Articles

In our last post, we discussed how to select new technologies for your tech stack. As a reminder, this decision is critical to the long-term health of both the product and the organization, and usually appears at critical inflection points. So now that we’ve discussed how to select new technologies, in this post we’ll tackle implementing new technologies.

Before we get started, I want to emphasize that the frameworks that we’ll explore below are valid across many different kinds of product launches.

As product managers, we should strive to leverage reusable frameworks and guidelines rather than blindly memorizing formulas or processes. That way, our experiences build on top of one another and enable us to tackle broader and deeper challenges over time. Continue Reading

Every product manager builds their product on top of some set of technologies (commonly known as a tech stack).

As customer needs and organizational needs continue to change, product managers may find that they can no longer solve these needs through product iterations alone. In cases like these, PMs are faced with a difficult decision: whether to switch out parts of their tech stack.

This decision is critical to the long-term health of both the product and the organization, and usually appears at critical inflection points – such as when a startup has found product-market fit and is aggressively scaling, or when a company suddenly finds itself inefficient and unprofitable.

I’ve had the opportunity to witness a couple of these decisions firsthand, and I’ve had the privilege (and pain) of leading such a decision myself. Since the decision to change technologies is rare but high-impact, I’d like to share my frameworks and best practices for selecting and implementing new technologies. Continue Reading

As a product manager, you’re guaranteed to come across at least one large product-related crisis at work, if not multiple ones. Therefore, crisis management is a core skill for any product manager.

Through observing senior product leadership, learning from peers, and reflecting on my own experiences, I’ve found that the most productive way to tackle a crisis is to break it down into four stages: identification, mitigation, diagnosis, and prevention.

But before I dive into each of the four stages of crisis management, I want to highlight a particular mindset that you need to have as you resolve the issue.

The Golden Mindset

Never blame others.

Blame is counterproductive. When you blame someone, you place that person on the defensive, which means they are far less likely to cooperate with you to resolve the issue. Continue Reading

Product backlogs are an invaluable way to gather ideas and capture inbound bugs from other stakeholders in the organization.

Not only that, as product managers, we heavily rely on our backlogs. We use backlogs to determine what’s ready to be loaded into the next sprint, what ideas need more grooming, and which initiatives should be postponed.

Yet, one of the problems with product backlogs is that they overflow very quickly. Ideas get placed in the backlog, and endless streams of tickets come in through all corners of the organization – yet, very few of these tickets ever get reviewed.

A disorganized backlog is a backlog that slows down the development team and causes confusion to stakeholders. Therefore, healthy backlogs are incredibly valuable. Continue Reading