Biweekly we select for you the best articles in product management.
Enjoy and have a PRODUCTive week!
Interesting Reads
1. Common Product Vision Board Mistakes
“The product vision board is a simple yet powerful tool to capture the product vision and the product strategy. Despite its simplicity, effectively using it can be challenging.” In this article, Roman Pichler helps you recognize and rectify common product vision board mistakes, thereby maximizing the chances of creating an inspiring vision and a winning product strategy. (Roman Pichler)
2. How The Founder Of Slack & Flickr Turned Colossal Failures Into Billion-dollar Companies
Slack and Flickr have one thing in common—”besides being co-founded by Stewart Butterfield—these multi-million to billion-dollar companies broke open a market that did not exist prior to their existence.” Jessica Lim, Software Engineer at Microsoft, summarizes what lessons we can learn from Slack and Flickr. (The Startup)
3. Product Management Is The Art Of Problems (Not Solving)
“Product Management is all about finding real problems of real users who are really looking for solutions.” Ujjwal Trivedi, Assistant Director of Products at MoveInSync, articulates a framework that describes the art of problem analysis instead of thinking of a solution. (The Startup)
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4. Four Early Signs Of A Deteriorating Product Backlog
“The backlog is known to be a source of clarity on future work, but can often be treated as a graveyard of ideas and features that don’t deliver the impact you need. It can’t be too full, nor can it be too empty.” Andrew Quan, Head of Product at Littlepay, provides some indicators you should be wary of as you continue to build features for your customers. (UX Collective)
5. A New Tool For Your PM Toolkit: Constrained Optimization
While the mathematical side of constrained optimization is widely useful, Sean Walsh, Group Product Manager at Klaviyo, has found more success applying this as a conceptual framework in these 4 steps: “Identify your constraints, write down all of the options that satisfy the constraints, identify your objectives, evaluate each option for maximizing the objectives.” (WholeProdTeam)
6. What’s Your Leadership Origin Story?
“How you tell the story of your own path towards becoming a leader frames your leadership style, as well as the ways in which you cultivate and support other leaders within your organization.” Alyson Meister, Prof. at IMD, Wei Zheng Associate Prof. and Brianna Barker Caza, Associate Prof. in the Brian School, shed light on four distinct types of leadership narratives and offer suggestions as to how leaders can better understand — and expand — their leadership stories. (HBR)
7. A Founder’s Guide To Writing Well
Product Managers know they need to be compelling and convincing storytellers. But that doesn’t mean effective writing skills don’t matter. “Of the many skills attributed to successful (people) — vision, execution, persuasion, perseverance, grit, resilience — effective writing inevitably fails to make the list.” Dave Girouard, CEO of AI lending platform Upstart and former President of Google Apps, shares his tips for adding effective writing to your toolkit. (First Round Review)
We wish you a great week!
The Product Management Festival Team