Whether you’re a facilitator or a business leader, here you’ll find resources, tools and how-to guides aimed at helping your teams — and your business objectives — achieve their potential.
3 common reasons product teams get stuck (and how to get them unstuck)
Often, a team’s inability to work productively is due to a lack of focus, lack of support, and/or lack of alignment. In this article, you'll learn why your teams are probably getting stuck, along with a solution that I’ve seen work time and time again for getting them out of the weeds and back on track.
How to name a product: From brainstorm to buzzworthy
Naming a new product isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be painful. It can be tempting to slap an acronym on it and call it a day, but taking time to come up with the perfect name is truly worth the effort. Here are my tips for picking a great product name, and a guide to get you get started on the naming process with your team.
A survival guide for Product Managers working with challenging stakeholders
In a perfect world, we'd have perfect professional chemistry with all of our colleagues. But alas, it's not a perfect world—not even close. Fortunately, even if there are certain stakeholders you mesh with less than others, it's almost always possible to overcome personality clash and find a way forward. Here are the tips I've found to be most helpful for working with, not against, your most difficult teammates.
The key to accelerating a project or idea when your team is stuck
When teams are stuck in the weeds it’s usually not because any one person failed to do their job, or because the group isn’t capable. It’s simply because the team doesn’t have the right tools to unlock the answers. This is why it’s so critical to bring in reinforcements when you’re having trouble accelerating a project or idea.
Why bad design = bad human experience
A lot of software is designed without consideration for the people who use it. (I know, it’s shocking.) Too often, we forget the power and potential impact we have on people’s daily lives when designing tools they’ll use every day. So, try some of these ideas out. Lead with the intention of doing meaningful work. Because a good design can mean a better day for someone at work and a better day can mean… everything.
Your team can do better
When it comes to action, the biggest barrier to product teams is often the team charged with making change in the first place. This doesn’t have to be the case. Your team can overcome and bring greatness (or at least bring something!) into the world.
Why “set it and forget it” never works for products
When you launch and observe how people interact with your product you can continuously make changes. The user responses will be influenced by what they want, need and expect. What they want, need and expect is influenced by the other things they interact with every day. With every beautifully designed experience that someone has, their expectations are elevated.