The Stepstone Group

During my initial quarter of working with a development team, I managed to push through an initiative that improved my main metric by 40%. I also saved around 2 months of development time for 2 teams by asking the right question at the right time. I work both in regular product setup, where I overlook my backlog and have significant input into product strategy. I also work to introduce best PM practices and coach other PMs as a part of our PM Operations division.

I've already proven myself to be an inspiring leader and a good meeting moderator. I use my PM content creator experience day to day to have a positive effect on my product and colleagues.

Senior Product Manager

Great Product Manager - Practical Product Management course

My careful market analysis of the affordable segment of Product Management courses showed that they lack quality. Within a year, I launched a course that has now amassed 20,000 students and gathered 2000 reviews with an average rating of 4.6. 

This has also led me to become one of the top 20 biggest Product creators on LinkedIn, with around 87,000 followers. I have statements from 270 people thanking me for helping them land their Product Management position. I also provide Product coaching and consulting and create content via different means (blog, YouTube channel, etc).

Product Management Teacher

Microsoft

I look over the Video Calling aspect of Skype. Being driven by goals set within my OKRs, I seek the best possible candidates to include in each and every sprint. I share my experience with teams and translate everything I learned over many years into successful updates and metrics growth. I seek to bring the easiest, fastest, best, and most fun experience to every user of Skype! I'm most proud of releasing the new major iteration of the product's video meeting stage and vastly improving the mobile meeting join experience. I take pride in leading engaging Skype brainstorming meetings, which I then translate into ideas that eventually make it to relevant backlogs.

OLX Group

I led all of the product-related aspects of OLX’s new used cars business in Poland. I have ensured a successful go-live both in terms of the product being ready and having the right metrics and processes established.

I coordinated development requests with the remote teams, making sure that limited available capacity is always dedicated to the highest priority items. I used my start-up and corporate experience to help other departments operate more effectively during the launch period and during the early days of the business.

Product manager

I led an agile mobile application team and my product focus was to improve the engagement aspect of Stepstone's mobile apps. I successfully achieved that thanks to the correct choice of the right user stories from a well maintained, transparent backlog. They embodied a roadmap and strategy I established for my team. I was responsible for establishing the product impact hypothesis that I would later prove using A/B testing and analytical software tools. During my tenure, my team and I achieved an ROI of 250% and improved our main KPIs by at least 15%.

Product Owner

StepStone Services

I performed duties of a scrum product owner by organising backlog, preparing user stories and running scrum meetings in accordance with the sprint schedule. I also conducted traditional analyst tasks that included looking into results of A/B experiments, performing research and monitoring of KPIs.

Senior Business Analyst

idibu

I was responsible for ensuring that the development team was working according to the roadmap established during regular planning sessions. I performed research on clients’ requirements and competitors’ movements. Products of my authorship allowed Idibu to acquire its most valuable clients. I worked both on small and big projects, cooperating with clients and partners from different countries (such as Australia, France, USA and others). 

While coding company’s internal content management system (CMS) I learned the PHP and SQL skills that allow me to better communicate with developers. I was also successful in my previous roles in this company as project manager, client support manager and integration specialist.

Product Manager

- day to day customer care
- 1st, 2nd and rarely 3rd level of support
- designing custom solutions to improve clients experience and reduce the support levels, as well as carrying about any confused soul
- building up knowledge base articles and template replies
- coordinating with other members of the team for optimal work flow and customer care.

Support Manager

Akademia Językowa

I was a certified Calan method English teacher. I worked with different age groups from children to adults.

English Teacher

Artificial Solutions

I've done a great internship with Artificial, providing basic software and hardware office support. It was my first experience in working in a professional, well-organized environment with several dependencies. My actual duties were pretty wide, from performing rather basic customer support to making sure printer is never stuck. One of the most fun projects there was setting up a shipment of laptops so they can be used asap by the people in the office.

Support Specialist

I am a resourceful and experienced Product Manager that, as Mark Twain suggested, never works, as this position became my hobby. I like to bring people together to create something great and help them become even better. I have been very lucky, being able to execute my career as I planned so many years ago and I am really proud to call myself a doctor. While still being an active Product Manager, I try to give back to the world of product management. My online courses have helped thousands to develop their skills and careers and I'm here to help develop yours as much as I can.

Are you having problems getting tasks ready for the sprint? I know it was a nightmare for me when I started working as a Product Manager. Here are 10 actions I learned to get everything ready before the sprint kicks off:

1) Refine backlog items every day, after daily meeting

It's hard to convince a team to do that but trust me - having 3–5 refinements weekly that last 15–30 minutes are way better than 1–2 every week. It keeps stuff fresh in your head and it's an easy, ongoing conversation.

2) Make your Product due diligence

Present the item to the team when you have all your research, impact hypothesis, and a mature, well-founded idea. If you know what you are doing, you will do way better to convince others to believe in the initiative.

3) Start with a kick-off meeting

Start with a general presentation of the idea and spend way more time providing the context and the motivation. Though people in the room are mostly not products, you all speak the same language. It's cool to know why you want the team to do what you awsk.

4) Include a large spectrum of stakeholders in the kickoff

The more voices that can point out a fault or an issue, the better! You want to discover risks as soon as possible!

5) Start as soon as possible

The more time between kick-off + ongoing refinements and the feature's first sprint, the less stressful and more grounded it will be for you and the team.

6) Make it a dialogue, not a monologue

While on kick-off you are the focus, on refinements you should be able to act more of a moderator with the team agreeing on how to achieve the presented goal. Thus:

7) Leave the details to the professionals

Don't try to dictate the (technical) solution. You presented your requirements and expected outcome: the team should be able to figure out how to make it happen. Thus:

8) Don't project manage your team

You are a product manager. It's easier for them if you worry about the timeline and all the actors needed to make stuff happen. That however eats your product research/discovery time and you can't have that. Instead:

9) Expect results

If the team promises to complete a task or design by a certain day and they don't deliver, it's not OK. They should know you are upset. Figure out together on retro what went wrong and how to fix it. And the final piece of advice:

10) Don't be afraid to challenge your team

A lot of things appear impossible, while they are "merely" difficult. Don't take no for an answer: Understand why things are difficult and find a feasible solution.
There you go! How do you make things happen with your team? What's your worst refinement story? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #sprint 

📌 P.S. If you'd like to bring the best product improvements to your team, check  out my courses at drbartpm. com. Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

Dr Bart Jaworski

Do you feel you need to be the smartest person in the room as a Product Manager? You don't! You need to rely on and guide great people around you to come up with the best solutions. Why?

Very often when you start as a Product Manager, it is pretty challenging. It appears like you need to prove yourself as someone outstanding who can come up with solutions on the spot.

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁.

You might believe all the Product development work relies on you and if you don't micromanage the work, nothing will happen.

That is not the case.

In fact, while you are your Product's voice and face when it comes to reporting, you are not the entire body.

You need great developers.
You need creative UX artists.
You need BAs to make sense of it
You need thorough QA engineers.
You need visionary stakeholders for support.

And probably many other people to have a successful Product process. 

You know what? It's extremely great if those people are smarter than you!

They will help you prevent mistakes
They will tell you if you are delusional 
They will show you a different perspective
They will help you keep the Product quality high
They will need inspiration and you to be a better leader
They will doubt you so you can make stronger arguments

And probably many more.

If you have a room of people smarter than you, you will simply be a better Product Manager. 

However, having those brilliant people around you is simply not enough! This is where you really come in:

• You need to show success
• You have to lead by example
• You have to give them direction
• You have to moderate their discussions
• You need to counteract their character faults
• You have to provide a guiding vision and strategy
• You need to translate the data into sensible evidence
• You need to be the person focused on achieving a goal.
• You need to ensure the team knows how to self-organize work
• You need to present user and business perspectives in a just way
  
All of those don't need the smartest person in the room. Not at all!

They need the best leader and the most focused one.

𝗬𝗼𝘂.

You are the person who will combine the goals and smarts into great Products.

Good luck and have fun with that!

Do you agree with this perspective? Who is the leader that really inspires or has inspired you to do better? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #leadership #teambuilding 

P.S.1 - Being a great leader is just a part of being a Great Product Manager. To learn about all the other pieces, visit www.drbartpm .com and start your Product Management journey today! 

P.S.2 - The image and post inspiration: Andreas von der Heydt

Did you ever feel ashamed when your hyped product idea turned into crap by the time of its first release? Here are 6 ways to ensure a quality development process and a release you can be proud of:

1) Cement your idea in the Product's vision, mission, goals, and user perspective

Having the right context, that helps everyone advance their agenda will go a long way in order to validate your idea. Especially focusing on the user perspective and then the business goal will really help to make a solid pitch, that won't be stripped down to barebones later on.

2) Involve your team as soon as possible

Before you make a pitch to your managers, it's best to consult the engineering team first. You will learn about obvious risks early on and you can take them into account in your pitch. It's much easier to make the idea more realistic to develop while it's still an idea in PowerPoint.

3) Keep an open mind

When presenting an idea to any audience, make it about gathering feedback and looking for the best version of what you pitch. Don't be stubborn to do things the way you want and allow everyone's perspective to resonate with you. However, at the same time, don't let problems bug you down. Thus:

4) Expect solutions, not a list of issues

More junior dev teams will be upset with challenging initiatives and will point out all the issues and risks that come with it. Remember, however, as a product manager, you are only interested in solutions to the problems identified. Complaining won't get your team anyway.

5) Find the right MVP

You likely won't be able to go with full scope upon the first release. Thus, you need to figure out what is the minimum viable version of your idea, that will be able to validate your product hypothesis. Simplify too much and you will get a poor product that will sink the best idea. Building the right MVP may take time and while doing so:

6) Prioritize quality above all else.

Users won't notice a delay of an unannounced feature. They will however hate or at least ignore the timely release of poor implementation. If you feel you are going to release crap, then don't! Instead delay it a bit in order to give your idea a fighting chance!

There you have it! Do you agree with those points? Did you ever start with a great idea that was later wasted with poor implementation?

Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #sprint

📌 P.S. If you'd like to bring the best product improvements to your team, check  out my courses at drbartpm. com. Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

A less-known feature of a Great Product Manager is to be able to call out if something is stupid, bad, or a waste of time. It takes a lot of courage and confidence to speak up. Here are 7 ways to achieve this:

So, if you are in a meeting where some bad decision is about to be made. How to become a voice of reason?

1) Speak last
Not everything that sounds stupid, is such. You may be missing some information or context, so best to speak last, in case you will learn what you need in the meantime. Plus, this makes for a dramatic plot twist if you point out a painfully obvious fault at the end of the meeting.

2) Ask "Why" first, a lot
If the info or context didn't appear, doesn't mean it's not there. Try to do everything possible to understand before you strongly question something. The stupidest things are often done to reach wise goals in an absurd environment. Thus, understand the end goal and the value to the stakeholders.

3) Leave emotions and personal relations out of it
You may not like the people behind the bad idea. You may be angry. If this shows when you speak, you won't be seen as a great stoic leader, and you may end up as a "troublemaker". Instead:

4) Operate on data
Using data, money, and efficiency figures is the way to go to communicate your doubts. However, your goal is for others to see your point, and using the right data is the way to go here! 

5) Don't expect immediate resolution
You don't want to sound like someone who questions the current course with ill intent. Keep focus on acknowledging the goal of the stupid solution and that you mean well. Best if you could: 

6) Provide alternative solutions
If you can present a competing solution to a problem at hand you will look way more reliable. Not to mention if the solution is free or has fewer downsides when compared to the original proposal. However, even if you are right and you just changed the course, remember:

7) Keep modest
No need to boast and stress about how you saved the day. You already made a great impression and recalling this will make you an a**hole, not a hero. You may bring this up in the performance review though :)

That's it, 7 points to prevent your company/team from doing something you see as a bad choice. 

What is something stupid you saw in your career you weren't able to stop? Do you think you'd be able to do it now with this post? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #leadership 

P.S. To become a Product Manager with great ideas, be sure to check out my courses on www. drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

Do you know how to correctly set user personas for your product? What are user personas? Should both Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne land in the same user bucket? Well...

It depends!

A user persona is a made-up person representing a group of users in your product. It’s explicitly designed to help product teams understand their end users deeply by digging into their problems, goals, needs, pain points, behaviors, and preferences.

The common misconception is that user personas are based on demographic data. While for some products this may be the right choice, this will usually be wrong and misguided. The user persona concept is not really about representing real people but representing a pattern of behavior.

So, to correctly identify your user persona, you should not start with a name and a fake bio. Not at all! Instead, you need to dig deep into your product's analytics data and identify groups of users that interact with the Product in a similar manner. Thus, for example, for Spotify, you could identify the following groups:

• Casual, free users
• Paid users
• Creators
  
Of course, you can go deeper and look for more granular personas within those main groups, but that's a story for another day. 

To the point, definitely, King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne would not fall into the same persona bucket. The King is most likely a Paid user, while Ozzy is a Creator. 

I can however imagine a Product, say about a medicine tracking app, where both Ozzy and Charles would fall under the same, "elderly, who need help to track their medicine intake" group, though they are very different people when you get to know them.

And this is ok, again, user personas are about identifying patterns of behavior, not about any specific user, fictional or otherwise. 

Giving those patterns names and backstories has only one goal: To help you better communicate, to connect emotions and context to any problems the problem is built to fix :) Just like it helped to build this post!

Just to add: knowing your demographics will help you build the right product, but it's not the same as crafting user personas. It will help you craft an imaginary user to closely match your typical user :)

Do you agree with me? What are the product personas in your favorite product? 

Sound off in the comments!

P.S. User personas are only a single tool in a Product Manager's toolbox. To learn more about other tools and how to become a Great product manager, visit www . drbartpm . com. Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

P.S. 2 Thank you, Maya Moufarek for the image and post associated with it. This was a direct inspiration for this post.

Do you also hate wasting time on meetings despite being a Product Manager? Lots of them could have been an email! Here are 8 ways I optimize sure my meeting time and I have time for "real" work:

1) Prioritize meetings
You should have your goals to achieve and commit to meeting which are in line with those goals. If some of the meetings are a distraction, treat them as such and either ignore or postpone them. Or at least:

2) Decide whether to show up or read the summary/notes
Sometimes, you are asked to a meeting in case you are the only one who can answer a question, make a decision or at least take the meeting as input. However, most of the time your only contribution to that meeting will be: "Thank you". Perhaps it will be enough to review meeting notes and answer questions/make calls once the meeting is concluded. However to achieve that

3) Ensure there are meeting notes with an action plan (including deadlines)
This is something you need to drive as an example and create a culture of creating a meeting paper trail. If the meeting happens, best to make sure it's effective!

4) Choose the right tools for the job!
In-person meetings will do fine with a whiteboard, but in the hybrid environment, you will need to use a digital equivalent like Miro or Figma jam board. You might consider the benefits of modern AI to automatically generate notes and action points!

The points above will easily be solved with MeetGeek, a new AI tool that automatically records, transcribes, summarizes, and shares granular insights from every meeting to any product collaboration tool, say Asana, ClickUp, or Slack. It already saved many hours of meetings that would be a waste of time for me :) Now, let's move on to additional points:

5) Always have a goal of the meeting
To further increase effectiveness, make sure you know what you want to achieve from any meeting, and the moment this goal is in danger, start moderating. Regardless of whether it is your meeting or not.

6) Close the meeting quicker if the result is achieved
Trust me, everyone will love the person who will identify that the meeting can be closed! :)

7) Make sure you only invite people who are needed
Jeff Bezos said that a meeting can only be effective if you can feed the participants with 2 pizzas. The fewer people, the more effective it will be! Or at least will waste least people-hours!

8) Plan breaks
If you really need so many meetings, at least make sure they are not exhausting. Take at least 10 10-minute breaks for every meeting hour.

There you have it! My 8 techniques. Do you find them useful? How do you make your meetings effective and engaging? Sound off in the comments :)

P.S.1 - Thank you for an excellent image to accompany this post, Carl Vellotti :)

#productmanagement #productmanager #productivity

😔 A lot of people, including me, paint Product Management as a dream job. However, let me tell you about 8 unspoken and dark sides of the job and how I recommend you deal with them:

1) ⏰ 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 - Whether it's agile, waterfall, or any other framework, no matter how much planning you do, how many experiments, or how experienced your team is, it is impossible to create a fully reliable development timeline. Even if your team's plan is stellar, one single illness, one downtime, one person leaving the team, and the deadline is automatically extended. 

How to compensate: I would recommend planning for 70% of the capacity including planned holidays of the team. This however has a downside: every plan presented will be longer than it could be in theory and stakeholders might question it.

2) 🚫 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽 - As mentioned above, people will leave and get sick. APIs will not work as promised. Simple, 1-day refactoring, will ultimately change into 3 sprint nightmare. The build will fail to compile, as a different team broke it. Feels relatable? All of those are little spikes of stress fired directly at the PM.

How to compensate? Honestly, on top of the buffer suggested above, just accept this as part of the process. You can also try to map out the risks of the initiative and plan out the next steps with the team. You can't plan for everything though.

3) 👔 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 - Sometimes a PM has to do what a PM has to do because her/his manager promised it to someone. Why? Does it matter? Of course, you can fight your manager and do what you believe is right for the product. However, this may mean you are not the right PM for the manager and will soon be fired!

How to compensate? Either use your best data and logical reasoning to bargain with the manager to withdraw his/her "request". If this doesn't work and you strongly disagree with the "requested" initiative, it's time to find a different manager or company altogether. Otherwise your PM autonomy will never be respected.

Again, I face the character count limit on LinkedIn. To learn more about the remaining 5 dark sides of Product Management:

4) 🐐 You are a likely scapegoat for a wider business failure

5) 😰 You need to smile while you are hurting inside

6) 🤐 You can't really vent your true thoughts and emotions

7) ⛓️ There is little you can do to achieve success

8) 😩 Your mental health suffers as all the previous points stack together

and how to combat them, check the link in the comments section.

Do you agree with those statements? Would you list more? How do you deal with them? Looking forward to your comments!

#productmanagers #productmanagment #agile 

P.S. If you still want to be a Product Manager head onto www . drbartpm . com and begin your Product journey with me today :)

Is Jira causing you constant headaches? Don't let it! Here are 6 ways to make it a tool you like, not a pain:

Before we start, let me just say that Jira is just a tool. If it works poorly for you, it's likely not its fault. It's most likely the way it was set up and what it requires from you. It can also collect other pathologies in your org, say avalanches of requests that will never happen and thus cause you stress. But even then, it's just a messenger!

With that intro out of the way, here are 6 ways to make Jira a more enjoyable experience:

1) Fight the beurocracy

As I said, it's mostly your company that dictates the set of fields and processes. Therefore, if something is a bother, takes too much time and forces you to stare into the interface for hours, take it up with the right people. Of course, some work you can:

2) AUTOMATE

Talk to your Jira engineer about what takes the most time. Perhaps there are ways and plugins that will do some of the work for you. You just need to invest time to get more time back in the future. However, automate in a smart way i.e.:

3) Kill the spam
Jira can send you tons of non-relevant emails that are nothing more than noise. Make sure to only receive what you need - probably only the comments on your tickets (or the ones you watch).   

4) Don't project manage your team
You shouldn't have to create development tasks and subtasks for the team. Your work should finish when the requirements are understood and accepted in the main ticket. The dev team should take it from there and organize their own work. You are a 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗧, not a 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 manager!

5) Clean up the backlog
Listen, if you have 500 tickets and 2000 bugs, while you can work on no more than 20 tickets in 3 months, everything else is just a depressing look. Limit yourself to 50 tickets and close anything else. It's not going to happen anyway. Make your Jira a source of truth, not junk.

6) Make it your own
Look at your Jira board and imagine an ideal set-up that will allow you to easily understand it. Maybe you need tags or color coding? Alerts if a ticket is not in the right state? Figure out what will help YOU and work with your Jira engineer to achieve it :)

So, do you agree with the post? Do you get any other pain from Jira? How do you deal with them? Sound off in the comments?

#productmanagement #productmanager #jira 

P.S. To become a Product Manager with great ideas in her/his Jira, be sure to check out my courses on www. drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

Do you want to be respected and trusted as a Product Manager? Follow those 10 principles:

1) Don't say "No" hastily to any request
Only with a mutual understanding of the current roadmap situation and the impact of the request, can the Product Manager say "No" or "Yes". Researching the request and being transparent regarding the rejection will go a long way in ensuring everlasting respect.

2) Be a part of the development team, not their manager
They are not there to work for you. They are there to work with you on creating the best possible product. You just differ in your skills and responsibilities. Look at your team of junior PMs and they will gladly participate to improve the product outcome!

3) Keep your cool
Staying calm in stressful situations and modest in moments of success will improve how you are perceived. It's not about not having emotions, it's about keeping them in check and not saying anything you might regret later.

4) Moderate the conversation
Whether it is your meeting or not, make sure the room is focused on achieving the meeting goal. If not, there needs to be someone brave to redirect the conversation on the right track. Be that person!

5) Be the presentation
As a PM, you will present a lot. Be great at it! It's not about the perfect slides, but entertaining and understandable delivery on your end. Make sure to follow me to get tips on that in the near future.

6) Be confident, but not an asshole
Use data and research to be data-driven and thus confident in your statements. On the other hand, if you go with your opinion without any evidence to support it, you might lose a lot of respect!

7) Be proactive
Don't just do what you are told! Surprise your team and manager with new ideas and initiatives. Don't get discouraged if those won't happen in the end. 

8) Acknowledge your mistakes
It's Ok to make mistakes and even better if you apologize for them. It's not cool to avoid the topic or even worse, blame others!

9) Share the credit
When presenting, use the "we" narration. As per other points, it's a team effort after all!

10) Be a great Product Manager
If you can also deliver a great backlog and meet product goals, you will likely be promoted very quickly. Not to mention that everyone in the team will feel great about their work :)

Do you agree with those principles? How do you make sure you are respected and trusted? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #leadership 

P.S. Become a respected Product Manager with great ideas, Check out my courses on www. drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

P.S.2 The image for this post is a composite of images from Carl Vellotti and Enzo Avigo . The header and post's content is fully original.

Do you feel like your job title is "Product Manager" and all you do is features you've been told to do by management? Here are 6 ways to regain your ownership and initiative:

1) Speak up! - Let's start with making sure your manager and the command chain are aware that you are underutilized. Product Manager should be able to make his/her own choices and set product direction. This is what you were trained for, not project management!

2) Take initiative! - You can do what you were asked and in parallel, develop your own ideas to present. Show the management you are the right person in the right position. If given the opportunity, you may impress them big time! Take that opportunity!

3) Use data to prove your ideas - What speaks to managers is data, specifically money-bringing data. If you can demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that what you bring to the table has potential, who knows? Perhaps management finally will be comfortable enough to delegate product decision competence to you - just as you expected when you were hired. 

4) FIgure out a creative way to make your ideas a reality - Sometimes actions can speak better than words. Try to deliver what was expected of you and then some from your own ideas pile. If your initiatives will perform better than the mandated ones, perhaps you will be given the trust you need!

5) Try to understand the situation - Perhaps this is just temporary and the company is in a position, where very specific stuff needs to happen at a very specific time and there is no going around it. Sure, this should have been communicated to you already, but people are just people. Perhaps your predecessor was incompetent and management feels they need to still handhold their PM? If you understand why things are the way they are, maybe there will be a road to a resolution.

6) Find a better place - If you tried everything and you simply are treated as a project manager rather than a Product Manager, then there is no need to endure this situation. Start looking for a different position inside or outside your current company. Do be sure to tell your potential new boss about what you did for points 1-5 when asked what did you do to regain ownership as a Product Manager!

Did you find those pieces of advice useful? Have you ever been in a position where you didn't get enough ownership to do your job properly? Sound off in the comments!

#productionmanagement #productexperience #communication

P.S. Know what to do as an independent Great Product Manager. Enroll in my courses on www. drbartpm .com! Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

Do you lose all motivation when forced into rushing poor product updates? Use those 8 reasons to get more time to work on your product:

1 - The more time is given, the 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗱
Each voice and opinion is worth listening to, perhaps one of those voices will be the key to the solution's success.

2 - The more time is given, the 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲
If you can run your ideas/wireframes by at least a few users, you will get some early indications of whether you are onto something or not.

3 - The more time is given, the 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗱 
The more the team has time to prepare, the more edge-case aspects can be taken into account and addressed in the early conceptualization phase.

4 - The more time is given, the 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗩𝗣 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱
Trust me, I've seen dozens of failed MVPs that could have been a fake door test. The sooner users will tell you "Yes, this is the solution we want", the better!

5 - The more time is given, the 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗱
The more the team has time to prepare the technical foundations, the more potential issues may be discovered before the first line of code is ever written!

6 - The more time is given, the 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱
The right strings can make or break a feature. You need time to find the right language, otherwise, you may risk wasting a perfectly great feature!

7 - The more time is given, the 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱
You and your data team can find data to estimate the solution's impact. However, the time is needed to do that.

8 - The more time is given, the 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲
If you work under constant stress and rush, your mental health, not to mention the work quality will suffer!

On the other hand, the longer you take:

• the higher the development costs
• the larger stakeholder's frustration
• the more boring the item becomes.
• the more potential value may be lost 
• the later you'll verify your product hypothesis
• the higher the risk the competitors will do better
• the higher the risk the solution will no longer be viable
• the higher the probability that your solution will never happen
  
Thank you for reaching the end of the post. Do you agree with those observations? What is your story of successful (or failed?) rush development? Sounds off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #agile  

P.S. If you want to have such dilemmas and know how to sort them as a Product Manager head onto www . drbartpm . com and begin your Product journey with me today :)

Do you feel like you are only pretending to be a data-driven Product Manager when you make most of your decisions based on guesses? Stop that today by avoiding those mistakes:

Amplitude has released an amazing ebook about typical mistakes one can make with digital analytics: https://bit.ly/43uUJWr. Don't miss out!
Here are a few that caught my eye, as I suffered them myself:

𝟭) 𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗝𝗼𝗯
Oh, have I struggled here, especially in my first start-up position where we didn't even have a reporting suite! All the data for analysis I needed I had to pull directly from the database using SQL. But I also suffered in the other spectrum: In Skype, our main reporting suite was so convoluted, that it was almost impossible to get any data correctly without issuing a ticket and waiting DAYS before a single data product question was answered. In another company, we tried using Marketing Analytics Tools for product Analytics and vice versa, which often meant the data was unreliable.

𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?
Use the right tools for the right job! But optimize their number as they come with maintenance needs and can affect each other.

𝟮) 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝗻𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 
Oh, this mistake is coming back to bite Product Managers across the world! Remember the days when user privacy wasn't a real concern, we tried to collect EVERYTHING possible. Result? Data leaks, hard drives filled to the brink with useless data that could even crash the product and make it unusable. If I had a penny for every time my product stopped working due to oversized log files... Not to mention it is already illegal in several countries to collect data you don't really need!  

𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?
Collect only what you need as long as you need. It will be cheaper and if you need additional data, you can always start collecting it for a time. Additionally, follow the strictest data safety rules possible! It will be a pain, but it is better than having a furious userbase and a gigantic fine!

𝟯) 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
The bigger the org, the more definitions for the same thing... I saw SO many communication issues due to this. In one company I spent months unravelling what "LTV" meant for different teams and how to correctly monitor it...

𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?
Have a single data officer in charge of maintaining a library of definitions that everyone will respect

Here are the 3/10 mistakes I made with my analytics experience. If you want to learn about 7 others Amplitude identified in their report, download it today! In the meantime, what are your struggles with being data-driven? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #dataanalysis 

P.S. If you liked the post, be sure to download the full ebook at https://bit.ly/43uUJWr. It’s been really insightful!

You may think that product vision is a cringy phrase that serves no reason. Let me correct that! Here are 5 reasons you, the Product Manager, need to establish a Product Vision:

1. Defines your target - If you know what you want to achieve with your Product, it will be way easier to achieve! I have a vision both for my coursework and my video calling portion of Skype!
   
2. Helps you focus your efforts - Having a vision will help you prioritize your backlog as a Product Manager. When deciding, just ask yourself whether this will get you closer to a Product Vision!
   
3. Prevents feature creep - Like in the picture below, many features should never make it to your product. You need to decide what brings the most value to the Product; often, a new feature is not the answer!
   
4. Let’s you own the vision that will appear regardless - Trust me, the Vision will appear on its own in the company and you want to establish one before that happens. For the longest time, I used to work with a company with a vision to be a cheaper alternative to a competitor. That wasn't too inspiring.
   
5. Highlights your professionalism - Product Managers are expected to provide a Product Vision. Even if you don't believe too much in it, do it to meet expectations and amaze your colleagues and managers!

Would you add something to the list? Sound of in the comments!

P.S. Create products with great vision! Enroll in my courses at www.drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

#productmanagment #productexperience #productvision

I will admit - I must have driven my developers crazy in my early days as Product Manager. Here are 8 mistakes I made that you need to avoid to create a dream team with your developers:

1) Not knowing what you want to do
Don't go to your team unless you have a clarified vision of what you wish to achieve with a given product update. If you come up with a half-baked idea, you risk looking incompetent. 

2) Failing to provide context
If you can tie your idea to current goals, mission, and strategy and also provide business and user perspective, it should all click into place. Otherwise, you will just tell them what to do, which is simply disrespect.

3) Not having enough time
If you don't make time for the team, it may appear as if you don't care. They can't deliver an excellent update without your input and guidance, so regardless of the zounds of calls you have booked, be sure to be available and approachable. 

4) Not moderating meetings
Don't let the refinement discussion go sidewise or you will all lose time together. Know what you need to achieve from a meeting and towards that goal!

5) Micromanaging
You are a Product, not a project manager. You are not there to make the code happen and you should not babysit your dev team. Otherwise, they will lose all sense of ownership and rely on you to remove any obstacles... and worse!

6) Dismissing product input from devs
You are not their boss - you are their Product Manager. Everyone in the room has equally good data and perspective and you create a Product together. Let everyone's ideas be heard with respect! Who knows who will come up with your next big breakthrough?

7) Showing frustration
As a PM, you need to display leadership qualities. If you show negative emotions and frustration, you become part of the problem of bad team dynamics. Lead by a stoic, data-driven example and be the inspiring leader in the room.

8) Lack of modesty
The product manager is never the sole author of any product success. Make sure to use the "we" narration whenever you present and recognize everyone who contributed. You are but a team's representative, not its brain.

Are you guilty of any of those mistakes? Can you share your story on how you rectify your mishap? Sound off in the comments!

#productmanagement #productmanager #leadership 

P.S. Avoid other mistakes as a Product Manager! Check www. drbartpm . com to learn everything else you need to know to land your next PM position! Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

Most products fail and you can prevent it! How?

By knowing the building blocks of any successful Product and getting them right! 

Take a look at the graphic attached to the post, based on the Lippitt-Knoster Model for Managing Complex Change (h/t Tom Alder). This is a simple framework that will allow you to create great products:

➨ 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: You have to know what you want to achieve with your product. Have a guiding vision on how to solve a problem worth solving.

➨ 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁: You need to know your potential clients and market size to know how to craft your product to make it appealing.

➨ 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀: If you don't measure the right metrics in your product, you might as well not build it at all. You won't know why was it successful or failed anyway.

➨ 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁: Building a great product requires a set of talented people, including developers, designers, QA engineers, data analytics, and more! On top of that, you need to make sure they support you and your product!

➨ 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻: You need to have a plan on how to get clients in your market. Thus, even when being Agile, you have to know when and what you want to achieve and have a great strategy to support the right development direction.

... As well as what happens when each is missing.

• No clear 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 = Your team becomes a feature factory jumping from one potentially useless feature to another. To achieve success you need focus and feature rush is the opposite of that.
• No 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 = If there is no one to sell to, then building the product never made sense in the first place.
• Wrong 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀 = Without this, you won't be able to iterate in any successful direction, thus limiting max potential growth.
• Lack of 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 = Without the right people around, there will be no dedication and future-proofing. You need help to create great products together!
• No 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 = Without it, you will never know when is the right time to release, and thus, you might waste time or arrive too late with your product.

Last but not least, here's an example for my Product Management course:

1/ Vision: Provide a course allowing students to replicate my successful PM journey.

2/ Market: Based on other known courses and the size of influencers, it's about 500,000 product aspirants and practitioners.

3/ Metrics: Average course rating, growth will follow with strong social proof.

4/ Talent: Well, it was only me, but it was enough :)

5/ Plan: 3 months of work to create MVP (in the end, 12 ;) ) and all the improvements to reach a 4.6 rating afterward. 

Do you agree with my framework? What else is needed to have a great product? Sound off in the comments and, by all means, apply the framework to your chosen product there!

#productmanagement #productmanager #strategy 

P.S. Create great products! Check out my courses on www. drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

𝗗𝗶𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀? Do they help you identify if you are moving in the right direction? Here are 6 questions to ask with your metrics:

1) Do your metrics accurately describe what you need to achieve?

Companies, products, and the market keep changing. You might have set to do one thing 9 months ago, but as time progressed, you and your team started focusing on something completely different. Do the metrics hold up? Or perhaps your main metric, say Monthly Active Users, is falling rapidly so that the number of visits that you were set to work on no longer matters? Verify your set of metrics at least every 3 months!

2) Are the metrics easy to monitor?
You may be looking at the right metrics, but if they need to be pulled from 3 different systems, each having its own minor data issues and inconsistencies and you can only monitor the data with 8 weeks lag, then you might be doing something wrong. Either decide on a single source of up-to-date truth or invest in better data monitoring.

3) Is the number of key metrics right?
This is important: While having a single main metric (North Star) is perhaps sometimes taking it too far, having the 20 most important metrics is nothing more than lying to yourself. 3-5 is the maximum you can realistically focus on and make an impact. Not to mention that no product will have that many metrics, that are most important, ever… Those Products might have leaders who might be a little misguided though.

4) Are there universal, product-wide definitions of all important metrics?
This might be my favorite! When a single product/company holds slightly different definitions for metrics that appear to be universally understood! What if one team monitors MAU from the 1st to the last day of the month and others always take 30 previous days? You will get different results which may result in different decisions! There should be some Rosetta Stone document that unifies the metrics definitions across the company.

...and I'm almost out of characters. I will leave a link to the full post that will explore two more questions:

5) Are those metrics the ones that you truly care for?
6) Are your metric goals achievable?

There you go! Six key metric questions each sitting and aspiring Product Manager should ask oneself regarding one's metrics? Do you think there should be more? Looking forward to your comments.

P.S. Using the right metrics is just a part of being a Great Product Manager. Check www. drbartpm . com to learn everything else you need to know to land your next PM position! Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

#productmanagers #productmanagement #metrics

Do you know enough about APIs as a Product Manager? Quick test: What does "API" stand for? Don't know? No worries! Here's a list of 13 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 courses for this hot tech skill for Product Managers:

 1. API and REST API Fundamentals - https://lnkd.in/dNxEqYhq
    
 2. API Methods - https://lnkd.in/dvwe7v-g
    
 3. API Terminologies - https://lnkd.in/df3YfuVE
    
 4. API Authentication - https://lnkd.in/d3hHb-i6
    
 5. API Status Codes - https://lnkd.in/d4WPEnaU
    
 6. REST API vs GraphQL - https://lnkd.in/djFFF3rS
    
 7. API Integration - https://lnkd.in/dgBujEPJ
    
 8. API Testing - https://lnkd.in/dPEHs_k6
    
 9. API with Python - https://lnkd.in/dY25XEM2
    
10. API Scaling - https://lnkd.in/dA_drr6Q
    
11. Designing and Developing Robust APIs - https://lnkd.in/dwTPyPdt
    
12. Designing APIs with Postman- https://lnkd.in/dQ8g8_ub
    
13. Testing APIs with Postman - https://lnkd.in/d7BnDcmi

The list was originally provided by Chirag Goswami.

You can also easily start by learning who an API Product Manager is with my very own video:

https://lnkd.in/dtqhJ4B

P.S. Do you know any other learning resources about APIs? Be sure to share them in the comments!

P.S.2 The answer to the original question is Application Programmable Interface :)

P.S.3 Fun fact: Deep knowledge about APIs was one of the main contributing factors to my landing my Skype Product Manager position at Microsoft. The position itself never had anything to do with the APIs :) However, for everything else that let me land this position, check out my course on www.drbartpm.com :)

#api #productmanagement #productmanager

📌 The most important and most challenging activity a Product Manager conducts regularly is backlog prioritization. Here are 5 popular frameworks with their pros, cons, and use cases:

𝟭) 𝗠𝗼𝗦𝗖𝗼𝗪: which stands for Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't have. This framework allows product managers to prioritize features based on their necessity and level of importance. 

Pro: It's easy to understand
Con: it does not consider the dependencies and the relative value of items. 
This framework is suitable for simple products and projects.

𝟮) 𝗞𝗮𝗻𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹: This is a framework for determining customer satisfaction with a product or service. It helps product managers to prioritize features based on their level of customer satisfaction and importance. 

Pro: it considers customer satisfaction
Con: it does not take into account the cost and feasibility of a feature. 
This framework is suitable for customer-centric products and services.

𝟯) 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲-𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁: My framework of choice. This is a prioritization framework where you prioritize features based on their potential value and the effort required to implement them. It uses a 2-dimensional matrix to plot features on a grid.

Pro: it allows to prioritize items based on the value and effort relative to each other
Con: the value and effort are often high-level guesses and therefore be totally off.
I would say it's rather universal in its application

𝟰) 𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗘: Here, one is prioritizing features based on their reach, impact, confidence, and effort. It helps you to prioritize features based on their potential reach and impact, as well as the level of confidence and effort required to implement them. 

Pro: it considers the potential reach and impact of features, 
Con: It's often hard to estimate the required parameters
Use it only when you can reliably estimate those parameters, otherwise, it's a pure guessing game.

𝟱) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹: here each feature is evaluated against a set of criteria, such as customer value, feasibility, and alignment with the company's goals, and is assigned a score. The scores are then multiplied by the weight of each criterion to determine the overall priority of the feature. 

Positive: it allows one to prioritize against multiple vectors and adjust them based on the current strategy
negative: it can be time-consuming and complex to set up and use effectively.
This framework is suitable for products with many features and when multiple factors need to be considered while prioritizing.

Of course, there are many other frameworks one can use. Which ones are your favorite? I really do hate the "The manager told me to do it!" one :) 

P.S. If you want to be ready to overcome Product Management setbacks, be sure to check out my courses on www. drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

#productmanagement #productmanagers #prioritization

Do you feel really stressed when you need to create your product roadmap? Don't be! Here are 7 ways to craft the best ones:

1) If possible, commit to working on goals, not features

This is the ideal situation: Your roadmap is showing how you will timebox different challenges and goals over the coming months. However, let's be honest: Hardly any management will accept such a roadmap. In that case, you will need to supplement this with a set of proposed deliverables that you MAY work on that should address your challenges. 

2) Show how your propositions fit into the wider narrative

If you can highlight how your proposed changes address your goals, but also fit into product/company vision, and strategy and answer market/user needs, you will be a Product Management GOAT (Gen Z readers, how I used that correctly ;)? ). Trust me, this is a roadmap masterclass in this single paragraph.

3) Don't go too granular

You want to impress and inspire your stakeholders. The roadmap meeting will be a long one and if you dive too deep, you will confuse your audience and lose the narrative. Do it Hollywood style: show, not tell! In any case, you should focus on the details over the course of the year, not when you are launching.

4) Include visualizations

If you have any wireframes or early designs, show them! They might change 1000 times later, but showing early concepts will show that you are nicely progressing with your plans. This will build confidence that the presented outcomes will land when you say they will land.

5) Make it easy to access and check the progress

This will save you time on updates - either stakeholders will be able to check your progress on their own or it will be easier for you to create a "check-in" presentation. 

6) Involve the team

Before showing the roadmap to stakeholders, show it to your team for input. Make them a part of the roadmap, not receivers. They should feel proud to follow it and feel co-responsible, not be surprised by your propositions.

7) Stress it's always only a draft, not a commitment

That's right! If you make this a commitment, it will make it harder for you to change direction later if, say, another ChatGPT pops up out of nowhere. You, as the Product Manager, should always pursue the best value for your product and no roadmap should stop you from doing that!

Do you agree with those points? How do you craft your roadmap? 

Sound off in the comments!

P.S. If you would like to always know what to show on your roadmap, enroll in my course at www. drbartpm. com :) Use the code “linkedinfollower” on checkout to receive a 30% discount on all of them :)

#productmanagement #productmanager #roadmap

I'm a nominee for the best Product Educator for Product Leader Awards at Uizard! Please vote for me on page 2 of the voting form: https://lnkd.in/de8H6FDY? What is the best thing I taught you so far?

#productmanagement #productmanager #awards

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