May, 2018

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Am I a Product Manager or a Product Owner? Part 2

bpma ProductHub

By Ellen Gottesdiener Part 2: 5 Ways to Untangle the Mess In part 1 of this blog, I outlined the confusion between what a Product Manager does and what a Product Owner does. The difference and overlaps between product management and product ownership work illustrated how activities span both strategic and tactical product management.

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Customer retention is the new conversion

Intercom, Inc.

Convincing potential users to sign up for your product isn’t easy. But what happens next is far more important. The latest batch of billion-dollar companies are built on high customer retention. They help their users be successful, and that means providing great onboarding. At Traction Conference, an event all about how to keep and grow customers and revenue at scale, I explained how to build onboarding based on your customers’ goals, and why when your product improves, your onboardi

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How to Get Roadmap Buy-in: Tell a Good Story

UserVoice

Numbers are great—when the black ones get bigger and the red ones get smaller, it’s always a good thing. And yeah, charts are awesome—arrows pointing up and to the right portend great things in the future, especially when they look like a hockey stick. But it’s hard to make an emotional connection with facts and figures when you’re seeing them in a presentation.

Roadmap 188
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Why do we Forget That Product Management is a Tough Career?

Mind the Product

Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut – or a dinosaur. I think I got closer to being a dinosaur, I certainly did more practice! As an adult, if I could trade careers overnight I’d quite like to be an actor. The challenge of authentically playing different characters in different situations appeals to me, but I know it’s a career that is much harder than it appears.

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Platform Product Management Beyond Features: Introducing B-MAP for Platform Ecosystem Success

Traditional PM struggles with the complexities of platform ecosystems. B-MAP framework tackles this challenge. B-MAP goes beyond features, focusing on building, managing, adapting, and partnering to foster a thriving platform ecosystem.

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Stop Looking For Customer Problems

Product Management University

There’s an old saying in sports – winning cures everything. The same could be said for B2B organizations that consistently meet their strategic goals. When organizations are winning, many of their so-called problems fade into the background. Which brings me to an important point that every product management team should consider: If your organization is on a crusade to find and solve customer problems, STOP!

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Am I a Product Manager or a Product Owner? Part 1

bpma ProductHub

By Ellen Gottesdiener Part 1: Confusion Abounds With the maturing of the software industry and with an overwhelming acceptance of agility, I am still surprised at the inconsistency and overall confusion between what product managers and product owners do. On a panel I participated on this very topic, the presenters had different, sometimes contradictory perspectives.

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Use exploratory research to keep innovative teams going

Intercom, Inc.

In today’s data-driven world, the idea of using research to build great tech companies has gone from being buzzworthy to expected. User testing is now a must-do, thanks to the lean build-measure-learn mantra that has inspired modern product development. It’s also been great to see exploratory research gaining ground as a strategy for identifying product opportunities.

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Yes, You DO Need to Do Post-Mortems

UserVoice

Introduction. One of the most important, and often most-overlooked, aspects of adopting a “little-a” agile culture lies in the application of continuous improvement practices. By far the most important of these practices is looking back over past efforts so that we can identify root cause and propose remedial efforts. And while Scrum has this function built in on the team level, the sprint retrospective is.

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What Blocks our Empathy in the Design Thinking Process?

Mind the Product

Empathy is the foundation of the whole Design Thinking process. Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes enhances our ability to receive and process information, which helps us understand how other people experience the world. As a product designer, I know that empathy helps me to recognise the difficulties that people face, alongside their needs and desires, and that I can then use that knowledge to design the best solution for their challenges.

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Entity Resolution Checklist: What to Consider When Evaluating Options

Are you trying to decide which entity resolution capabilities you need? It can be confusing to determine which features are most important for your project. And sometimes key features are overlooked. Get the Entity Resolution Evaluation Checklist to make sure you’ve thought of everything to make your project a success! The list was created by Senzing’s team of leading entity resolution experts, based on their real-world experience.

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That Which is Urgent is Not Always Important

Clever PM

We’ve all been there — that sudden call from one of your Sales team with a customer “on the hook” but they only need this one more thing to close the deal. Or maybe it’s an escalated issue from your biggest customer that lands in your mailbox with gigantic ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!! Or worse […].

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Product Backlog vs. Sprint Backlog

Product Management University

What’s the difference between a product backlog and a sprint backlog? There are two key differences between a product backlog and a sprint backlog. A sprint backlog typically covers a few sprints whereas a product backlog covers a much longer timeframe like one or two quarters. The second difference is the content and context within each document. The content in a product backlog should be more WHO, WHAT & WHY – who is the user, what job task will you help them improve, why is it important

Document 100
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Understand context and diminish risk: How to build your first Wardley Map with RealtimeBoard

Miro

Understand context and diminish risk: How to build your first Wardley Map with RealtimeBoard Wardley Maps are all about strategy. To be more precise, it’s about building an intuitive and shareable understanding of your context so the strategy you adopt ends up being a good one. All this is especially helpful if you are starting […]. The post Understand context and diminish risk: How to build your first Wardley Map with RealtimeBoard appeared first on RealtimeBoard Blog.

Blog 118
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Motivate your star performers with meaningful career conversations

Intercom, Inc.

Imagine walking into the office one morning and having your star team member ask if you have a few minutes to talk. In person. Your instincts tell you nothing good is going to come out of this conversation. And unfortunately, your suspicions are confirmed when they hand you their resignation and explain they’ve been offered “a new and exciting opportunity” that aligns with their career aspirations.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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Relationships are the Currency of Product Managers

The Product Guy

Guest Post by: Rodhmir Labadie (Mentee, Session 5, The Product Mentor) [Paired with Mentor, Stuart Moore]. The process of taking a product or a feature from idea to execution is a taxing proposition for any team to undertake. Moving from product concepts to execution requires the steady guidance of a product manager to listen and understand the needs and wants of the organization, the teams involved, and the users for whom the product is being built.

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Product Owner vs Product Manager: Worry About Outcomes not Titles

Mind the Product

Over the past year I’ve worked with hundreds of product managers in dozens of companies, and there’s been one question that has sounded like a persistent drum beat: “ What is the difference between the role of a product owner and a product manager? ”. When confronted with this question, I used to hesitate, because from company to company there are a million things that can affect the roles; the product, larger organization structure, product development process, cultural differences, regional di

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“Product” is More Than Just Development

Clever PM

It’s far too common in the world of Product Management for us to wind up being narrowly focused on the actual product development cycle – define, build, measure, repeat. But there’s far more to building, launching, and maintaining a successful product than just what goes on between Product Management and Development. The best and most […].

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Four Steps to Product Feature ROI

Product Management University

Senior executives often request a product feature ROI prior to approving plans for product development. It’s a mind numbing exercise for product managers and developers and in most cases a fool’s errand. Most products and features are usually interrelated at some level and target the same markets and customers, so how is it possible to predict revenue and cost estimates on a feature by feature basis?

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IDC Analyst Report: The Open Source Blind Spot Putting Businesses at Risk

In a recent study, IDC found that 64% of organizations said they were already using open source in software development with a further 25% planning to in the next year. Most organizations are unaware of just how much open-source code is used and underestimate their dependency on it. As enterprises grow the use of open-source software, they face a new challenge: understanding the scope of open-source software that's being used throughout the organization and the corresponding exposure.

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Social Media has the “Exact Same Negative Effect on Depression” as Eating Potatoes

Nir Eyal

It feels impossible to tell if the technology our kids use should be celebrated or feared. A few years ago I wrote a book, Hooked, about how technology can be used to change our habits. I intended the book to teach startups how to build healthy habits, but now I’m not so sure. With headlines […]. The post Social Media has the “Exact Same Negative Effect on Depression” as Eating Potatoes appeared first on Nir and Far.

Books 111
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Why your growth depends on taking risks with your hiring strategy

Intercom, Inc.

There’s a key turning point for your hiring strategy in a rapidly scaling team or organization. The inflection point is when you go from only being comfortable hiring star candidates who pose very little risk to taking chances on candidates who don’t tick all the boxes but who have promise and potential. Making that transition smoothly is crucial for your longer-term growth.

Strategy 222
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Deliver Outcomes, Not Features

The Product Guy

Guest Post by: Jie Jin (Mentee, Session 5, The Product Mentor) [Paired with Mentor, Andy Wadhwa]. The learning experience in the past few months with my mentor Andy Wadhwa has been profound. If I could pick just one thing to share, it would be: focus on delivering outcomes, not features. I vividly remember the first conversation with Andy. At the time, our product team was in a process of envisioning our ideal product.

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Building Product in a Post-GDPR World

Mind the Product

It’s GDPR week! Keep Calm and Manage Data Responsibly! I’m not going to go into an exhaustive breakdown of exactly what GDPR is, as there are plenty of other perfectly good posts about that. I’m also going to avoid – wherever possible – the legalese and specific jargon that comes with it. By this point, you’re either familiar with it or you’re in for a nasty shock in the near future!

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LLMOps for Your Data: Best Practices to Ensure Safety, Quality, and Cost

Speaker: Shreya Rajpal, Co-Founder and CEO at Guardrails AI & Travis Addair, Co-Founder and CTO at Predibase

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT offer unprecedented potential for complex enterprise applications. However, productionizing LLMs comes with a unique set of challenges such as model brittleness, total cost of ownership, data governance and privacy, and the need for consistent, accurate outputs. Putting the right LLMOps process in place today will pay dividends tomorrow, enabling you to leverage the part of AI that constitutes your IP – your data – to build a defensible AI strategy fo

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Our 6 Must Reads For Creating and Accelerating Trust on Teams

First Round Review

Trust is intangible, but foundational to nearly every part of company-building. We've assembled our top posts from leaders who have gotten particularly tactical with fostering trust on their teams.

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Make yourself "Redundant"

Ask Benny

Heavily rely on your team to make daily decisions in order to help you focus on the long-term strategy. The Illusion of Importance As product managers, especially those that had been engineers before, you can sometime feel insecure in your position and contribution. This feeling may be enhanced due to many people not actually understanding the role of product management.

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How Bad is Tech Use for Kids, Really?

Nir Eyal

It feels impossible to tell if the technology our kids use should be celebrated or feared. A few years ago I wrote a book, Hooked, about how technology can be used to change our habits. I intended the book to teach startups how to build healthy habits, but now I’m not so sure. With headlines […] The post How Bad is Tech Use for Kids, Really? appeared first on Nir and Far.

Books 111
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From hi to buy: 6 live chat etiquette tips for sales teams

Intercom, Inc.

Adding live chat to your funnel is a great way of generating more sales and targeting specific leads in a more effective way, ensuring the best experience possible for all involved. When it comes to conversing with leads over live chat, it is a very different experience compared to talking in person or even on the phone. No wonder many reps are daunted by the thought of putting live chat on their website.

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Use Cases for Apache Cassandra®

There’s a good reason why Apache Cassandra® is quickly becoming the NoSQL database of choice for organizations of all stripes. In this white paper, discover the key use cases that make Cassandra® such a compelling open source software – and learn the important pitfalls to avoid. From understanding its distributed architecture to unlocking its incredible power for industries like healthcare, finance, retail and more, experience how Cassandra® can transform your entire data operations.

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On the Current State of Product Management Tools

The Product Guy

Excerpts from our conversation with The Best Product Person of 2017, Melissa Perri. Watch now and see why she is counted amongst the ranks of the best in product management. More to Come. The Best Product Person (TBPP) is the leading international award honoring excellence in Product Management. Established in 2010, TBPP is awarded annually in association with The Product Guy and The Product Group.

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How JustGiving Crowdfunding Went From an Idea to £100m in Five Years

Mind the Product

JustGiving’s goal is to grow the world of giving, enabling more money to be raised for good causes through the use of technology. Initially JustGiving supported only registered charities on its website, but the founders’ vision was to support all good causes. In 2012, when I was working as part of the JustGiving team responsible for innovative products and disruptive business models, we decided to test how people could raise money for non-charitable good causes.

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Pricing Lessons from Working with 30+ Seed and Series A B2B Startups

First Round Review

As CEO of Entrepid Partners and First Round's Sales Expert in Residence, Gaffney works directly with founders and early sales teams to establish go-to-market strategies and growth plans. Here he shares his pricing principles and experiments so early-stage teams can generate foundational revenue.

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