Kicking off another year on Product Breaks
As we look ahead, here's a roundup of some of our favourite articles from 2023
Happy New Year! 🥳 I know we’re 9 days into 2024 but many of us are only just getting back into the swing of things this week. Remember all the discussions and decisions in December that we said we’d tackle in the new year? Well, that time is now. Send coffee!
We’re excited about kicking off another year on Product Breaks and bringing you more valuable content (and events!) If there are any topics you’d like us to cover, or if you fancy contributing to Product Breaks, let us know by commenting on this article.
This week, I wanted to look back at some of my favourite articles from last year - I’ve narrowed it down to 5, which was hard! In no particular order, here goes:
1. New Year, New Job? Here are some tips to help you build domain knowledge
There’s something about taking time to reflect at the start of a new year that means that people usually consider changing jobs in January. If you find yourself diving into a new product, job or sector, we have some tips to help you quickly build domain knowledge. In this article, Gala shares her top 5 tips including leveraging your team and really getting to know your target users.
Some tips to help build your domain knowledge
The natural curiosity of a Product Manager is probably what leads a lot of us down this career path. We love to know what, and why, and how. We spend our days asking the same questions to as many people as we can wrangle, trying to build a 360 foundation that lets us make tidy, informed decisions, helps us connect with our teams, our customers, our prod…
2. Are you doing product strategy all wrong?
We all know that vision statements and strategies are vital to ensuring alignment and driving decision making. Or are they…? Andy presents a differing opinion that perhaps these are a waste of time and effort. Definitely worth a read before you devise your next strategy.
What If You’ve Been Doing Product Strategy All Wrong?
Introduction If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Steve Maraboli Mission and vision statements have become part of conventional product wisdom. The consensus view is that they're valuable. We’re told product managers should be able to communicate them. We know a good product vision should be ambitious, inspiring and e…
3. Do it, even though it’s hard
Product managers who work on platform or internal products can often feel as though they’re on the un-sexy end of the spectrum. Rather than external customers, you’re building a product(s) for your colleague. You might find that while the product management principles are the same, they can be tougher to execute. Erin, a self-confessed recovering platform product manager, says you should do it even though it’s hard, and shares how building this muscle makes you a more effective PM.
Platform Product Breaks
Even in the best companies, where teams focus on user value streams, platform teams (and platform product managers!) are necessary. Platform teams are responsible for self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product. They are essential for a business unlocking awesome customer outcomes.
4. Focus on excellence
The nature of PM roles means that you’re often having to spin multiple plates. And although we’ve gotten used to this, and can even do this quite well, we should regularly pause and ask - is being busy preventing us from being excellent? Tim says “Generating ‘strategy’ ahead of the next committee meeting, rather than pondering, playing and noodling increases the chance that the wrong, generic path will be followed… This is bad for business, users and personal development.” In his article, he shares 6 ways to create space and protect yourself from distractions.
Plate spinners, jugglers and firefighters
It’s very common to take more on as we develop skills and competencies. Promotions typically lead to broader remits, or involvement in a wider variety of activities. While it’s obviously important that we grow - and sensible for organisations to leverage the resources available to them, getting the wrong balance between depth and breadth can stunt talen…
5. Psychological safety is key to successful teams
Teams who trust each other perform better than those that don’t, ultimately resulting in better outcomes. Psychological safety is a must-have to build high performing teams that build better products and as product managers, we’re well placed to improve this in our teams. I shared some of my personal experience, as well as 3 things you can do as a PM to promote psychological safety in your team.
A PM’s role in promoting psychological safety in their team
The nature of my role means that every few months my project team changes, and a new team means new team dynamics. You may already be familiar with the different activities you need to run when setting up a new team - defining your social contract, establishing ways of working, determining if you want to use scrum or kanban (
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