunately, good old-fashioned brainstorming sessions are still the best way to get both creativity and ideas flowing. Aneta Palevska explores 15 techniques that you can use to spark idea generation and to make your brainstorming sessions as effective as possible
(via @planbox)

Idea generation: Idea Drop’s favorite tried and tested techniques.  Ideas are the fuel that drives your innovation strategy. If you extend that analogy, it’s helpful to think of idea generation as a funnel: “you want it as wide as possible at the top. The more ideas you put in – when combined with a structured idea management process – the more value you’ll get out.” To get the most ideas at the top of the funnel, it’s helpful to have some good idea generation techniques at your disposal. Owen Hunnam describes several techniques used by the world’s greatest minds when they need to come up with ideas themselves.
(via @thisisideadrop)

The post Ideas for generating ideas appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

Soon we will announce the inaugural Product Collective Top Software Product Management Blogs rankings. Each resource will be judged based on a variety of data points, including a review by a group of product leaders, search engine authority, and also by popular vote.

And it’s on the final part that we ask for your contribution. Below is a form where you can choose up to 3 blogs — which ones do you enjoy the most? Please share your thoughts and we’ll let you know how your choices fare here in the coming weeks.

The post Top Software Product Management Blogs appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

1.  Make new friends from all over! This year’s attendees represent 38 states and 13 countries representing a diverse array of companies, including The Home Depot, BMW, eBay, Capital One, Chick-Fil-A, and others.
2. Meet the originators. Architects of popular frameworks like the Design Sprint and Jobs to be Done will be speaking and giving special hands-on workshops (psst, still a handful of slots left which just opened up!)
3. Get caffeinated! If you’re the type that needs your coffee — all the time — you’ll feel at home at INDUSTRY, with our complimentary barista-staffed coffee bar serving mochas, lattes, and more.
4. Bring home the notes.  Every year at INDUSTRY, we hire a professional journalist and designer to take notes so you don’t have to. A nicely compiled ebook will be waiting in your inbox the day after the conference ends. Yes, really.
5. Grab the swag. Your pass to INDUSTRY includes a commemorative t-shirt, a book written by one of our speakers, and more.
6. Learn from the best.  Jason Fried of Basecamp, Jessica Tiwari of Upwork, and 20+ other product leaders from Walt Disney Imagineering, Comcast, Walmart, and elsewhere will take the stage.
7. Spot a celebrity!  You may have seen him in The Hate U Give, Selma and other award-winning films… or heard his Grammy award-winning music.   At INDUSTRY, we’ll be joined by Common, who will be taking the stage for a very special fireside chat.
8. Kick back and relax.  Your pass to INDUSTRY includes admission to two different social events, and on-site happy hours on both days (along with breakfast and lunch on both days of the conference).
9. Share your expertise.  There are 24 intimate small group discussions that take place at INDUSTRY, as well as other attendee dinners that you can participate in.
10. Experience The Land!  If you’ve never been to Cleveland before, expect to be surprised. It’s been a trendy addition to many lists lately, including best foodie cities, best beer cities, and was even called “The Coolest Place You Never Thought to Visit.“

The post Top 10 Reasons You Should Join Us at INDUSTRY: The Product Conference in September appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.

In 2019, we’ve seen some newer roles emerge and some that have evolved. Macro trends in product such as increasing consumer demands, emerging B2C marketing and sales channels, product-led growth, and cheaper development costs are creating new conditions and new demands on product teams. We’re also seeing the impact of more in-product data analytics and initiatives like product-led growth emerge.

In this article I want to capture a few new roles that have either emerged over the past few years or have evolved significantly. My hope is that growing product teams can use this to better understand how to fill out their team, and those seeking jobs in product have a better understanding how their skills may fit with new roles.

Product Designer

This isn’t a new title by any means. It continues to be used in industrial design to refer to physical products, and while it has been used in tech for some time, what it actually implies has been evolving. UI, UX and visual design are all components of this role, but what truly makes it “product” is the additional focus on issues related to adoption and usage of product.

Designers own feature design, and are experts at optimizing user workflows. But as the software industry has evolved, the bar has risen on UX to the point that it’s not simply enough to have a “better design.” Issues like adoption, conversion, and retention have grown in importance as the landscape has gotten more competitive. Historically, these types of issues have been the domain of sales and marketing. Today creative product designers that know users well are now tasked with providing creative solutions to these problems. 

Other Titles

• UX Designer
• UI Designer
• Growth Designer

Skills

• Concept Design
• Conversion Flow Design
• Prototyping
• Visual Design

Typical Responsibilities

• Finding opportunities to increase adoption of features
• Streamlining conversion points in buying, and signing up for product

Product Marketing Director

Another role that isn’t new but is quickly evolving in importance due to many of the same factors I mentioned above. To understand this role, it’s first important to understand how product marketing is different than marketing. 

At their core, they both are tasked with understanding a market and promoting the product to the right audience. But product marketing takes a more strategic position in the organization. They act as the translator between marketing, sales, and product teams, and are responsible for things such as product brand strategy, product hierarchy, product packaging, and positioning. Marketers typically execute campaigns and collateral that tie to that overarching position, message, and hierarchy. The output of a marketer is fairly tangible to an outsider, but the output of a product marketer is behind the scenes.

It’s common to see marketers move into product marketing but it’s important to understand that this role is more of an architect than a builder: product marketers create the framework, marketers bring that framework to life. This role must lead with confidence and work with brand designers, marketing, sales and the product team to be successful.

Titles

• Product Marketing Director
• Product Marketing Manager

Skills

• Product Positioning and Messaging Framework
• Product Hierarchy
• Packaging
• Sales Enablement
• Technical product knowledge

Responsibilities

• Establishing clear market positioning to guide all downstream product decisions
• Managing creative teams to ensure collateral, visual identity and brand tell a consistent story
• Establishing messaging guidelines to guide internal and external product marketing activities
• Creating internal alignment across all product, marketing and sales organizations

Growth Product Manager

Product Managers typically oversee products and features, but Growth Product Managers oversee growth-oriented initiatives. I touched on this in the description for product designers. More mature platform and e-commerce teams will often have entire teams dedicated to growth initiatives, much like mature software teams will have product teams devoted to product maintenance and support initiatives. The role of a growth product manager operates outside of a particular feature and product and oversees growth across products.

In earlier stage companies, or companies driven by longer sales cycles, outbound sales, or those operating in less competitive markets, dedicated growth teams aren’t necessary. However, it’s becoming more common that these industries have dedicated growth product managers that oversee conversion, adoption and retention to ensure that all teams are focused on these efforts. As I said earlier, these areas are not solely the domain of sales and marketing; they now must be addressed by all teams, and growth product managers are the people that keep teams in sync. 

Why would a product manager be devoted to growth? Imagine a product has been selling well but is starting to see hints at attrition—customers abandoning their product. The reasons will likely cross several features. 

One product manager might oversee settings and privacy, another might oversee analytics. But the attrition might be due to workflows that are crossing those features. Maybe users aren’t seeing the right analytics they want because the admin has hidden these from their dashboards. And maybe the admin hid them because user settings were confusing to find. 

A growth product manager can uncover these inefficiencies across the products through tools like Pendo or Appcues, and then working with product designers (who may often be serving more than one feature team) to find solutions.

Titles

• Growth Product Manager
• Product Manager

Skills

• Data Analysis
• Metrics-based Roadmap Planning

Responsibilities

• Utilizing in-product analytics tools
• Creating product initiatives aligned to product growth goals
• Connecting with customer to uncover opportunities and pain points

Data Scientist

I’ve saved the best for last. I imagine this role is not new to anyone but its role on a product team is evolving fast. Marty Cagan, one of the most distinguished leaders of product has discussed how the data scientist is becoming the next new pivotal product role.

Similar to growth teams, company size and product maturity will often determine whether a data science team is needed, or whether data scientists will integrate with development and product teams. In my experience, I’ve seen data science impact the product in two key ways. The first is how data can help improve the product’s experience. Consumers no longer want to see charts and graphs, they want their product to make recommendations for them. Data scientists create structures and machine learning algorithms that help turn these hard numbers into real-world suggestions. 

The second way data scientists impact the product is through in-app analytics. Growth product managers become highly dependent on these statistics to make product decisions, but data scientists help provide the data. Once products gain traction and product market fit, the questions of how a product is being used gains more importance. Data scientists can work alongside product teams to help translate product analytics to influence product decisions.

Titles

• Data Scientist
• Data Analyst

Skills

• R Programming
• Server/Cloud Architecture
• Machine Learning

Responsibilities

• Creating data models that can scale as product usage grows
• Creating algorithms to support product experiments
• Communicating complex algorithms so product teams can understand
• Interpreting product and user requirements

Consumer demands and vastly improving technology is opening the door for exciting new roles in digital product teams. Data is no longer relegated to server rooms, designers are no longer executing top-down feature requirements, and product managers and marketers are now being asked to own sales and growth. 

While many product companies are starting to hire these roles, in many cases it may be up to you to carve out these roles yourself. But whether you’re looking for growth opportunities for your product team or are on the hunt for a new job opportunity, start looking in one of these four areas to be ahead of the curve. 

The post 4 Emerging Product Roles in 2019 appeared first on Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference.