We are excited to welcome guest writer John Cutler to the LIKE.TG blog. John is a product coach with Amplitude, where he collaborates with internal teams, customers, prospects, and the broader product public. Product teams are no stranger to the ever-changing and continuous demands of consumers and executives alike. When you create and update a particular product, it’s important to make sure the product does “things” that people need it to do. A list of available features holds obvious value to a customer—you can see in one quick bulleted view what the product has to offer and how it will fit your needs. But are features truly the only beacon of light for high-impact product work? Do the constant feature requests (and the ongoing efforts to communicate progress on those requests) distract developers and product managers from being able to create a more sustainable and meaningful product? We asked those questions, and more, in a recent interview with expert panelists Abbie Kouzmanoff, product manager for Amplitude, and Jim Semick, veteran product manager and one of the founders of ProductPlan. What are the pitfalls of focusing myopically on features while creating and communicating roadmaps? How do you avoid feature-fixation, and instead use themes and “north stars” as the guiding light for creating long-term value not only for customers but for product teams as well? Features and Inertia Feature-based roadmaps have long been the norm of product development, they put product managers in the hot seat to “deliver” the roadmap “to plan.” While in many ways it makes sense to first answer the question of “what are we building, and in what order?” the key is balancing that need against the upside of taking a less prescriptive approach. Certainty and surface-level predictability come at a cost. Once the team has converged on a specific feature—or set of features—it can be difficult to change course. We become less likely to respond to new information, and we don’t work in ways that elicit new information. We all have difficulty counteracting inertia, confirmation bias, and escalation of commitment. For example, Jim shared a past experience where his team helped develop software in the property management industry that would help property managers move tenants into their apartments faster. They created a roadmap based on an idea about what they were going to build and all the features it would encompass. Unfortunately, they were overly optimistic and got stuck. It took a long time to deliver that first feature. With this feature-based roadmap viewpoint, it was very hard to shift priorities along the way. Alternatively, Jim noted, “Had we created a theme-based roadmap, we could have delivered value to customers a whole lot faster. We could have learned faster. We could have introduced features more iteratively to our customers, and it might have re-prioritized what we did.” It’s really important to be able to test the riskiest assumptions first before committing to specific features. Instead, Abbie recommends, it’s better to treat features as options and give yourself the time for iterative learning—testing out and learning what features will have the biggest impact and save time in the long run. The end game is outcomes, rather than outputs. You might have an idea for a great feature to build, but that feature doesn’t necessarily create a business outcome or solve a customer problem. And in the end, as Abbie asserts, “[A feature-based roadmap] doesn’t set you up for really evaluating yourself once that feature has actually gotten out there.” So what is the alternative? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '53ae44b5-ec4d-4ff8-9d1c-56626297bb4c', {}); Product Themes and North Stars Themes and the North Star framework can be used by themselves or in tandem to address the traps above. Importantly, both can still be used even if your roadmap is currently feature-based. The key goal is coherence and shared understanding. Themes With a theme, features connect to an overarching idea for that work. Themes are a great nudge to see the bigger picture, link to a particular strategy or companywide objective, and allow for stakeholder buy-in. You can create a theme-based roadmap in several ways. The important part is tying together your theme with certain features to illustrate the benefits. A theme does a couple of things. It helps you earn stakeholder buy-in because—ideally—it is tied to the objectives of the company, in addition to the outcomes that you want to create for customers. Talk with your stakeholders about themes first and come to a consensus together. Then you can begin to plug your features into that theme. It helps you stay strategically on track. Jim notes, “You’re going to get distracted. You’re going to get distracted by a loud customer. You’re going to get distracted by the next shiny object. Someone’s going to come to you with a fantastic idea, and that idea is often phrased in terms of a feature.” With a theme, you are less lured by flashy ideas because the feature inevitably requires alignment. That way, even if you get distracted by a fantastic idea, you can decide whether to put the effort into it if it doesn’t fall in line with the theme.” Think back to the property management feature-based roadmap example, had Jim and his team started with a theme, they would have created a more innovative product. “If our theme was about moving in renters 50% faster, we could have started to measure our progress against that. It’s a lesson that I learned along the way and one that I would encourage you to do.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '527dc6af-8860-436f-9ca6-ae2b71b0cc99', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); North Star Framework In contrast, a North Star Framework represents your product strategy with a primary (North Star) metric and a series of inputs. Together, this “tree” of metrics serves as an effective way of capturing assumptions, beliefs, and known causal relationships between different components and subcomponents of a product strategy. For example, Amplitude’s North Star, Weekly Learning Users (WLUs), has three inputs related to activating customers and encouraging users to create and share their insights. Each input is a key facet of their team-focused, learning-focused strategy. Zeroing in on the right North Star metric can be a bit of a challenge. However, it forces you to ask hard questions related to your product strategy. How can you tell if you’re on the right track? Here are the key characteristics of an effective North Star, according to Abbie: It focuses on customer value and the exchange of value. For example, daily active users (DAUs) don’t really tell you anything about the value that was exchanged. It represents your unique product strategy. It is not generic. It connects the customer value you are trying to create as a product team with the business impact that the executive team in your company ultimately cares about. Once you have a strong North Star in place, it has an exponential impact on decision-making. With WLUs as a guide and reminder, Abbie’s team was able to take a routine feature request (the ever-popular in B2B “Bulk Editing of Records”), and ask “How does this impact learning and WLUs?” By asking that question, they’re able to see past the surface request to understand the deeper impact on how teams create and share insights. Abbie explains, “It’s a tool to communicate and say, ‘Hey, we still want to solve this customer pain, but we all know that we’re working toward this metric. This alternative path will really get us to that metric faster.’” Themes & North Stars At a high level, both Themes and North Star Frameworks are tools for alignment and sensemaking. They are complementary. A team might use the North Star Framework to create alignment around a product strategy, and then attach Themes to North Star “inputs.” Themes are flexible and can be used to describe any number of dimensions related to the work. The job you’re hiring both to do is very similar: inspire aligned autonomy, encourage the best solutions and decisions, and foster a shared language. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {}); How to Get Started Wondering how to integrate themes and a framework like North Star Framework into your roadmapping process? Here’s where to start. Have lots of conversations, brainstorms, and “testing.” See if your proposed themes and/or North Star metric and inputs withstand extra scrutiny, like the “yeah buts” and “what ifs.” These tools will only be useful if people can actually use them, so they must be “usable,” even if that means a little less theoretically correct. Buy-in is one of the biggest hurdles to adopting a feature-less roadmap. Abbie and Jim recommend that your first goal be to establish themes alongside your entire team—not just the key product decision-makers. Get everyone from design to dev on board with your themes and see where the journey takes you! Above all, keep the “why” in mind. Don’t remove features from a roadmap just to scratch a dogmatic itch. The reason you do this—along with Themes and North Stars—is to inspire better decisions. This, in turn, delivers more value to your customers and leaves your team happier and more proud of their work. Check out the webinar to learn more about feature-less roadmapping. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); John Cutler shares more of his product leadership thoughts in Spotlights: John Semick “The most daring thing I’ve done is shut up and observed”, below.

The move towards product-led growth is on the rise, in part because potential customers increasingly prefer to experience a product or service first-hand before committing rather than read about (or be told by sales or marketing) the perceived value. Of course, customers heading straight for the product have a pretty significant impact on sales organizations. Growing Sales in a Product-Led Company Traditional Sales Models Let’s walk this back a bit. In a traditional sales model, prospects work directly with salespeople. But it’s sales folks who do the bulk of the talking. They assess what a prospect is looking for, what problems need to be solved, and the potential purchase’s overall context. They also tend to educate the prospect about a product’s features, functionality, and benefits. Sales act as a go-between between prospective customers and the product. Marketing-led Approach And in a marketing-led approach, prospects start their relationship with a product’s advertised perceived value. These values are strategically marketed in well-orchestrated campaigns. Still, they run a fairly high risk of creating a costly value gap with customers when the promise of perceived value doesn’t align with a customer’s real experience with the product. When this happens, relationships break down fast. Disappointed prospective customers lose trust. Sometimes they even walk away. “Statistically, 70% of online businesses fail due to a less than optimal usability. Users expect meaningful experiences that ‘show and don’t tell,’ with the products that they are going to buy.” Product-led Growth However, in a product-led model, prospects lead the charge. They take an intentional and active role in looking for a solution, exploring various options, researching, and ultimately experiencing the product first-hand before they buy. Experienced value seals the deal. And although prospects initiate and hold space for the conversation, it’s the product itself that does the bulk of the talking, for better or worse. But because prospects experience a product for themselves, see how it works, and eventually make their own decision whether to convert their trial to purchase or upgrade to a paid tier of service, the sales organization plays a less direct, different role in the overall sales process and ultimately in closing deals. Which Companies Are Following a PLG Model? What is Product-led Growth (PLG?) When done right, it can boil down to a value proposition that is simultaneously well-communicated and well-executed. In other words, you build a great product that delivers on its promise. OpenView Venture Partners The entity that first coined the term “product-led growth” describes PLG as follows: “Product led growth (PLG) is an end user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.” So who’s following a PLG approach to sales? Calendly is, for one. According to Oji Udezue, VP of Product and Design at Calendly: “Product-market fit is achieved when you have a product with a clear value proposition that resonates with customers whom you know how to reach and convert. In other words, build a great product that solves a real problem—and make sure you have a way to get it to the people who need it.” So who else? Expensify, Slack, SurveyMonkey, Grammarly, and Dropbox are just a few SaaS companies that use PLG as the main driver of acquisition, retention, and expansion. LIKE.TG’s Approach to Product-Led Sales Growth According to Jim Semick, co-founder and chief strategist at LIKE.TG, “we discovered really early on that [people] don’t want to have their hands held, especially by a human,” preferring instead to figure the product out for themselves and letting the product speak for itself. Semick attributes his own company’s organic growth within existing customer organizations to offering free viewer licenses, which has expanded exposure of LIKE.TG’s roadmaps and planning boards more globally across customer organizations. When the product leads the charge, there’s less hand-holding with potential customers. As a result, company overhead costs go down. The sky’s the limit on growth scalability—a wider top-of-funnel (i.e., customers enter your funnel earlier in their journey) and a rapid global scale (i.e., instead of onboarding new sales reps, you can ramp up the onboarding experience of customers). With product at the helm, customer acquisition costs also go down due to faster sales cycles, higher revenue per employee, and a better user experience. Growing Sales in a Product-Led Growth Company But how do you build and scale in an organization that is highly collaborative internally and hyper-focused on figuring out if our product can help its customers? Jeff Horn, VP of Sales at LIKE.TG, approaches building his product-led sales team this way: “I focus on finding empathetic, curious people.” Building a core group of like-minded people then influences and forges the culture of the rest of the sales team. “What’s important to me as a sales leader is to be empathetic and committed to ongoing learning and growth. In a sales org, I want loyalty, heart, and grit,” adding that a team embodying these characteristics will provide an excellent experience for customers. The LIKE.TG sales team is well known for its curiosity, drive, and, most important—its empathy-first mindset. “We get to know our customers,” continues Horn. “We recognize that we are in the same boat and can’t be profitable if our product doesn’t fit our customer’s needs. Revenue will come on the heels of an amazing product and a sales organization committed to figuring out the impact of the customer.” Best practices for Building a Product-Led Sales Team: Traditionally, sales team people ask: “Tell me about how you ranked against your quota. Stack rank yourself. What number are you?” Those questions are important, but you can find the answers on LinkedIn. Culture first, history of excellence second. At LIKE.TG, we never deviate. Start by hiring those who will lift others and help them improve. A person can be a top rep and still offer best practices to peers. And once you have a core group, it will attract others with similar character and focus. Be an architect of culture. If you aren’t intentional about defining culture, you’ll end up accepting the culture defined for you. A high-performing sales rep who doesn’t embody any characteristics of your culture lowers the bar and brings down the team’s entire culture. You don’t want a customer to churn, so don’t set up a pressure-driven process. Give the customer the time they need to make the right decision. We have a sales process that we follow. There’s a responsibility on both sides, as well as accountability with both sides. Doing what matters and creating a meaningful culture aligned with that belief are two non-negotiables at ProductPlan. Putting product first and placing a high value on heart, humility, and hustle are the building blocks of a successful PLG company. Other non-negotiables include team focus: empathy, commitment, grit, loyalty, humility. “Grit is important,” asserts Horn. How to Link Sales and Product to Solve User Pain To be successful, a PLG company must follow three fundamental steps: Understand its product’s value. Communicate the perceived value to prospects. Deliver on its promise. Easy, right? According to Intercom, provider of a business messaging tool that enables companies to communicate directly with customers in an online context, 40-60% of people who sign up for a free software trial use it once and never come back. Building a great product that delivers on its promise without a sales team to talk a prospective customer through the process must be approached thoughtfully by working with product managers to understand users and solve real end-user pain. Horn explains: “The interesting challenge is in a space like this, the potential client is using nothing more than a simple spreadsheet. How do we help that customer evaluate and understand the cost of not going with LIKE.TG—of continuing to work the way they are currently?” He adds, “The client has to be open and willing to examine their process. Where are the inefficiencies? What’s the cost? We can find the value gap. There’s a cost if you’re working late and you’re not with your kid. How do you assign a value to that?” Here are four tips to keep in mind to ensure that sales and product teams align in that goal: 1. Customer Centricity Product-led companies place the customer in the middle of every decision. Read 6 tips to keep customers front and center. 2. Communication Ongoing and consistent communication is essential, but it also needs a structural component. Regular communication between leaders, the front-line sales team, and the product team needs to be built in. “Product managers are expected to have a diverse set of skills that are considered soft and hard. Year after year, we’ve asked the most important skill in product management on a day-to-day basis? Communication skills always take the cake.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '35d36a84-b157-43a1-acb7-b972dcb1d1ad', {}); 3. United Teams Keep silos at bay by holding regular meetings. Create opportunities to have fun together (e.g., book club organized by the sales team to bring in customer service team members to get to know each other better). 4. Retention This is a big focus at LIKE.TG and other PLG companies because it shows that the product is becoming embedded. What Does Product-Led Forecasting Look Like? Forecasting sales in a product-led company can be challenging without traditional engagement with salespeople and traditional sales stages. Derek Skaletsky, the founder of Sherlock, writes: “The emergence of the self-serve, product-led model has turned much of the traditional software operation on its head — and it’s completely upended revenue forecasting. Traditional forecasting models are dependent on a salesperson’s interaction with a prospect. But a pure-play product-led model is designed to eliminate the sales interaction.” Product engagement plays a central role in product-led forecasting. Skaletsky continues: “In a true product-led motion, how a trial account is engaged with the product during a trial is the biggest determinant of their Likelihood to Convert. If they see value with your product, the more likely they are to pay for it.” Product managers need to understand that a PLG model changes the customer acquisition model. But whether or not a company is a PLG business shouldn’t change the focus. Building a great product is still the goal. Is product-led growth the right fit for your company? This blog post featuring Wes Bush of Product-Led Institute explores this question and how to shift to product-led growth.

On our blog we often discuss the challenges of being a product manager. One recurring theme is that although you are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of your products, you often do not have organizational authority over anyone. It’s a conundrum: Your job is to develop a consensus and execute your product’s strategic plan without the authority to tell anyone what to do. You need to bring together development, marketing, sales, and even your executives to make that plan a reality. This is why we frequently make the case that successful product management is largely a function of leadership — not management (at least in the sense of ordering and supervising). It’s also why my team here at LIKE.TG has written several posts, like this one, about the need for product managers to learn how to think strategically, communicate persuasively, evangelize for their products, and develop other important soft skills. Tweet This: “Product management is largely a function of leadership — not management.” But what happens when the product management challenge you face is that you have poor strategic direction to begin with? In other words, what if you’re simply handed an ever-changing strategy and given responsibility for turning it into a successful product? Worse, what if you know that the product strategy is flawed or poorly conceived? This happens all too often. And it happened to a product manager who attended a recent webinar on thought leadership that I presented for Pragmatic Marketing. I’ve reproduced a portion of the message here. Then I’ll summarize the advice I gave him, because I think it could prove useful for you, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Hi Jim, I have a question about working with a poor product strategy for a just launched product. Our ex-CXO developed the product strategy. Since his departure, the executive team doesn’t have the resources or energy to fix the problems he left, and I find it difficult to push out the releases and spend time on defining a new product strategy. Unsurprisingly, there has been weak adoption of the product by the market and few new users. How do you deal with being handed a poor product strategy where the targeted customer segment isn’t clear, not enough time was spent learning about the potential users, and your executives don’t want to stop product development and do customer development in order to hone in on a specific segment, learn more about pain points and get super clear of value add? How You Can Get Stuck with a Poor Product Strategy As I told this attendee, this is an excellent question, because it summarizes so many of the challenges product managers and product owners face when their company’s ideas and assumptions don’t match reality. Here are the challenges — every one of them a common problem, facing many companies, particularly startups — that I spotted in his question. Software companies want to deliver new features. This is understandable because it shows progress. It’s also an easy metric to focus on and can feel like an easy win. “Look! We’re releasing new features to the market!” The more important question, though, is whether any of these new features will move the needle for the company in terms of user adoption, opening new markets, customer delight, and positive public reviews. Executives work on assumptions — not always grounded in fact. Another common product management challenge, clearly evident from this attendee’s message, is that often a startup’s executive team will be working off of their own assumptions about their market, their product, their competitors and their target customers. This, too, is understandable. After all, the executives were responsible for getting the company off the ground, and as a result, they have probably developed a bias in favor of their own opinions. At the attendee’s company, the previous product lead was clearly operating on his own assumptions. But as the product release revealed, he likely didn’t subject those assumptions to testing and verification before building them into his strategy. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {}); Growing companies often feel the need to keep their developers busy. The note in this message about the executive team not wanting to stop product development to focus on strategy highlights another common product management challenge. Often a management team or a company’s investor will equate a development team being busy — being “productive” — with the company making progress. Again, that’s understandable from the standpoint that the company is paying for development resources, and the perception is that those resources will be sitting idle while the product team interviews customers, studies the market, and conducts other “fuzzy” tasks. It certainly isn’t as easy to measure as hammering out code. Tweet This: “Focusing on strategy is far more valuable than just keeping the dev team busy.” But as smart product owners like this attendee understand, focusing on strategy is far more valuable than keeping a development team busy on the wrong things. Product owners can become information silos. One final problem that this attendee’s message highlighted is that often a company’s product owner — whether a product manager, VP, or founder — can become the organization’s perceived source of knowledge about the product, market, competitive landscape, and customer personas. This is obviously a danger. If the rest of the product team has little to no input in developing the product strategy, the departure of one key individual can leave the company struggling to figure out all of the learnings and input that went into building that strategy. The good news, as I told this attendee, is that a product owner can indeed improve upon a flawed or poorly conceived product strategy. Here are the suggestions I offered to him. How to Fix a Poor Product Strategy 1. Assign a product owner (or team) to drive the strategy. One key component to creating a viable product strategy is to assign a responsible person or team to the task. In other words, developing the product strategy needs to be a clearly defined role in the company. If it becomes an informal, widely distributed task that everyone has a hand in crafting, your product strategy likely will be watered down. Ideally, this will be a product manager, as I suggested to the attendee. But it could also be another product owner or even a small dedicated group of product team members. For more on developing your product strategy, watch our webinar: 2. The product strategist must then bring evidence supporting these strategic initiatives. If you want to improve a weak product strategy, you must first identify a few of the major strategic initiatives that will support your vision. These initiatives should emerge after working closely with customers (end-users, economic buyers at your customers’ organizations, etc.) to determine the problems they’re facing and how your product can solve those problems. From there, you will be able to present real evidence to your stakeholders that these strategic initiatives support solutions that your customers need and are willing to pay for. This means shifting the focus of your efforts from developing more product features to performing customer development — getting out there and talking with a cross-section of your customers and potential customers. What I suggested to my attendee, and what I’d also invite your team to do, would be to spend time on the road visiting with customers to identify the ideal segment, and to settle on a few of the most compelling problems to solve for that segment. Tweet This: “Handed a poor product strategy? Shift the focus back to customer development.” A related part of your research here, of course, would be to validate that your target customers would be willing to buy your solution if it were to solve these major problems for their companies. 3. The product strategist should get company buy-in to shift focus temporarily from project management to crafting the new strategy. Through customer development, you can prioritize your strategic initiatives. You can use a variety of methods to prioritize before developing your visual product roadmap. This roadmap will serve as your high-level blueprint for implementing your product strategy. You and your team will need to step back temporarily from a focus on your backlog. Instead, you will need to focus on customer problems, describing how your product will help solve those problems and putting this into a strategic plan. [Free book] Backlog Refinement: How to Prioritize What Matters ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'ba6d6ffb-c21a-41c0-8f7e-7f79e553dae1', {}); As part of this process, you will need to communicate this plan to your executive team to earn their buy-in. If you work at a smaller company you might also need to offload some of your day-to-day project management responsibilities so that you can focus on strategy. This might be more challenging, and you might receive pushback. But if you’re going to avoid the problem my attendee faced — releasing an unsuccessful product because you were forced to work from a poor strategy — it will be worth convincing your stakeholders to give you this strategy time. It will pay big dividends on release day and beyond. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Have other ideas for handling a flawed product strategy? Please share them with us in the comments section.

A few years ago the UK government’s publicly available online information was spread out across hundreds of individual and disconnected websites. So the Government Digital Service (GDS), a department within UK’s Cabinet Office, set out to consolidate this information and make accessing it easier for the nation’s citizens and interested readers around the world. The result was GOV.UK, a single point of online access to UK government information. This online hub, which receives 12 million visitors every week, describes itself as “the best place to find government services and information… simpler, clearer, faster” and has given itself the ongoing goal of “making government work for users.” I spoke recently with Neil Williams, a founding member of GOV.UK’s product team and now head of the 140-employee GOV.UK team within GDS. We discussed Neil’s groundbreaking 2016 decision to help make the platform even more transparent and accountable by releasing a publicly available product roadmap. Neil’s product management approach is fascinating and offers, I believe, some valuable insights for product managers in both the public and private sectors. Jim Semick: You didn’t start out with a product roadmap for the GOV.UK platform. What was the catalyst that caused you to create one to map out and share your strategic vision for the website? Neil Williams: For a long time during the development of the GOV.UK website, we didn’t believe we needed a roadmap because we were really just in ‘skirmish’ mode. We wanted to build something new that could replace all the existing government sites. Plus, in the early stages we were a small group. 14 people working very closely together on an alpha product. I think what moved me to see the need for a roadmap was actually twofold. First, there was the increasing size and complexity of this thing we were creating. GOV.UK became much bigger and more complex. Our team eventually grew by 10x, from that initial 14 to a team of 140 that I manage today. And our stakeholders became more numerous with more than 330 government organizations publishing to the web via our platform. As we grew more mature, and as groups began to work on different initiatives for the platform in parallel, we definitely needed a roadmap to document, track and share all of our plans and objectives and make sure we were all pulling in the same direction. At the same time, it’s important to understand that a central part of the culture at GDS is transparency. You can see it on the posters in our offices and the stickers on our laptops: ‘Make things open, it makes things better.’ So the second reason we moved to a roadmap is that it just made sense to create an ongoing, open source of information where our colleagues and (later) the general public could come and see what we were working on at GOV.UK. JS: That’s a great lead-in to my second question. Why you chose to make your GOV.UK product roadmap available to the public. Indeed, today anyone can view the roadmap at your Inside GOV.UK blog. This is a relatively uncommon move for product managers. What did you see as the benefit of a public roadmap? Neil Williams: For most of my professional life now I’ve been a member of the civil service, and honesty is enshrined in our values. That matters a great deal to me and an ongoing theme in my career has been to help create more openness and transparency within government. For example, many years ago I launched the first-ever blog by a UK Cabinet Minister and soon after became one of a handful of civil servants who started blogging about their work in the late 2000s. I’ve gone on to spend a lot of my career pushing departments within the UK government to be more open and engaging with the public, using the culture and tools of the internet. Within GDS, I was pushing against an open door. We were set up as a new bit of the civil service with the express intent of being a strong center of digital culture and expertise – so all employees at the Government Digital Service blog about our work and anyone can check in with what we’re building and planning by visiting our public blogs, be that the main GDS blog or the blog from a given team – like Inside GOV.UK. As GDS’s most mature product, GOV.UK was the first to start roadmapping across multiple teams and was first to go public with our roadmap – but the precedent of openness was already there (we code in the open, many of our backlogs are open, and like I said we blog by default). And – most importantly – publicly posting our roadmap is perfectly aligned with the GDS mission, which is to make government work more efficiently for our citizens. You have to keep in mind that we are a public agency, funded by taxpayers rather than revenue from customers. Unlike products in the private sector, we aren’t driven by sales figures, active users, conversions or profit-and-loss. Our users are the taxpayers who fund us, which makes them our most important stakeholders. Making government services better to meet their needs is our entire reason for existing. So as far as I’m concerned, we have to make this information readily available to the public – it’s a moral issue, as I see it, for us to be as transparent as possible to the users the website is there to serve about what we’re working on, and listen to their feedback. JS: Okay, so that’s a great explanation of how a public roadmap benefits GOV.UK’s end users and other interested parties. Does making the roadmap public also provide benefits for you and your own team? Neil Williams: Absolutely. It keeps us on our toes to have public oversight of what we’re doing. Saying publicly what we think we’re going to do means we’re held to account, and if we get delayed for any reason we have to be ready to explain why. That’s good discipline, it keeps us honest. It also keeps us focused. Everyone is watching — or at least can watch — and so any delay or change of plan is visible. A second and related benefit I see in making our roadmap public is that we receive user feedback on it. The simple act of posting the roadmap online generates constructive challenge and valuable ideas from our government colleagues, and sometimes the public. It also has the effect of heightening interest in GOV.UK and what’s coming next for the platform – including for prospective employees, who we obviously want to be excited about the work coming up here so they choose to come and join our team. And, most simply, publishing the roadmap is far and away the most efficient way for us to keep all of our government colleagues around the country up-to-date on the progress of our platform. We have more than 3,000 admin users across the 330 organizations that make up the central UK government, and they are very widely distributed, which makes it difficult and costly to reach all of our stakeholders with every update. Maintaining a public roadmap online, then, is just a more efficient way of communicating the ongoing plans and objectives of GOV.UK with everyone in the government. JS: And finally, may I ask you about your experience using LIKE.TG to create your GOV.UK roadmap? Why did you choose our roadmap software and how has it worked for you? Neil Williams: My first approach to building the GOV.UK roadmap was to use a static design tool and then output a PDF to share with my team and stakeholders. I published this roadmap monthly. This was okay as far as it went. But it was laborious, and too static – each monthly issue was outdated within a few days after publishing because details were always changing. So we needed something more interactive and collaborative, easier to update and share. Then I moved to an online collaboration tool, which served our needs perfectly while we were still completing the initial build and working on a small number of concurrent goals. But we outgrew that at the start of this financial year (April) when we started to need to show multiple streams of work, which teams were working on which things,interdependencies and so on. The tool we were using was great for Kanban boards but wasn’t designed specifically for product roadmap creation, so it didn’t have the ability to allow me to show, for example, the same roadmap at the different levels of detail depending on the audience — such as the feature-level stuff, the group-level objectives, and the more strategic-level vision. LIKE.TG allowed me to tell the GOV.UK story, setting out the narrative of what we’re doing next, with the right level of details for different audiences. And it made it easy to get it all set up very quickly compared to some of the other tools I tried. Plus of course it has an option to share the roadmap via a hosted URL, which was top of the selection criteria for me! It’s working out well for us so far – and I’d encourage product teams everywhere to try going public with their roadmaps, what’s the worst that can happen?

Product leaders don’t often get many chances for hiring product team members. It’s not overstating things to label bringing on new talent as critically important. Additions to the product team must ramp up quickly. Then they are entrusted with varying levels of authority and autonomy to add value and allow the organization to scale. There’s no perfect resume recipe or qualifying exam for product types. So hiring managers must assess candidates based on a few interactions, a curriculum vitae, and some reference checks. That leads to some big bets based on incomplete information. So, how can a product leader make sure they’re onboarding new hires with a good chance of success? Criteria for Hiring Product People During Each Stage of Interviewing Here are some ways I vet product management candidates to weed out poor fits and spot the diamonds in the rough. Stage 1: Reviewing the applications A candidate’s resume will always tell you a lot about what they’ve done. But I’m just as interested in HOW they did it and their overall approach versus a long list of accomplishments. This starts with the language they use in their resume. How did they participate in projects? Did they “run” a project or “collaborate” on it? Was the emphasis on completing something or its actual impact? Just like a product roadmap shouldn’t simply be a list of to-do items, I’m looking for outcomes and objectives in this context. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '57ff7e42-ccfa-4d9e-b5be-8a0f6ba69363', {}); Are they passionate? When hiring product team members I’m also looking for adjectives and verbs that convey patience, curiosity, and a humble style. I want a sense of the methods and tactics they employed to achieve those goals, not just that they ticked the box. How do they measure success? Similarly, the impact should be measured in more than dollars and cents. While it’s great that the product made a few million bucks, what I care about more is how many problems it solved. How many customers are satisfied because of specific decisions and actions made by the applicant? I’ll take a high Net Promoter Score over a short-term revenue spike any day of the week. Are they team players? I also want to hire team players. Look if their resume emphasizes all independent decisions made versus the processes they used to solicit feedback and garner stakeholder buy-in. If this is the case, it could be a sign they boss people around and don’t listen to opinions or leverage data-driven decision-making. Do they commit? One red flag for me is frequent job-hopping. It can mean they didn’t care about their customers, weren’t performing well, and had to leave, or they didn’t do their homework ahead of time and signed on for something that wasn’t sustainable. While sometimes things don’t work out or a new opportunity springs up, you have to jump on it. If it’s a trend, then my “spidey sense” starts tingling. But it’s something I’m definitely going to dig into if they make it to the interviewing stage. Stage 2: The phone screen Before going through the hassle of bringing a candidate with a promising resume in for an in-person session, a phone screen can fill in many gaps. This opportunity can give you a better indication of whether they’re worth the time and energy. I want to be sure they have enough of the necessary skills on day one to add value quickly. I have a checklist of things I want to make sure they’ve done before and can do for me. Do they have soft skills? This spans from the tactical to the interpersonal. Soft skills are just as essential as the ability to develop a persona or comprehend new technology. I’m looking for best practices they rely on, anecdotes from previous experiences, and other signs that they’re true practitioners. How much did they pay attention? It’s also an opportunity to see if they’ve fully digested the job description. I want them to prove that they understand the situation and assess the problems I’m looking for them to solve. Not regurgitation, but the ability to listen, digest, and translate into something actionable. I want to come away with a sense of who they are, how they work with others, and whether they’re empathetic and a good listener. If they can’t show me that over the phone and forge a connection, they won’t be able to do it with customers who don’t have as much invested in the conversation. Stage 3: During the interview Test their abilities. Once I finally get a chance to be in the same room with a candidate (or at least in the same video call), I rely on a go-to set of topics to ask them about to get a well-rounded picture of the potential hire before me. Then I ask them to do some of the things they’ll have to do on the job. Write a spec, reply to a customer complaint, that sort of thing.It’s a quick way to assess their ability to think on their feet and do the day-to-day work of a product manager. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'a6df8971-315b-4e8c-ad02-5e133239bfda', {}); What part of the job do they care about? I’m asking questions to uncover what they care about and where their passion lies. What parts of the job excite them? Is it the customer interactions and interviews, solving problems and collaboration, or finding valuable use cases for new technologies? Are they quick on their feet? Another test is whether or not they can think on their feet. I’ll frequently change subjects and see if they can keep up. This isn’t to trick them but rather to see if they’re up for the multitasking onslaught of context-switching that product management demands. What do they do outside of work? I also like to consider the “full human being” I’m talking to and not just the product professional side of their personality. I ask them what they like to do for fun and how they de-stress, which is important since product management can be pretty demanding and all-consuming. What do they care about? Finally, I want them to articulate what it is about the role that appeals to them. Why do they think they’ll like the job, and what about the company and position interests to them. This may seem obvious, but what they focus on and articulate can be insightful. For example, a generic response indicates they may not be that invested in the opportunity. What do they ask? But what I ask is only half of it. The other part is seeing which questions they ask me. I’m looking for candidates that have an innate curiosity. If that doesn’t emerge during these sessions, it’s unlikely I’ll move forward. I’m actively hoping they’ll surprise me and take me out of my comfort zone. Questions I can’t answer or haven’t even thought of indicating they’re engaged and might bring a fresh new perspective to the team. And it’s all the better when they ask me a personal (yet appropriate) question. This shows they can connect on a human-to-human level and are trying to get a better feel for what it will be like to work for/with me. Not to mention it’s a good proxy for how they’ll fare conducting customer interviews. Do they think of the big picture? While the hiring process is all about filling a specific open role at a particular moment in time, we all know that situations change over time. Serious professionals aren’t only concerned about their next job, but the one that comes after that. That’s why I always touch on their career path during our interactions. I explain the current role, how it fits into the overall organization, and that even though they may not have direct reports, it doesn’t mean they’re not a senior team member. I also don’t base compensation on whether they’re managing other folks. The goal is product excellence and customer delight, not empire-building. Beyond that, I touch on where they could grow within the organization. On how this job will prepare them for future opportunities beyond this company. Although we’d love our product hires to stick around for decades, I’m not naive about how mobility plays into career development and am open about how this job positions them for long-term success. Of course, what I’m really looking for is the candidates to ask these questions as well. While bringing this topic up might make them a little uncomfortable, I also don’t want product people with no ambition or drive. As long as they’re not too aggressive on this front, I welcome them to consider their own future as they consider the job at hand. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '8bd83652-2868-48a8-9b9c-ebb8e0b9c945', {}); A Good Use of Everyone’s Time When hiring product team members reviewing, screening, and interviewing potential fits takes a while if you’re doing it right. But if a lengthier process yields better fits for the organization that is likely to stick around for a while, it’s well worth the extra effort. A bad hire is a sunk cost, but it’s also a missed opportunity. The months wasted onboarding them, the negative customer experiences, and the problems that didn’t get solved are far costlier than taking more time to bring the right person in the first time around. The best candidates will share your team’s values, complement the staff already in place, and augment the group’s overall capabilities. It’s one of the few times when being extra picky and diligent is worth a potential delay. Watch our webinar, Hiring and Growing a Successful Product Team, to see what product leaders look for when hiring new team members:

I’ll admit it, in the past, I’ve wrestled with needing to control uncertainty. For years I thoroughly planned most everything and felt the need to know the eventual outcome of decisions. I had expectations, and if the expectations weren’t met, I was disappointed. Whether it was a product I managed or a vacation I took, I wanted to control the inevitable uncertainty. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. As a result, I found myself with a lingering sense that things were out of control. As a product manager, the uncertainty manifested in really detailed and lengthy Product Requirements Documents. I know I’m not the only product manager with this challenge. Over the years, I’ve realized through observation and personal experience that the most successful and happy people are those who are willing to embrace uncertainty. They are the ones who make “risky” decisions without knowing 100% of the information. It’s especially true for product managers, entrepreneurs, and others who want to launch products or ideas. Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {}); I’m much better now about letting things unfold without needing to know how the plan eventually will materialize. And yes, I get the irony that I’m the co-founder of LIKE.TG, software that helps product managers visualize their plan. More on that later. The Psychology of Uncertainty The fear we all feel from uncertainty – and the feeling that we can control it – can cloud our thinking. After all, research consistently shows that humans are wired for seeking comfort, safety, and loss aversion. Our inner cave-person wants to avoid getting eaten by the tiger. A couple of years ago, our team read the fantastic book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics. His research demonstrated that we choose options to avoid loss. We don’t behave logically when presented with the same choice framed in different ways. In one example from the book, a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000 is considered more dangerous than a disease that kills 24.14% of the population. In studies, we believe the first disease to be more threatening even though the actual risk is significantly less than the alternative. We also tend to overestimate our ability to control events – and this feeling that we can control a situation is an illusion. If we can stop for a moment and change our thinking that we’re not in as much control as we think, and surrender to it, we’re more likely to succeed because we’re open to change and opportunities we wouldn’t see otherwise. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '6291e080-7d48-43d6-99df-4a101a0c4487', {}); I’m not saying that we never need to plan. I think two ways of living can co-exist – it’s possible to have outcomes-based goals and, at the same time, take decisive action without knowing the exact path with certainty. And I’ll add that it’s a lot more fun to work once I learned to live with the uncertainty. Lessons for Product Managers I think there are many lessons for product managers in this philosophy. Here are a few thoughts for how product managers – especially those in an agile development environment – can embrace uncertainty and live with the inevitable discomfort. Hopefully, these ideas will help you focus on what matters. Make decisions based on outcomes One way to live with uncertainty is to relax about the exact plan, and instead make decisions based on an outcome-driven goal. For example, rather than creating a list of arbitrary and disconnected features for your product, instead, focus on what your desired outcome is for customers – what is the goal you want them to achieve? By focusing on an outcome-driven roadmap, you (and your team) have room to think about new possibilities, about different ways of achieving the goal. Focus on today (and maybe a few sprints out) There’s an expectation of product managers to spell out the vision for our products and what the product looks like one or two years down the road. But it’s problematic if this planning is too detailed. One or two years out any plan is only a fantasy. There’s no way things will go exactly to plan, and the goalpost will probably change along the way. You’ll never achieve perfection. This detailed planning, unfortunately, sets an expectation in your head (and your stakeholders’ heads) that simply won’t come true. It sets up everyone for disappointment. My advice: Don’t plan too far ahead. Focus on the big picture vision in broad terms. Then, focus on what is in your control today to meet that vision. For your product planning, a few sprints out are far enough. Get comfortable with the discomfort Stop spending as much time dwelling on problems at work and what-if thinking. You’re causing stress, which will affect you in all areas of your life. Spend more time working to solve the problems your customers are facing. Those are the fun problems. For all the worst-case-scenario planners out there… cut the negative thinking. Why worry about all the endless gloomy scenarios that your (fearful) mind can conjure up? Plus, I believe that if you expect the worst, you’ll put yourself in a position of being close-minded to recognize new options and opportunities. I’m not saying that you should avoid realistic contingency planning, but truly, the five percent chance of a worst-case-scenario is unlikely to unfold. Spend your brainpower toward an optimistic outcome. Positive thinking really does affect. And your nights will be more restful. Embrace confrontation Another tip: Embrace confrontation. Stop avoiding the conversations you know you need to be having. I’m not saying to pick fights, but rather address conversations directly. Rather than avoiding conflict, micromanaging, or trying to prove someone wrong (controlling), have an honest upfront conversation about the situation. Incorporate stress reduction daily The last bit of advice on another way I’ve found to embrace uncertainty at work and in life: give myself time for exercise and other mindfulness practices daily. I’m finding that when I prioritize this above other items, the rest of my day (life?) is happier, even when I get thrown a curveball I hadn’t expected. Takeaway In the end, will you be a product manager who embraces uncertainty or one who plays it safe and avoids unpredictability? While it’s not a guarantee of success, I think I know which one stands a better chance. Read the Agile Product Manager's Guide to Building Better Roadmaps hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'f7b97c22-2e32-45da-99f7-1ddcb66e57d3', {});

I’ll admit it, in the past, I’ve wrestled with needing to control uncertainty. For years I thoroughly planned most everything and felt the need to know the eventual outcome of decisions. I had expectations, and if the expectations weren’t met, I was disappointed. Whether it was a product I managed or a vacation I took, I wanted to control the inevitable uncertainty. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. As a result, I found myself with a lingering sense that things were out of control. As a product manager, the uncertainty manifested in really detailed and lengthy Product Requirements Documents. I know I’m not the only product manager with this challenge. Over the years, I’ve realized through observation and personal experience that the most successful and happy people are those who are willing to embrace uncertainty. They are the ones who make “risky” decisions without knowing 100% of the information. It’s especially true for product managers, entrepreneurs, and others who want to launch products or ideas. Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {}); I’m much better now about letting things unfold without needing to know how the plan eventually will materialize. And yes, I get the irony that I’m the co-founder of LIKE.TG, software that helps product managers visualize their plan. More on that later. The Psychology of Uncertainty The fear we all feel from uncertainty – and the feeling that we can control it – can cloud our thinking. After all, research consistently shows that humans are wired for seeking comfort, safety, and loss aversion. Our inner cave-person wants to avoid getting eaten by the tiger. A couple of years ago, our team read the fantastic book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics. His research demonstrated that we choose options to avoid loss. We don’t behave logically when presented with the same choice framed in different ways. In one example from the book, a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000 is considered more dangerous than a disease that kills 24.14% of the population. In studies, we believe the first disease to be more threatening even though the actual risk is significantly less than the alternative. We also tend to overestimate our ability to control events – and this feeling that we can control a situation is an illusion. If we can stop for a moment and change our thinking that we’re not in as much control as we think, and surrender to it, we’re more likely to succeed because we’re open to change and opportunities we wouldn’t see otherwise. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '6291e080-7d48-43d6-99df-4a101a0c4487', {}); I’m not saying that we never need to plan. I think two ways of living can co-exist – it’s possible to have outcomes-based goals and, at the same time, take decisive action without knowing the exact path with certainty. And I’ll add that it’s a lot more fun to work once I learned to live with the uncertainty. Lessons for Product Managers I think there are many lessons for product managers in this philosophy. Here are a few thoughts for how product managers – especially those in an agile development environment – can embrace uncertainty and live with the inevitable discomfort. Hopefully, these ideas will help you focus on what matters. Make decisions based on outcomes One way to live with uncertainty is to relax about the exact plan, and instead make decisions based on an outcome-driven goal. For example, rather than creating a list of arbitrary and disconnected features for your product, instead, focus on what your desired outcome is for customers – what is the goal you want them to achieve? By focusing on an outcome-driven roadmap, you (and your team) have room to think about new possibilities, about different ways of achieving the goal. Focus on today (and maybe a few sprints out) There’s an expectation of product managers to spell out the vision for our products and what the product looks like one or two years down the road. But it’s problematic if this planning is too detailed. One or two years out any plan is only a fantasy. There’s no way things will go exactly to plan, and the goalpost will probably change along the way. You’ll never achieve perfection. This detailed planning, unfortunately, sets an expectation in your head (and your stakeholders’ heads) that simply won’t come true. It sets up everyone for disappointment. My advice: Don’t plan too far ahead. Focus on the big picture vision in broad terms. Then, focus on what is in your control today to meet that vision. For your product planning, a few sprints out are far enough. Get comfortable with the discomfort Stop spending as much time dwelling on problems at work and what-if thinking. You’re causing stress, which will affect you in all areas of your life. Spend more time working to solve the problems your customers are facing. Those are the fun problems. For all the worst-case-scenario planners out there… cut the negative thinking. Why worry about all the endless gloomy scenarios that your (fearful) mind can conjure up? Plus, I believe that if you expect the worst, you’ll put yourself in a position of being close-minded to recognize new options and opportunities. I’m not saying that you should avoid realistic contingency planning, but truly, the five percent chance of a worst-case-scenario is unlikely to unfold. Spend your brainpower toward an optimistic outcome. Positive thinking really does affect. And your nights will be more restful. Embrace confrontation Another tip: Embrace confrontation. Stop avoiding the conversations you know you need to be having. I’m not saying to pick fights, but rather address conversations directly. Rather than avoiding conflict, micromanaging, or trying to prove someone wrong (controlling), have an honest upfront conversation about the situation. Incorporate stress reduction daily The last bit of advice on another way I’ve found to embrace uncertainty at work and in life: give myself time for exercise and other mindfulness practices daily. I’m finding that when I prioritize this above other items, the rest of my day (life?) is happier, even when I get thrown a curveball I hadn’t expected. Takeaway In the end, will you be a product manager who embraces uncertainty or one who plays it safe and avoids unpredictability? While it’s not a guarantee of success, I think I know which one stands a better chance. Read the Agile Product Manager's Guide to Building Better Roadmaps hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'f7b97c22-2e32-45da-99f7-1ddcb66e57d3', {});

No matter how far into your career you might be, you’re never too old for imposter syndrome to make an appearance. Imposter syndrome is a feeling of inadequacy that persists despite the evident success, according to Harvard Business Review. ‘Imposters’ suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraud that override their feelings of success or external proof of their competence. Sound familiar? So, to level the playing field. Even after years into my career as a product leader and founder, every so often, I too suffer from feeling like an imposter. We sometimes need to make decisions with imperfect information. Despite years of experience in this field, it still feels like I am taking risks as I lead LIKE.TG into the unknown. For example, with a recent project, the data wasn’t playing out the way we expected. We had to decide whether to adjust or stand pat, with no clear “right” answer in front of us. As an expert, I should know how to do all this. However, at that moment, I felt like an imposter. However, I’m not — and neither are you. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '57ff7e42-ccfa-4d9e-b5be-8a0f6ba69363', {}); Why Product Managers are More Susceptible to Imposter Syndrome Product managers (PM) are particularly vulnerable to experiencing imposter syndrome. The nature of our profession is nebulous. There a few reasons why product managers might be more susceptible to the feeling. First, no one gets a degree in “product management.” You don’t train for it. There’s no set path to becoming one. There also isn’t a universal definition of success for product managers. With no pedigree or success validation, it’s natural to feel like an imposter. Colleagues also look to their product managers to have all the answers. Of course, we don’t have them all—nobody does. But we’re expected to know just enough about everything that we can speak intelligently and have an opinion on nearly every subject. It’s important for our role. This creates very high expectations, which plant the seeds of doubt in our minds. Product managers also wield power in their organization, even if it’s not always reflected in the org chart. We have an awesome job to decide what’s in and what’s out. Others have input, but view us as the gatekeeper. Unfortunately, that puts a target for blame if things don’t succeed. This fear of letting people down compounds, so we start to second-guess ourselves. With the weight of the product on our shoulders, we’re the ones to say “no” to various stakeholders. We’ll say no to customer ideas or inform the CEO that their pet project won’t make it onto the roadmap. All while wondering who decided we’re qualified to make that call? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); How I Overcame Imposter Syndrome (and How You Can Too) There’s no magic bullet, but I have found a few things that helped me get over the hump. 1. Humanize your counterparts Everyone is in the same boat. We’re all human and we all have fears that we have to push through. That means regardless of how much success or failures our peers have had, they’re still putting on their socks one at a time. By humanizing your counterparts, it takes away the fear and intimidation that people are inherently better or more qualified to do your job. 2. Opportunity always comes again Once it’s done, it’s done. Once a decision is made and acted on, then that ship has sailed. If it works out, great! If it doesn’t work out, there will be another chance to make another decision again. At that point, I’ll have learned from this mistake and be even better. There’s always tomorrow. 3. Nobody knows everything As disheartening as it is to realize, I will never have all the answers. Nobody knows everything. We’re all always operating with an incomplete data set and no guarantees. That’s not a defense to solely trust our gut and wing it. However, it does mean you need to move forward and believe that you’ve done enough homework to make an educated decision. Inaction due to uncertainty doesn’t breed innovation. 4. Embrace collaboration Embrace collaboration. The lone wolf product visionary that trusts no one, issues proclamation, and finds success is exceedingly rare. Most successful PMs learn fast that leveraging the knowledge, experience, and instincts of others makes things a lot easier. Not only are you operating with more information, but the decisions you make aren’t yours alone. Moreover, when others are involved in the process, they’re less likely to be resistant to the final decision. 5. Use data to make decisions Metrics matter. You can use data to make decisions and convince others to get on board. This is a valuable tool for PMs. Not everyone is going to trust you. They might have their preconceptions and biases that you’ll be challenged to sway. However, with an argument based on facts instead of feelings, it’s much easier to build consensus, not to mention instilling confidence that you’re on the right path. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {}); 6. Vulnerability shows you have humility Honesty is the best policy. I prefer to be the person that is open and has good relationships with people versus the one who bulldozes their way through. No one likes a bully or a know-it-all. Don’t be afraid to tell people you’re not positive about something or are still seeking input from others. Others will appreciate if you expose your vulnerability, it shows you have humility. What I’ve Learned from Overcoming Imposter Syndrome as a Product Manager Everyone’s trying to figure it out, just like you. Once you realize and accept this, you can be much more empathetic to others. That forgiveness is contagious, and I’m certain will circle back to you. The only way is to outgrow your doubts. It doesn’t happen overnight. But over time, as you have more successes under your belt and more positive experiences in your rearview, you begin feeling like you belong. Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {}); It’s hard to do. But, try to stop caring about what other people think. When you’re confident in your abilities, you know you’re doing good work, and are treating people well then it becomes second nature. Now with all that free time you’ve created for yourself, you can do the fun stuff. You don’t need that kind of stress. I’ve met plenty of older, successful people that are still racked with worry. Despite all they’ve accomplished, they can’t be content and convinced of their abilities. To them I say, “Relax, you’ve made it this far, and it wasn’t by accident.” Typically, this industry doesn’t put up with underperformers, so if you’ve made progress in your career, then you’re doing something right. Let your guard down. People can tell when you’re forcing it, so don’t bother putting on airs. You are who you are, and you’ll do a good job or you won’t. Have humility, take the time to figure things out based on the input of others, and have faith that you’ll make the best decisions you can. You can’t lead or even garner the respect of your development team, you have to believe in yourself. Not unreasonably or unwaveringly, but with general faith in your competence and abilities. Without it, no one’s going to have your back or want to follow you into battle. Conclusion Don’t let your insecurities hold you back! If your team didn’t think you could do the job, they wouldn’t work with you. Your requests for help are appreciated and not annoying. Imposter syndrome is real and unhelpful to your career. Moreover, you can beat it. We’ve all been there. When you make mistakes, you’ll learn from them and be better for it.

No matter how far into your career you might be, you’re never too old for imposter syndrome to make an appearance. Imposter syndrome is a feeling of inadequacy that persists despite the evident success, according to Harvard Business Review. ‘Imposters’ suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraud that override their feelings of success or external proof of their competence. Sound familiar? So, to level the playing field. Even after years into my career as a product leader and founder, every so often, I too suffer from feeling like an imposter. We sometimes need to make decisions with imperfect information. Despite years of experience in this field, it still feels like I am taking risks as I lead LIKE.TG into the unknown. For example, with a recent project, the data wasn’t playing out the way we expected. We had to decide whether to adjust or stand pat, with no clear “right” answer in front of us. As an expert, I should know how to do all this. However, at that moment, I felt like an imposter. However, I’m not — and neither are you. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '57ff7e42-ccfa-4d9e-b5be-8a0f6ba69363', {}); Why Product Managers are More Susceptible to Imposter Syndrome Product managers (PM) are particularly vulnerable to experiencing imposter syndrome. The nature of our profession is nebulous. There a few reasons why product managers might be more susceptible to the feeling. First, no one gets a degree in “product management.” You don’t train for it. There’s no set path to becoming one. There also isn’t a universal definition of success for product managers. With no pedigree or success validation, it’s natural to feel like an imposter. Colleagues also look to their product managers to have all the answers. Of course, we don’t have them all—nobody does. But we’re expected to know just enough about everything that we can speak intelligently and have an opinion on nearly every subject. It’s important for our role. This creates very high expectations, which plant the seeds of doubt in our minds. Product managers also wield power in their organization, even if it’s not always reflected in the org chart. We have an awesome job to decide what’s in and what’s out. Others have input, but view us as the gatekeeper. Unfortunately, that puts a target for blame if things don’t succeed. This fear of letting people down compounds, so we start to second-guess ourselves. With the weight of the product on our shoulders, we’re the ones to say “no” to various stakeholders. We’ll say no to customer ideas or inform the CEO that their pet project won’t make it onto the roadmap. All while wondering who decided we’re qualified to make that call? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); How I Overcame Imposter Syndrome (and How You Can Too) There’s no magic bullet, but I have found a few things that helped me get over the hump. 1. Humanize your counterparts Everyone is in the same boat. We’re all human and we all have fears that we have to push through. That means regardless of how much success or failures our peers have had, they’re still putting on their socks one at a time. By humanizing your counterparts, it takes away the fear and intimidation that people are inherently better or more qualified to do your job. 2. Opportunity always comes again Once it’s done, it’s done. Once a decision is made and acted on, then that ship has sailed. If it works out, great! If it doesn’t work out, there will be another chance to make another decision again. At that point, I’ll have learned from this mistake and be even better. There’s always tomorrow. 3. Nobody knows everything As disheartening as it is to realize, I will never have all the answers. Nobody knows everything. We’re all always operating with an incomplete data set and no guarantees. That’s not a defense to solely trust our gut and wing it. However, it does mean you need to move forward and believe that you’ve done enough homework to make an educated decision. Inaction due to uncertainty doesn’t breed innovation. 4. Embrace collaboration Embrace collaboration. The lone wolf product visionary that trusts no one, issues proclamation, and finds success is exceedingly rare. Most successful PMs learn fast that leveraging the knowledge, experience, and instincts of others makes things a lot easier. Not only are you operating with more information, but the decisions you make aren’t yours alone. Moreover, when others are involved in the process, they’re less likely to be resistant to the final decision. 5. Use data to make decisions Metrics matter. You can use data to make decisions and convince others to get on board. This is a valuable tool for PMs. Not everyone is going to trust you. They might have their preconceptions and biases that you’ll be challenged to sway. However, with an argument based on facts instead of feelings, it’s much easier to build consensus, not to mention instilling confidence that you’re on the right path. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {}); 6. Vulnerability shows you have humility Honesty is the best policy. I prefer to be the person that is open and has good relationships with people versus the one who bulldozes their way through. No one likes a bully or a know-it-all. Don’t be afraid to tell people you’re not positive about something or are still seeking input from others. Others will appreciate if you expose your vulnerability, it shows you have humility. What I’ve Learned from Overcoming Imposter Syndrome as a Product Manager Everyone’s trying to figure it out, just like you. Once you realize and accept this, you can be much more empathetic to others. That forgiveness is contagious, and I’m certain will circle back to you. The only way is to outgrow your doubts. It doesn’t happen overnight. But over time, as you have more successes under your belt and more positive experiences in your rearview, you begin feeling like you belong. Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {}); It’s hard to do. But, try to stop caring about what other people think. When you’re confident in your abilities, you know you’re doing good work, and are treating people well then it becomes second nature. Now with all that free time you’ve created for yourself, you can do the fun stuff. You don’t need that kind of stress. I’ve met plenty of older, successful people that are still racked with worry. Despite all they’ve accomplished, they can’t be content and convinced of their abilities. To them I say, “Relax, you’ve made it this far, and it wasn’t by accident.” Typically, this industry doesn’t put up with underperformers, so if you’ve made progress in your career, then you’re doing something right. Let your guard down. People can tell when you’re forcing it, so don’t bother putting on airs. You are who you are, and you’ll do a good job or you won’t. Have humility, take the time to figure things out based on the input of others, and have faith that you’ll make the best decisions you can. You can’t lead or even garner the respect of your development team, you have to believe in yourself. Not unreasonably or unwaveringly, but with general faith in your competence and abilities. Without it, no one’s going to have your back or want to follow you into battle. Conclusion Don’t let your insecurities hold you back! If your team didn’t think you could do the job, they wouldn’t work with you. Your requests for help are appreciated and not annoying. Imposter syndrome is real and unhelpful to your career. Moreover, you can beat it. We’ve all been there. When you make mistakes, you’ll learn from them and be better for it.

At its most basic level, a customer-led product strategy means that your customers are the top priority at all times. Sounds pretty obvious, right? But creating a truly customer-centric business model means balancing a lot of different factors, not just customer service. All too often, customers are losing out to more influential stakeholder groups and other priorities. One report found that 80 percent of customers said the experience a company provides is just as important as its products or services. Therefore, it makes total sense to look at the products you offer from the customers’ perspective. Ensuring your products and services bring joy to customers at every stage of their journey will help grow your business, helping it survive even in tough times. Putting Customers First Any time you launch a new idea, a new product, or a new system, ask yourself the following questions: #1 Who will this serve? #2 How will it benefit the people it serves? #3 What are the company’s goals for this product or service? By asking – and answering – these questions, you can create something that people truly value. Anticipating the kind of products customers need and making sure they get them will lead to deeper brand loyalty and customer retention. But first, you need to know exactly what the customer wants to deliver it. Making use of key customer insights and then implementing them is vitally important. For example, if you discover that most customers want to receive their purchases in the fastest possible time, you could use retail inventory management software to speed things up. Remember that 81 percent of consumers are willing to increase their spend with an organization in return for a better experience! Read the Customer Interview Toolbox ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd7d86cbd-164a-46c9-8c8f-f15fee88bc7f', {}); Looking at the Data You might think you’re pretty hot on knowing what your customers want, especially if you’ve been running a successful business for many years. However, here’s a sobering statistic: 80 percent of companies believe they are delivering a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of customers agree! This proves that you shouldn’t claim to be customer-centric if your products and services don’t reflect that. Digital technology means there are now more avenues for observing customer behaviors and spotting crucial insights – and statistics suggest that insight-driven customer experiences help businesses retain 89 percent of their customers. By blending data from customer surveys with qualitative and observational insights, you can build a detailed profile of your target users and see their needs. It’s also helpful to note what your competitors are up to and look at non-competitors to get an idea of best practices. You don’t have to copy their approach, but you can tease out the best bits and blend them into the perfect strategy for you. Creating a partnership with a competitor can actually aid the customer journey in some cases. If you cannot offer a product or service that your customer really wants, put your rivalry to one side and team up with a company that can! Making a Plan Once you’ve taken a look at the improvements you could make, it’s time to produce your plan of action. This framework should always put the customer front and center while ensuring any changes are viable within your overall business model. Product roadmaps are useful in planning and development and can be used to create alignment across the organization. Start with the product vision statement, then set out your goals and initiatives. The customer-led product strategy must be ingrained at every level of your company, so all your employees need to understand who the product is aimed at, what its unique selling points are, and what the long-term goal should be. Having your customer service and marketing departments work together is a good way to boost the customer experience. Hiring the right people, who truly believe in your vision, is crucial – as is keeping them up to date and motivated. Using video conferencing software can help maintain face-to-face contact with those in other sectors of the business. Download the Guide to Roadmap Software ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '4bf8579a-d29b-4f68-83a0-dff66a99d470', {}); Adapting to Change The digital environment has created a definite shift in customer behavior, meaning that customers become more discerning and impatient in the products and services they choose. They now have higher expectations and more choice than ever before – so if you don’t meet their needs, they can just as easily go elsewhere. New technology might make it easier for you to communicate with customers, but it’s also easier for them to complain! Older businesses, in particular, can struggle to adapt to the new pattern, compared to newer companies and start-ups with millennials at the helm. But it’s basically a case of “adapt or die.” Companies that consistently find innovative ways to develop and market their products will succeed in the long run. Tapping into Technology One prediction is that by 2021, there will be over 230 million digital shoppers in the United States. The role of technology affords many opportunities to provide a superb customer experience and gain customer insights at all the different touchpoints. The automation of customer service is one such element, and we’re seeing businesses introduce improvements like a call recording service to make life simpler for both customers and agents. Meanwhile, the rise of artificial intelligence can give extra insights into the customer experience using smart chatbots and analytics. Technology will only increase in importance, but you should make sure it is always useful to the customer and helps rather than hinders their journey! For older customers and more traditional businesses, the latest tech may not necessarily be the best solution for booking appointments, where it has advantages and disadvantages. Making it Personal A customer-led product strategy means learning which products appeal to customers and viewing them as much more than mere transactions. However, just offering them excellent products and an enjoyable, hassle-free experience isn’t enough. Personalization is the real key, as it makes customers feel like they are genuinely valuable to the business. Finding ways to personalize both the product and the overall journey will boost customer retention – and a happy customer will share their positive experiences with others, thus enhancing your rating on product review sites. It goes without saying that you should deliver a great omnichannel experience as standard. Still, it also helps to give customers personalized support as they browse and hopefully make a purchase. Customers appreciate little details, such as adding extra filters to narrow down browsing choices and save time. A customer-facing product roadmap can be used to let individual customers know what you’re up to and how you’re implementing their feedback, helping you to build a deeper relationship. You can encourage employees to develop empathy for the customers by talking to new service users and regular visitors if a customer has decided to switch to a different company, try to find out why – and see if there’s a way to tempt them back in. 点击播放声音 @keyframes VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } @keyframes VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } .volume__small-wave { animation: VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite; opacity: 0; } .volume__large-wave { animation: VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite .3s; opacity: 0; } 1:09:25●●●●●IntroCustomer Feedback and Your Product VisionDeciding What to BuildHow to Use Metrics to Align Product Strategy...Questions & Answers #wistia_chrome_37 #wistia_grid_103_wrapper .w-css-reset{font-size:14px;} #wistia_chrome_37 #wistia_grid_103_wrapper 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.w-css-reset-button-important{border-radius:0!important;color:#fff!important;} Complete the form to access the full webinarFirst Name*Last Name*Job Title*Email*LIKE.TG is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy, and we’ll only use your personal information to administer your account and to provide the products and services you requested from us. 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Make sure you ask the necessary questions before the customer embarks on their experience, thereby keeping in control of the process. Once a customer has been convinced to create an account, the onboarding system is crucial in executing your product strategy. You could keep them coming back by creating personalized messages or offering free trials or discounts on products you’ve learned that particular customer would like. The importance of website maintenance cannot be overstated if you want customers to choose you over your competitors. Ensure your whole online presence is optimized to give all users the best experience on whatever device they use, including personalized product suggestions and plenty of up-to-date, relevant content. The eventual aim is that happy customers will keep returning, so you won’t have to spend so much on marketing and sales activities – especially great news for smaller businesses. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {});

When you think of company-sponsored events, a few scenes may come to mind. There’s the holiday party where coworkers schmooze over food and drinks, be it in the office kitchen or at a fancy hotel with significant others in tow. There are fun activities where silos are temporarily broken down, giving way to bowling matches or scavenger hunts. And there is, of course, the company all-hands meeting where leadership shares future direction and celebrates past achievements. These everyday work rituals translate poorly for the new normal of remote work and often result in a negative experience. When your team participates in video calls all day, the idea of an extended virtual gathering may fill your team with dread. Here at LIKE.TG, we believe we’ve cracked the code on making these events fun, engaging, informative, and meaningful. We wanted to share our experience and inspire others to plan or improve their own virtual events. Why Events Matter to Your Team Rituals and stories create a team identity. Ritualized gatherings build a cultural heartbeat and team identity. Gatherings are a huge part of life, and they’re a part of the human experience. But the time we spend in them is often underwhelming and uninspiring. Invest the time, energy, and attention-to-detail to make them great. Humans are story-seeking creatures. One key to great events is creating a shared experience that generates stories your team can tell months or years from now. It’s rare to go to a conference or a social gathering and find that the event organizers have given serious thought to how guests will connect and get something meaningful from the event. We tend to focus on the mechanics like Powerpoints and Zoom logistics more than we think about people and human connection. Thinking about the connections that can result in storytelling is where the “magic moments” exist. Gatherings help build trust in relationships. Interacting with our peers creates empathy and humanizes our coworkers, building trust. They’re not just an email address or a Slack handle, or a voice on video chat. They’re real people with homes and pets, and families, trying to pay their bills, have a little fun, advance their careers, and do interesting work. This is particularly true for cross-functional relationships where conflict may commonly arise. Gatherings build flexibility, grace, and resilience in your team relationships. Team members are less likely to judge or jump to conclusions once we build deep connections through effective events. Our humanity is reinforced via these interactions – especially face-to-face. Whether at the coffee station, small talk before a meeting starts, or riding in the elevator together. These micro-interactions are a huge part of our relationships in an office environment. When distance reduces or eliminates those casual exchanges, intentionally create similar opportunities for similar interactions to happen. Doing so not only leads to increased social contact (and the corresponding mental health benefits) but also helps people work better together. The more familiar you are with a coworker, the better you’ll understand their communication styles, motivations, and concerns, which leads to more productive interactions where people don’t stick to niceties. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '35d36a84-b157-43a1-acb7-b972dcb1d1ad', {}); How LIKE.TG’s ‘Fest’ Started Like many programs at LIKE.TG, “Fest” began in our Engineering department, which was remote long before a global pandemic. For five years, Fest was a semi-annual engineering event and was an opportunity to give face-time with the entire remote engineering team within our Santa Barbara office. This eventually evolved into a full-fledged cross-functional event to create alignment across ProductPlan. Each discipline developed tracks on exciting topics. It became a shared experience and tradition that forged deeper relationships among employees. Those connections lead to grace in their business interactions instead of everyone jumping to their own conclusions. While LIKE.TG had an advantage as Fests began pre-COVID-19, there’s no reason other organizations can’t make these types of virtual gatherings a success starting from scratch. You can use elements of past in-person events as the springboard for planning a new virtual gathering. Carryover activities and sessions that translate well to a remote environment while also using some new virtual activities. 7 Lessons from LIKE.TG Virtual Event Success 1. Do your research. We began the planning process by conducting an employee survey to tease out key themes that spoke to the new remote team’s needs and combine feedback themes from our previous on-premise events. This helped us identify which tracks would be popular and relevant to the team’s needs and which external speakers would be a good fit. It also reassured us that employees wanted to participate in the event versus begrudgingly attend. Develop a Clear Purpose and Shared Assumptions. Our synthesized goals became clear based on our collective team feedback. First, we needed to create an aspirational vision and alignment coming into 2021. Secondly, the agenda had to be dedicated to team-building activities. Lastly, we needed to figure out how to provide opportunities for professional development. 2. Hosting intentionally is more important than being laid back. In modern life, being chill is often treated as a virtue. As a result, we’re hesitant to tell people what to do, even at events we are hosting ourselves. Being laid back, not imposing on our team members feels like the right thing to do. But when it comes to gatherings, being a “chill” host is an abdication of your responsibility to your gathering and guests, and it’s a sure-fire way to let things fizzle out. Feel empowered to be hands-on and drive because it will only serve to create a better event. Build up anticipation and excitement. Recognize that your team will form impressions about what to expect from your event before it’s even started. So prime them with the right expectations. LIKE.TG intentionally provided a “drip” of the agenda each day to foreshadow and build excitement for the event. Start and end on a high note. A strong start and solid finish are also key to a great gathering. You want everyone to be pulled in immediately, so think high energy to kick things off. Then save the best for last, so your team goes out on a high note. Incorporate physical elements in the virtual event. A principle in executing great gatherings is honoring team members on arrival. What a better way than providing a “mystery box” full of surprise gifts, some related with portions of programming with “don’t open” stickers to make sure the element of surprise and anticipation was maintained throughout the event. Our mystery box was a vessel to tie us together in the virtual world and made our event more special. Other items included new LIKE.TG swag for the team to enjoy, materials required for our fun events such as a deck of cards, gummy sushi candy (-a special homage to our in-person fests tradition in which we usually enjoy a full table of sashimi), and a lightbox to share our collective experience. 3. Shift expenses to provide new opportunities. Because we knew the event would be virtual, we wouldn’t have some traditional expenses to worry about. We would not need to rent meeting space or provide food and drinks all day long (although we did give employees gift cards to order in). This let us spend a little more in other areas, such as investing in our guest speakers’ quality from around the world! 4. Incorporate dead space. We did a survey, and that pulled themes out of the needs of remote workers. For instance, Zoom fatigue is a thing – People only have so much tolerance for videoconferencing. So instead of spending all day on Zoom, we took a different approach. We elected to limit the event to four half days with Friday off. This less-is-more approach ensures you’ll get everyone’s best versus a raging case of Zoom fatigue. 5. Provide quality and contrasting content. The latest Fest agenda focused on career development. It was important to employees and a way to show that management cares about them as people and not just the role they currently fill. We included many great external speakers, including CEOs and executives from other companies, product management thought leaders, authors, and executive coaching consultants. 6. Leave room for fun. This formal agenda was augmented with some fun, including trivia contests, magic shows, and escape rooms. We include a fireside chat with our leadership team and breakouts for each discipline. It added up to a half-day full of great content that employees rated highly in their post-event survey responses. 7. Be ready to adapt. Never be afraid to change things up if your formula or adjust the event elements as you go. Room For Improvement There is always room for improvement. Approaching each event as the next one in a series creates a growth mindset for everyone. That said, we do have some things we wish we’d done differently and a few more suggestions for a successful virtual event. 1. Become even more inclusive. Our team spans across multiple time zones, and we didn’t do the best job of making sure it was convenient for everyone to attend. Try to find the best overlap opportunities for most participants. Although for a truly global organization might not have had other options. If you really need to, you could also have special sessions for employees too distant to take part and record some of the content they can’t access live. As previously mentioned, feel free to “call an audible” when needed. Whether it’s a session running long or one that doesn’t resonate with the crowd, it’s OK to shake up the agenda on the fly. The most important thing is an engaged audience, not the schedule. 2. Include more bonding time. Build-in breakout sessions, so people get a chance to participate one-on-one or in smaller groups. While some staff may feel comfortable speaking in front of the whole company, others may prefer a smaller venue. Plus, it helps make sure everyone gets a chance to contribute to conversations. 3. Perform a retrospective. The post-event survey is a definite must-have to continue improving and iterating on the event while it’s still fresh in their minds. Perform a retrospective on the virtual event to improve the next event and talk to the other organizers about what worked and didn’t. Create benchmarks from event to event to measure whether or not you are improving the planning and facilitation You can compare their responses to those conducted during the planning stages to see if what people asked for was what they actually enjoyed. The next virtual event will be halfway planned with some good feedback before you’ve finished rehashing this one! 点击播放声音 @keyframes VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } @keyframes VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH { 0% { opacity: 0; } 33% { opacity: 1; } 66% { opacity: 1; } 100% { opacity: 0; } } .volume__small-wave { animation: VOLUME_SMALL_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite; opacity: 0; } .volume__large-wave { animation: VOLUME_LARGE_WAVE_FLASH 2s infinite .3s; opacity: 0; } 1:02:52●●●●●●●●●●●●Meet the PanelToday's AgendaAre you currently working from home?Our Remote AwakeningsAre you temporarily working from home, or do you always work from home?Remote Work Best PracticesRemote Key TakeawaysWhat tools do you use to create sources of truth?Managing AlignmentHow effective is your team's communication?Staying Connected and Having FunLive Q&A #wistia_chrome_23 #wistia_grid_57_wrapper .w-css-reset{font-size:14px;} #wistia_chrome_23 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When plotting out our product’s trajectory, there’s a constant tension between two competing mindsets. On the one hand, there’s the “go-big-or-go-home” moonshot approach. Where charismatic leaders rally the troops around an ambitious vision with a massive potential payoff. These high-risk gambits get praised when they succeed and pilloried when they fail. Meanwhile, the slow, steady drumbeat of cautious experimentation and incremental enhancements always makes the product better. However, they don’t fundamentally shake things up much. It’s not sexy and won’t land the leadership team any TED Talks. Yet the customer experience continually improves while KPI targets come into view. Some might think an organization must be all-in on one of these philosophies. How can you justify redirecting resources to tweaking the UX or integrating an API when they could spend time building the next big thing? Alternatively, how can we let our current customers suffer and miss out on easy wins just to chase after something that might not even work and won’t generate meaningful revenue for years? Big bets have big payoffs, but there’s a reason it’s called gambling In the venture capital world, the prevailing strategy is to invest in multiple companies knowing that many will fail. But when one of them hits it big, it makes up for the 75% that fail to deliver a return. This portfolio approach is baked into everything VCs do. They raise enough capital to spread their cash across a diverse enough collection of businesses. This way, they can weather the risk and wait around for their eventual payday. But your company isn’t a VC, even if some back it. You don’t have the cash to take so many risks or the runway to see which might eventually pan out. This means you’ve only got so many swings at the plate to get a big bet right. So you want to make those chances count. That means doing your homework regarding market intelligence, product-market fit, technical feasibility, and the like. But it also sets the stage for a parallel strategy that doesn’t sacrifice short-term wins. The team can still make minor changes and improvements that boost adoption, revenue, and retention while still pursuing big bets. How can these things happen in parallel without chaos ensuing? Here are the four ingredients you need. A clear product vision Every business and product needs a vision to guide everything that follows, from strategy to staffing to roadmaps. Taking a bifurcated approach to product development and innovation is more vital than ever. The product vision defines where the business wants the product to be. The planning and tactics are set against that vision. This maintains focus and prevents shiny objects of all shapes and sizes from stealing the stoplight. A shared vision ensures that every project aligns with the vision. Whenever prioritization occurs, the prevailing vision provides only relevant, contributing items that rank highly. Connect Product Strategy to Execution in LIKE.TG > Stakeholder alignment Stakeholders must buy into this strategy to push incremental value while working on more extensive initiatives. Inevitably, some influential voices will want to reach for the stars and not worry about the short-term—founders and CEOs often fall into this bucket—while others will lobby for projects that solve immediate pain points for current and prospective customers in the interest of keeping those folks happy, closing deals, and easing pressure on customer service. Both sides have valid arguments for why the company should focus on its primary areas of concern. But instead of picking one path or another, organizations can take a “yes, and” approach by working on both initiatives. This means you can’t chase as many big bets simultaneously nor knock out short-term wins as quickly as possible if the team was 100% focused on one or the other. But this strategy still addresses the here and now while working toward future growth and expansion. Explaining the benefits of this parallel approach and winning over holdouts is critical to establishing and maintaining stakeholder support, which trickles down to the rest of the staff. You can even work to get broad-based commitment to spending a specific percentage of product development resources on big bets, which should comprise at least 20% of the overall budget. But beyond resource allocation, stakeholders must also embrace this approach’s inevitable risks and failures. Not all those big bets will work out, and those failures should be commended as learning opportunities rather than blame sessions. Idea management Since your business worries about the short-term and the big picture, there are more ideas than ever to consider. Keeping track of them all, ensuring they’re given proper consideration, and closing the feedback loop with the folks who make suggestions is essential and falls on the product team to manage. As ideas come in and are periodically reviewed, they should be slotted into the appropriate track (big bet or short-term win) and then prioritized against currently ranked projects and other potential candidates. Once an idea gets rejected, put in the backlog, or slotted into a roadmap, whoever suggested it should be informed so they know their idea was taken seriously and followed up on. And remember, today’s bad idea might not look so terrible next month or next year, so don’t be too quick to dismiss them immediately out of hand. Building up a deep backlog of quality ideas that could be pursued under the right conditions is never a thing. An end-to-end product management platform When an organization adopts a balanced product development approach, roadmapping, resource management, and launch planning get more complicated, and each phase requires something different from product management. But, with the right processes and tools in place, a lot of the heavy lifting and finicky fussing gets handled for you for every stage of the product management process. Take a tour of LIKE.TG’s end-to-end product management platform > Prioritization There’s no shortage of frameworks to help you and your colleagues sort, rank, and evaluate potential projects, but with an end-to-end product management platform, you can do it all right in one place. From capturing ideas to deciding which ones make the cut for the next release, you can tame your backlog and elevate winning ideas before slotting them into your product roadmaps. Be sure to evaluate and prioritize big bets separately from more incremental enhancements. You want an apples-to-apples ranking process that clearly delineates selecting a risky moonshot from debating which minor UX improvements to take on next. Roadmapping When adopting a balanced product strategy, product roadmaps are more crucial than ever to communicate essential information to stakeholders, colleagues, external partners, and customers. Given these roadmaps’ complex and interdependent nature, trying to manage them in a spreadsheet or slide deck is a disaster. You need visual, theme-based roadmaps that convey the big ideas with the option to drill down into the details. With customized views, portfolio rollups, and a cloud-based viewer, you’ll always know everyone’s looking at the most accurate version. And each audience will get the specific level of detail and granularity they need. It also provides more visual ways to ensure your roadmap has the right balance between big bets and incremental gains and differentiates between the lengthier timelines big bets demand and the rapid-fire short-term wins that get cranked out on the regular. With a purpose-built product management solution, the product team can spend less time futzing around with formatting and version control. Instead, they can focus on understanding their market and talking with customers to turn feedback and findings into actionable insights. And the audience for these roadmaps gets consistent output across the product portfolio. Launch Management Executing a successful product launch requires a ton of collaboration and coordination to ensure all the messaging, deliverables, and events convey the appropriate talking points and value propositions for the product. And since different releases will have different goals—short-term win messaging will focus on current users and prospects, while big bets require much more fanfare and a broader push to attract new audiences. Much of the planning, tracking, and communication around a launch can be streamlined and centralized with the right product management tool. Deadlines and progress are visible to everyone. Status reports are handled by the software, freeing up launch team members to spend more time actually doing the work. Best of all, because everything’s on the same platform, the launch plan and roadmap are connected and integrated. So you can pull elements out of the roadmap and directly into launch planning. Keep your balancing act in balance Most businesses that achieve sustained success pursue both paths simultaneously. They navigate the tricky terrain to keep adding value bit by bit while also chasing more elusive and substantial objectives. They can keep the lights on while still dreaming big by finding a formula that works for them. Each business has a unique situation. Funding, cash management, customer and contractual obligations, and the risk appetite of investors, the board, and senior leadership. Adopting this strategy might also be the winning formula for your product. But attempting to orchestrate all those moving pieces without the right tools in your product stack will be difficult.

A few days ago I had lunch with the product team of a mid-sized software company, and one of the product managers had a conundrum: “Sometimes I hear the same feature request over and over, but when we finally release it customers barely use it.” Does that sound familiar? How can we as product managers avoid these dead-weight product features? How can we determine whether to 1.) implement a feature exactly as customers request, 2.) defer it, or 3.) deliver something that is completely different than requested but solves the core problem? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); In my experience, good product managers often combine all three (especially the deferring part). But for the product features you decide to include on the roadmap, there is one practice that can help you make sure they will add value and get used: Set aside the feature request and first understand the job that customers need to accomplish. I’m assuming you’ve already nailed the basics: You have a process for validating prototypes with customers, and once you release a feature, you have the metrics to measure the success of the feature. “I need the following product features…” Before LIKE.TG I worked for a SaaS company developing business software for vertical markets. The software was complex, including accounting, CRM, and marketing. Every customer came to our solution from another solution, and they often came to us with a pre-conceived mindset about what features the software needed to have. We routinely got requests for product features and reports that (surprise) mirrored exactly what they were using in their previous solution. Sure, it would have probably satisfied the customers to simply add the button, feature, or report they asked for. But through understanding the job they were trying to accomplish we were able to imagine solutions that they were not able to imagine themselves and deliver product features that completely revolutionized their workflow. Download Building Your First Product Roadmap ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'a81908bd-d7dd-4be2-9d7e-cb09f3f90137', {}); Case Study: Eliminating Hours of Work with a Few Clicks With their previous solution, our customers would print out reports that needed to be produced every month. In some cases this process would last for days; printing hundreds of reports, collating them, attaching checks, and stuffing it all into manila envelopes to be mailed. It was a cumbersome, horrible process. Some even had family and children join them for “stuffing parties” because it was so time-consuming. But this was a part of their life and they expected our software to support this workflow with the appropriate reports, printing, and buttons, and so on. Before building our solution, we spent hours onsite at the offices of our early prospects to understand their workflow, hear their pain points, see the stacks of paper on their desk, and internalize what they were really trying to accomplish. We watched over their shoulder, asked a lot of open-ended questions, shot hours of video, and ate (too many) donuts with them in the break room. We thoroughly understood the job they needed to accomplish: delivering reliable information and payments to their customers (to be clear, the job was not printing reports and mailing checks). We envisioned how their life could be different by using the latest technology to optimize their workflow. We knew how it could improve their business and how much money they would be saving if we could shave hours off their process by moving the information and payments electronically. Once we understood that, we were able to release innovative product features that our customers hadn’t considered or thought possible. For our customers, what previously took hours or days could now be accomplished in a few clicks. The results were wildly successful features that contributed to our customers becoming huge promoters of the software. Not every feature needs to be re-imagined. Sometimes there is low-hanging fruit you can deliver that happens to match exactly what customers request. But there are often product features that warrant further digging to really understand the job the customer is trying to accomplish, and get the right initiatives onto your product roadmap. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {});

Public speaking isn’t usually included as a required skill in a typical product manager job description. But it should be. Today’s article on public speaking tips is written with product managers in mind, but is broadly applicable to many trades. We’ve been trained to think of public speaking in only the narrowest sense: a professional standing on a stage or at the front of a large room, often behind a podium, delivering a speech to an audience. But for product managers, public speaking can take many other forms. In this broader context, a product manager’s job often requires public speaking — at product roadmap meetings, development meetings and daily scrums, sales meetings, executive stakeholder meetings, analyst briefings, product demonstrations to prospects, customer site visits, and many other settings. Then there are all of the other public speaking opportunities designed to establish product managers and their companies as thought leaders in their industries. These include sitting on discussion panels at conferences, tradeshows and other events; hosting educational webinars on issues related to their products; and being interviewed by reporters or analysts as public representatives of their products and industries. In fact, you can even think of a product manager as her product’s chief public speaker. Given how important public speaking is to a product manager’s job, here are some tips and strategies to help you become a more effective public speaker — and, as a result, more effective as a product manager. How to be an effective public speaker Speak with Authority — by Using Data This tip will apply in virtually every situation where you have to speak to a group — whether you’re running a development meeting to discuss features and product details, or delivering a high-level product roadmap overview to your executive stakeholders. As a product manager, you have the data that support your decisions for which features your next product iteration should prioritize, how to adjust your pricing scheme, and what the best time will be to roll out your product for general availability. The data can take the form of quantitative metrics related to the product or qualitative data such as the results from customer interviews. Using data to support your talk can give you two important advantages in persuading whatever audience or constituency you are speaking to. First, bringing relevant data into your discussion positions you as the authority on the topic. This credibility can help you overcome the barriers product managers often encounter when, for example, trying to convince executives to green-light to a new initiative, or when trying to persuade a sales team to agree to a new pricing structure for the product. A second advantage of supporting your talk with data is that it signals to your audience that your suggestions and requirements are not simply your opinion but rather the result of real-world evidence. This will often give your constituencies more confidence in your decisions than if they believed those decisions were only the result of educated guesses. Some product managers are reluctant to deliver presentations or run meetings based on statistics, charts or other data, because they worry that the material will be boring. This is a valid concern: A talk or meeting driven entirely or primarily by dry statistics can cause you to lose your audience to thoughts about what to have for lunch. But you can find ways to include credibility-enhancing data points in your discussions without losing the room’s attention or enthusiasm. The best way is to use your data points sparingly, and to build them around a lively, more interesting mechanism for delivering your talk. Which leads to tip 2…. Build Your Talk Around Stories Often the best way to structure a presentation or other public talk is to deliver it in story form. People respond to stories. They remember stories. Stories provide a convenient framework for a complex discussion, allowing you to quickly bring everyone in the room onto the same page in terms of the big picture, before you dive into any details. To explain why this works, let’s use a story. Say you need to present your strategic plan for an overhaul of your site’s e-commerce experience to your executive team. You’ll need their buy-in before you can move forward and commit development and marketing resources to the project. You could walk into your discussion with a slew of data to back up your argument that your online shopping page needs an overhaul. Your shopping experience currently takes 45 seconds longer than the average site selling a comparable product. Your e-commerce page has been rated among the lowest of its kind by third-party review sites. Your shopping-cart abandon rate is 23% higher than the industry norm. And on and on. Some of your executives might even be persuaded — if the PowerPoint slides filled with charts and raw statistics don’t send them deep into thought about lunch. But now imagine that instead, you walk into your meeting and open with a story. It goes like this. “Our new marketing campaign catches the attention of Kirk, our primary persona and ideal customer. He comes to our site, spends a few minutes reading our blog… a few minutes more checking out our testimonials page, and then he….” (Note: At this point, your executives are likely all listening intently, interested to know what happens next with Kirk. Not one of them is daydreaming or making mental lunch plans.) “Finally, Kirk heads to the pricing section of our website. After a few minutes on that page, he clicks buy. Everything is working according to plan! “Kirk selects the most expensive version of our product, inputs his credit card information… and then four minutes later abandons his shopping cart. He also ignores our follow-up asking if there’s anything we can do to help him complete his purchase. “What happened?” Because you’ve introduced the discussion topic — your strategic plan to improve your site’s e-commerce experience — using an engaging story, told from the point of a customer, your executives are now ready to listen to your evidence. And because you’ve established the framework for your topic using a story that everyone in the room intuitively understood and related to, your evidence will carry far more weight with your stakeholders than if you had simply recited it without first putting it in context. Be Flexible Let’s say you’ve built your new product roadmap and have scheduled a one-hour meeting with your sales and marketing teams to run through it. You’re planning to start the discussion at a high level, providing a strategic overview of the product’s current position in the market and where you plan to take it with the new roadmap. Maybe you’re even planning to open with a story. These are all smart public speaking strategies. But a couple of sales executives who will be in the meeting tell you just beforehand that they’ll need to cut it short. Now you’ll have to deliver essentially the same talk in only 15 minutes, including Q&A. Or assume one of the sales executives catches you in the hallway and asks you to pop into an empty conference room and quickly explain your thinking behind the new roadmap. In other words, in this instance you’ll have to deliver the same talk in five minutes! As a product manager, you might be called on to discuss your product vision at length, or in just a few minutes; to a technical audience, or to a non-technical sales rep. Part of the value you bring to your company is the ability to quickly and persuasively articulate that information under just about any conditions. Keep Your Talks Positive Enthusiasm is contagious. So is negativism. That means as a public speaker, you have more power than you might realize to influence your audience’s perceptions and feelings about your topic. One of a product manager’s many roles is to serve as her product’s chief evangelist. So it is important that when you speak about your product in any context, to any constituency, you remain positive, and focused on moving forward to achieve your strategic goals. It’s easy in a product roadmap meeting or a scrum meeting to be taken off track and discuss past development cycles, or dwell on what went wrong with a previous release and who’s to blame. These detours almost never lead to any enthusiasm or positive feeling among the people whose hard work and dedication you will need to move the product forward. Because you are the person driving these meetings, you can implement a culture that guides your teams to focus on the positive. What’s more, as the lead speaker in many of these settings, you always have complete control over what you say. Another trait of great public speakers is that they stay positive and forward-looking — and, leading by example, they encourage similarly positive feelings among their teams. Conclusion: Public Speaking Ability is Essential to Effectiveness as a Product Manager You might not have been asked about your public speaking ability in your interview for any product manager position you’ve ever applied for. And you might never have given much thought to the importance of honing this skill just as you would the ability to understand technical jargon or read a profit-and-loss statement. But as you have probably found if you’ve spent any time in a product management role, it is difficult to make it through a week without having to do some form of public speaking — whether that means leading a meeting, presenting a product roadmap to one of your constituencies, or accompanying a sales rep to a customer site to talk about your product. Public speaking is a vital tool in the arsenal of any product manager, not to mention an invaluable skill to have in any area of life. So there is plenty of upside — and no downside whatsoever — in devoting time and energy to becoming the best public speaker you can be.

At LIKE.TG, we are revolutionizing how a company delivers products to market by elevating product organizations to the heart of strategy and execution. This vision holds true with our own organization as well. It is a very meta experience to build the LIKE.TG platform as a go-to central hub for everything product management-related. As we help our customers overcome challenges, we’re using the same product we deliver to customers to overcome our own challenges. It’s a win-win situation! This year, we focus on the major priorities that help us achieve our vision while maintaining an easy-to-use, delightful, and flexible user experience. Through this effort, we created a very exciting and strategic annual roadmap. With so many impactful initiatives planned out for the year, we knew it was important to communicate with our customers and keep them updated on our product strategy. And what better way to do that than a customer-facing roadmap? Why we built a customer-facing roadmap Our customers are one of the major driving forces behind what we decide to build. Their thoughts and feedback are an incredible source of information for our product team. In fact, customer interviews play a key role in what gets prioritized and put on our roadmap. The purpose of our customer-facing roadmap is to communicate the vision of LIKE.TG and, at a high level, show the steps we’re taking in 2022 to realize our vision. And by creating a customer-facing roadmap, we can address common questions from our customers like: What is LIKE.TG working on right now? What new features and updates are coming next? And most importantly, why is LIKE.TG doing what they are doing? Through this exercise, we have uncovered helpful best practices and tips for creating your own customer-facing roadmap. Keep reading to learn more! How we built our customer-facing roadmap When we began building our customer-facing roadmap, we thought about a frequently referenced metaphor for prioritization: In this metaphor, you have a jar, rocks, pebbles, and sand. The goal is to fit the most important items into the jar. However, if you start with the sand and pebbles (the less important stuff), you quickly run out of room for the rocks. Instead, you start with the rocks, then the pebbles, and finally the sand. In that order, everything perfectly fits into the jar. The rocks leave gaps that the pebbles can fill, and the remaining gaps fill with sand. So how does this translate to building a customer-facing roadmap? We started with the rocks—these are the major items that we’re tackling to achieve our vision for the year. These are the product features that will have the greatest impact on our customers and therefore need to be on the customer-facing roadmap. The smaller items (the pebbles and sand) typically don’t impact our entire customer base, and we don’t necessarily plan our development sprints around them. We can get more done when we properly prioritize these items according to importance. The roadmap is designed to be dynamic and evolves over time. This can play out in a multitude of ways, but a great example is when we refined our filter functionality based on customer feedback. Thanks to the flexibility of our roadmap, we were able to accommodate this update. Organizing major items on the roadmap Once we decided on our “rocks” or major initiatives we planned for the year, our next focus was organizing this information into a roadmap that would make the most sense for our customers. We organized four categories into columns from left to right on the roadmap to give our customers an insight into our plans. The four columns are: Recently released. The containers and bars in this column help our customers understand what problems we’ve recently solved. Now. Bars and containers in this column are problems we’ve committed to solving and are actively being built. Next. We’re currently researching bars and containers in this column and plan to build solutions for these problems next. Future. Bars and containers featured in this column represent items we recognize as an opportunity to invest in research but have not committed to building yet. The information here gives our customers insight into what we are thinking about long-term. Below, is a mockup of what this kind of customer-facing roadmap can look like. We also break down our product vision using bars, containers, and lanes: The Legend represents how we will execute our vision for the year. So everything featured in the customer-facing roadmap lines up to specific items in the legend. Lanes represent areas of investment. These areas are how we spend our time and help us ensure we can organize our resources towards our specific goals throughout the year. Containers organize bars and provide additional context. Bars feature details about specific features that contribute to the overall objective. Our roadmap does not include everything we have planned for the year. It would be way too overwhelming if that were the case. So the smaller items, our pebbles and sand, don’t make it on the roadmap because they are lower priorities. Instead, we include them in our regularly scheduled release notes. Take a look at the mock-up below to see how changes and updates to the container and bar details can be communicated in the Highlights section. It’s important to note that we restart the roadmap each year, so we focus on the specific vision and goals that we set for that year. How we share our roadmap Our roadmap is a tool for starting a conversation with our customers. It is also an opportunity to learn more from our customers. Their feedback from conversations where we share the customer-facing roadmap helps us inform and refine our plan. Our customer success team is trained on the ins and outs of our customer-facing roadmap so that we can have these important conversations at scale. With this training, our customer success team can speak confidently to the problems we are solving, they provide the product team with more insightful customer feedback, and it is a great way to develop deeper relationships with our customers. As an added bonus, our roadmap also serves as a great training tool for our customers so they can build their own customer-facing roadmaps. Looking to the future We’re so excited about all of the major enhancements and updates planned for the year. Additionally, we’re looking forward to continuing our work with our customers to achieve our vision of revolutionizing product management.

Let’s face it. Building an IoT product roadmap is hard — much harder than building roadmaps for “normal” technology products. That’s because IoT products are complex systems. To create a working solution, all layers of the IoT Technology Stack — device hardware, device software, communications, cloud platform, and cloud applications — need to work together. It’s like having to manage five products in one, and your roadmap needs to be the glue that keeps all your stakeholders aligned with your vision. Tweet This: “IoT products are like managing 5 products in 1. The roadmap is the glue that keeps everyone aligned.” The IoT Roadmap — Your Key to Aligning Stakeholders and Teams An IoT roadmap needs to show the product direction as well as the impact of new features in a way that makes sense for all stakeholders. Your stakeholders might be from Sales, Marketing, the Executive team, Engineering, and more. They all have different needs and different levels of understanding of how the product is put together. In fact, IoT introduces additional complexity because even the technical implementation is probably split across multiple groups. Depending on your company’s structure, you might have dedicated teams for hardware vs. software, embedded vs. cloud development, etc. No single team will have a holistic understanding, which makes it even more important for you (and your roadmap) to communicate the full picture. Because of this complexity, managing an IoT product is similar to managing a portfolio of products, with the distinction that ALL the products in your portfolio need to work together to form a cohesive solution. Not an easy task. The key to creating a solid IoT product roadmap is to balance a high-level view of the end-to-end product with more detailed views at each layer of the IoT Technology Stack. That way, you’ll be able to provide the right level of information for your different stakeholders and ensure nobody loses sight of the big picture. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Building Your High-level IoT Product Roadmap Let’s use an example to illustrate all the moving parts of an IoT product roadmap. Let’s pretend your company builds industrial water pumps. After talking to a lot of customers and sales folks, you discover that a major concern for your customers is to keep operations going at all times. They would like to know if a pump is about to fail so they can proactively order parts and schedule service. This would reduce downtime and save them a lot of money. Such “predictive maintenance” is very valuable to your customers, and they are willing to pay a lot for it. Researching solutions with engineering, you learn that as a pump ages, it starts to vibrate. The more it vibrates, the closer it is to failing. Therefore, if you were able to monitor pump vibration and perform analytics on that data, you’d be able to predict failures. With this information and some business due diligence, you determine this is a great solution and you are ready to put it in the roadmap for internal buy-in. Your high-level roadmap might look something like this. As you can see, this is no different than the roadmap for a non-IoT product. The challenge here is that it is very difficult for your stakeholders — Executives, Sales, Marketing, and Engineering — to understand what it will take to build this functionality and what the final product looks like. It’s also difficult to understand why release #1 will take 6 months and release #2 and #3 will be shorter. Using Story Mapping to Enhance Your IoT Roadmap For your IoT roadmap to convey the full story, you need to provide another level of detail describing the features of the high-level roadmap across the IoT Technology Stack. I’ve found that story mapping is a great way to dive into this next level of detail. I like to combine story mapping with the IoT Technology Stack to show how features align to the various layers of the end-to-end IoT product. The result is a visualization that is still higher level than a “product backlog”, but gives enough information for all teams to understand the big picture. This view also empowers teams to understand how the planned functionality relates to the day-to-day work they’ll need to do. Here’s how this approach would look for our “smart pump” example. From this view, it is easier to explain the work that needs to get done to support the predictive maintenance functionality. Notice how the names of the high-level features in the previous roadmap became the theme for each of the releases. This helps your team keep an eye on the big picture while still focusing on smaller details. Notice that not all layers have to be impacted on every single release. In this example, there are no features in the “Communications” layer after release #1. This example assumes that the release #1 features in the “Communications” layer will be able to support the functionality of releases #2 and #3. From this visualization, it is easy to see that release #1 is the only one that impacts your device’s hardware. Therefore, it’s easy to explain why release #1 will take longer than other releases. You can also see that fewer layers are impacted in releases #2 and #3. The initial release will be the longest because you need to build a lot of infrastructure. Once you build that initial “plumbing”, then you’ll be able to add features on top of it at a much faster pace. You can use this tool to explain that evolution as well. Using The Roadmap to Coordinate Engineering You can also use the story mapping roadmap to coordinate multiple engineering teams across various layers of the IoT Technology Stack. Every team needs to share a unified vision of where the product is going. But at the same time, they need to understand the work that lies ahead for their specific team. This roadmap can help you with both goals. Tweet This: “Use a story mapping roadmap to coordinate multiple engineering teams across the IoT Technology Stack.” As shown below, you can take “vertical slices” to create specific roadmaps for each engineering team across multiple releases. As long as the data format and the interfaces between layers are well defined, this approach will enable each team to work independently and make progress faster. The Bottom Line As a Product Manager, you will always face challenges when communicating the product vision throughout your company. It’s a difficult task, and yet it is probably the most important function of our role. The approach outlined in this post provides you with a very powerful communication tool you can use to clearly express your product ideas and get everybody aligned. The result: increased transparency, which results in better communication, happy teams, and happy customers. About the Guest Author Daniel is an IoT product leader with 17 years of experience building connected products. He is the author of TechProductManagement.com, the leading blog on IoT Product Management, and the creator of the IoT Decision Framework. Daniel also teaches the course “Product Management for IoT” at Stanford Continuing Studies.

It’s a brave new world for pricing software-as-a-service products. Gone are the days of simply setting a per-seat fee and launching. How can you choose the best SaaS pricing model for your product? In this SaaS pricing series, I review lessons I’ve learned from helping set pricing for several successful SaaS products. In my first article, I reviewed why pricing based on customer value is so important. This second article reviews why SaaS gives product and marketing managers unprecedented flexibility to choose unique pricing models. Models that can differentiate your product in the marketplace. Models that ideally align with your customers’ goals. SaaS Pricing Flexibility One of the exciting advantages of SaaS is that you can think differently about pricing models. Unlike traditional software, customers licensing SaaS products pay for your product on a recurring basis. Your product is no longer tied to a one-time purchase. And because the product is centrally hosted, you have additional flexibility for offering your product in unique packages. Read the Power of SaaS Pricing Experiments ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'c948d259-0fb9-457e-aece-634799b48e6d', {}); SaaS Pricing Models: a Short List SaaS gives you the ability to consider revenue models that weren’t previously possible. Here’s a short (and by no means exhaustive) list of SaaS pricing models used today. Many products use a combination of these models: Per-user (many SaaS products) Per-user with free participants (GoToMeeting, LIKE.TG) Storage (Dropbox) Features (plans based on feature tiers) Project (Basecamp) Freemium (LinkedIn) Per item/contact (AppFolio, Hubspot) Per Node/Server (Hadoop) Per Visitor/Traffic (AdRoll) Processor time/Data transferred (Amazon Web Services) Open Source (free with paid services) Advertising (Facebook) Broker fee (AirBnB) Feel free to add to this list in the comments. My point is that with so many options, you now have the ability to discover a pricing model that aligns with your customers’ goals. To learn how to make subscription pricing work for you, watch our webinar: Success-Based SaaS Pricing Model Example For AppFolio’s property-management software, we developed a unique pricing model based on the number of rental units managed by a property manager. Because we charged a flat $1 per rental unit per month, the pricing was simple and easy to understand. This SaaS pricing model resonated with customers because it aligned with their business goals. They paid more for our product only if they grew their business by adding rental units to their portfolio. If they were more successful, we were more successful. Don’t be Tempted by Competitive Pricing When pricing a new product, there is a temptation to set your pricing relative to the competition. It’s common for new products to price using the same model as competitors, but slightly lower. Sure, you can price your product the same way as your competitors, and perhaps that’s what your customers expect. But with SaaS, there are so many ways to price the product that you have the ability to stand out in the market by thinking differently. Capitalize on the approaches that your competitors haven’t considered. In my previous article, I described how we launched GoToMeeting with innovative pricing that disrupted the competitors. Keep it Simple Don’t overly-complicate pricing. With so much flexibility in SaaS pricing model options, there is a temptation to offer various flavors and packages. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for doing so. For example, it’s common to have three packages based on features. Studies show that this approach anchors customers, and can be an effective technique for driving customers to your best-performing package. That’s fine if this is your goal. However, creating an overly complicated pricing scheme has the potential to confuse customers and create a nightmare for your finance team. Keeping it simple reduces headaches and may even provide more revenue over the long term. For example, at LIKE.TG (product roadmap software), we saw that products in our space had complicated licensing options. Many required a paid license for every software user. Several offered complicated pricing tiers based on packages. We took a different approach to simplify pricing. We charged only for editors of roadmap data and offered free licenses to other collaborators. Rather than offering complicated pricing tiers based on features, we offered unlimited use of all features for one price. Because the product managers want to widely distribute the product roadmap to stakeholders, this SaaS pricing model benefits the customer. It’s aligned with their goals. In addition, this model gives our product more exposure within the organization, so ultimately we sell more licenses when other departments ask to use the software. In the next article, I’ll review several tips for successful pricing, including estimating lifetime value.

As we head into a new year, we tend to talk more about gratitude. We talk about what we’re grateful for in our own lives, and often express gratitude for the friends, family, and coworkers we have around us. We’ve tried to foster a culture of “thank you” at LIKE.TG. And lately, I’ve thought a lot about what gratitude means for the people we work with. Today, I’d like to share a bit about the role of gratitude at ProductPlan. Hopefully some of these thoughts might help you at your workplace. I’d like to say that there’s some magical formula for fostering a grateful culture within your organization, but there isn’t. A culture of gratitude, or a culture of thank you doesn’t materialize on its own. Our culture at LIKE.TG is the result of consistency in our values and decision-making from the very beginning. We wanted LIKE.TG to be a place where people genuinely enjoy coming to work; a place where people feel that they are contributing towards something important. We wanted our team to see the significant ways they help build great products and we wanted them to enjoy working with our customers and with each other. Gratitude and appreciation are key to creating the environment we set out to create from the get go. I’ll discuss how we did this shortly, but first let’s look at why. Why does gratitude matter? Why is it something we should all strive for? Let’s see what science has to say. The Science of Gratitude To start, what exactly is gratitude anyway? Gratitude, to me, means taking a moment and recognizing the good things that we have and the good things that other people are doing. It sounds easy right? But if we look closer, there are actually a few different ways in which we interact with gratitude. We can feel grateful, we can express our gratitude, and we can receive expressions of gratitude. Various studies over the past century or so exploring our different reactions with gratitude have revealed multitudes of benefits of gratitude in the context of both health & wellness and social . For example, feeling grateful not only increases life satisfaction but also one’s willingness to help others. And, the act of taking time to express gratitude is a proven mood-booster. The Importance of Gratitude at Work My co-founder Greg and I both have previously worked with enough teams and at enough companies to recognize what it feels like to operate in organizational cultures that lack a sense of appreciation. It’s not surprising that research shows our perceptions of gratitude in the workplace can be fairly complex. A recent study on US Americans’ relationship with gratitude found the majority of people wish they were thanked more often at work. Meanwhile, that same study found that the office is the place where people are least likely to express gratitude. So let’s break that down: employees feel that they should be appreciated more, yet don’t feel that they should verbalize their appreciation for others at work. Yikes. We strive to foster an environment in which everyone not only feels appreciated, but also freely expresses their gratitude to others. Initially, this was the product of our belief in practicing the golden rule “treat others as you’d like to be treated.” But, beyond simply being the right thing to do, we’ve also noticed many other positive benefits of our culture of gratitude. Gratitude Keeps our Team Motivated In the office, I see and overhear people doing small things for each other every day; helping them on something, picking up the phone to help someone who is away, volunteering to take on extra work to help out a colleague who already has a full schedule. It’s wonderful to witness this. It’s exactly the sort of environment that I want to create. We never hear someone say “that’s not my job!” but quite frequently hear “how can I help you out?” When you’re on the receiving end of an expression of gratitude, you feel appreciated and that your work is being recognized. But beyond those emotions, researchers found that people who are thanked for their efforts are driven to work harder and volunteer to help more in the future. So if you want to motivate your team, don’t forget to take time every now and then to thank them for their efforts. It doesn’t take much, but your sentiments can go a long way. Gratitude Improves Relationships and Encourages Collaboration In addition to keeping our team motivated, gratitude plays a role in promoting better teamwork. Sharing our appreciation with the team has encouraged them to do the same amongst each other. I hear it all the time in the office. And while knowing gratitude is present is reward enough for me, there’s an even bigger upside for the team as a whole. Gratitude exchanges among colleagues are proven to positively impact prosocial behaviors. Those who feel and express gratitude to colleagues are more motivated to spend time with others and work on improving the relationship. Meanwhile, those who are thanked for their work are often more willing to broaden the scope of the help and support they offer others at work. Something as simple as hearing a colleague say, “hey, thank you for helping me out with this project,” can promote closer collaboration and teamwork. Receiving Gratitude Reduces Likelihood of Burnout We care deeply about the health and wellness of our team at ProductPlan. And that’s another reason gratitude is important for our culture. In addition to motivating and driving collaboration, when people feel appreciated, they are less likely to experience burnout. Software startups and other fast-paced organizations are notorious for having high rates of burnout amongst employees. We don’t want that, and it turns out gratitude helps. A 2015 study found nurses (one of the professions with the highest burnout rate) who received expressions of thank you from patients were significantly less likely to experience burnout than their peers who did not. This is not surprising. If our work benefits others, we want to know about it and feel valued by them. But what is surprising is how little effort it takes to show people they are valued. Taking just a few moments out of every day to express your appreciation can make a huge impact on your team’s happiness and employee retention. Don’t pass up gratitude at work. There’s no doubt that there are countless benefits of gratitude at work. But in fast-paced environments, it can easily slip off the radar. So let’s look at how to avoid that by diving into how exactly we can make gratitude part of the employee experience. How We’ve Fostered a Culture of Gratitude at LIKE.TG Part of our success in fostering a culture of gratitude is arguably due to our motivations for founding ProductPlan. Greg and I founded LIKE.TG because we like to build products and solve problems. We didn’t get into the business of product roadmapping software for ego-based reasons. Of course we saw value in improving product roadmaps, but we founded LIKE.TG largely because we saw a fun and interesting opportunity to create something. But there was more to it than a motivation to have fun and a few well-timed thank yous. Here’s a few of the ways we’ve established and maintained a culture of gratitude at ProductPlan. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Make Gratitude a Habit Everybody is busy and everybody has their own experiences. Sometimes we can feel completely overwhelmed at work, and to top it off we all also have personal lives too. When we have all these things going on, it can be hard to come up for air and recognize how good we truly have it. So, I think it’s important to make gratitude a habit. And by this I mean, making time to step out of yourself to be aware of what’s happening right now. If you’re stressed at work, it can be as simple as remembering that you have a job to stress you out in the first place. And beyond that, there are most likely other people around you going through the exact same thing that you are. Why not be grateful and appreciative of them? Get in the habit of taking moments of time to yourself for gratitude. Step away from the chaos for a moment, and you’ll give yourself a better opportunity to recognize the good things happening. You don’t necessarily have to start a gratitude journal or meditate to do this, the separation alone is often enough to get you thinking. I like to go for walks around the block; getting a little exercise and breathing fresh air helps me remember and appreciate the good things. Sometimes it’s hard to get the blocks of time for this habit. What works for me is making it part of my daily routine. There’s this tendency for many people to sit there and work while eating lunch at their desks. And that’s ok, but I still think it’s important to take breaks to get you outside and into a different headspace. That’s why I love to take advantage of my lunch break for this. Pay it Forward “Actions speak louder than words” they say. And that applies to gratitude in some ways as well. Leadership plays a significant role in an organization’s relationship to gratitude. My first job was a very typical corporate job where you walked in and there were rows upon rows of desks. I was just out of college and eager to learn. Productivity was of the utmost importance at this organization, so I worked hard. Certainly people said “thank you,” here and there, but I see now that something critical was missing: the culture didn’t value people or support helping them grow. I, like many others, was simply a cog in the wheel of this 40,000 person company. My career and happiness did not matter to them. I think everyone with enough years in the workforce has been somewhere like this. Even in larger organizations, a lot of this culture has to do with management and how they approach things. It is possible to foster this culture at a large organization if management consciously commits to it. For us, it’s common sense: our team’s success is directly correlated with our own. We truly value each individual on our team. After all, we couldn’t possibly be successful without them! So, management is on board to support every member of the team in not only getting the experience they want, but also in general being happy in their career (even if this means eventually they’ll take their talents to somewhere other than LIKE.TG). This is just one way we put gratitude into action here. Hire the Right People As we’ve grown, we’ve hired a lot. And we look well beyond talent and experience when we hire. A big part of building our culture is hiring genuinely kind people who share our values. For us gratitude is not a tactic, it’s a philosophy. It’s the golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated. “Thank you” should not come with ulterior motives. We don’t express gratitude because we want somebody to do something. This sort of manipulative pseudo-gratitude isn’t how we operate here. We say thank you because we genuinely care and want the people around us to be successful. And we hire people who bring that same philosophy with them to work. But how do you make hiring decisions that help us continue driving this culture? It can be tricky to suss this out completely during the interview process. Sometimes the version of someone you meet in an interview is not the same as the one who comes into the office on the first day. And, I’d be lying if I said we’ve never made a mistake there. For the most part, we have been incredibly fortunate. It seems that we somehow attract people with similar values. In addition, Santa Barbara is somewhat of a small town and because of that, we’ve been able to hire and work with many people with whom we’ve previously worked. That history counts for a lot because we know who they are and the philosophies they bring to work. Of course, we can’t always hire someone we’ve worked with before. For key hires it’s really important for us to understand their past history. And that’s where references become incredibly helpful. When we talk with references, we look beyond experience. It’s important for us to understand who someone is as a human, too. Practice Patience Finally, there are some days when it’s easier to feel gratitude than others. For example, sometimes people can frustrate you. Perhaps it’s because they’ve disappointed you, or they’re not reaching their full potential or meeting their goals. I think that taking a deep breath and finding the gratitude and the good things that you see in other people helps a lot with patience. And patience is an important part of gratitude. Thank You. To wrap things up, I’ll leave you with this: it’s never too late to start being grateful. I know I’ve mentioned many times that what we have is the product of long-term efforts. But, you too can drive a shift in your organization toward a culture of thank you. Here’s a few things you can do starting today. Think of one thing you’re grateful for. Write it down in a journal or vocalize it to a cherished friend. Incorporate gratitude into your daily standups. Have people share “I’m grateful for _____” in addition to their normal talking points. Make time every week to personally express your gratitude to someone on your team either verbally or in a written note.

If you’re responsible for change management at your company, you have my respect. My sympathies, too. Because the resistance to change management can be difficult. People find it easy, even fun, to envision a great outcome. But the resistance to change management can negatively affect this excitement. So, in this post, let’s talk through the common reasons businesses face resistance to change. When you understand and recognize these reasons, you position yourself to address and overcome them. Then I’ll offer a few suggestions for a successful change management process. Why You’ll Encounter Resistance to Change (and You Will, Every Time) 1. People are often unaware that their daily actions conflict with their aspirations. I once worked for a CEO who liked to describe our company as product-team driven. He truly believed he’d built an organization that empowered the product department to lead the strategy. But in practice, that wasn’t the case. The CEO set all priorities and approved or rejected all product ideas. When the product team came up with viable concepts and produced evidence that these products could succeed in the market, the CEO often said no, ending the project. If someone had proposed a plan to shift the company culture to be more product-team-led, the CEO would have rejected that idea as well. His resistance would have stemmed from the fact that he believed we already had a product-driven company. One reason you might face resistance to change is that your team believes—or at least wants to imagine—that they have already adopted the new framework you’re suggesting. “Hey, we’re already a customer-centric business.” Download Developing a Product Team Checklist ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd8abf101-87a4-49aa-b909-2dcb3743fb8b', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); 2. Inertia is a powerful driver of human behavior. When you present a plan for digital transformation or some other company-wide change, many people’s first instinct will be to feel threatened or worried. Their second instinct will be to push back against your plan. Everyone has routines and processes that make them feel comfortable. With your sweeping change proposal, you’ll be asking them to give up some or even most of these routines. Additionally, some people on your team could worry that they will have a diminished role under your new framework. Others might have the opposite concern: that they will have to take on more work and responsibility. Often the resistance you will face in your change management efforts will have nothing to do with the merits of the approach or framework you’re proposing. It will simply be the result of your team’s fear of shifting to a new process in which they might not be as needed or successful. 3. People might not realize what they’re committing to when they sign on for the change. Let’s say you persuade your company to make a change. You begin rolling out the new processes. For a time, everyone seems to be adjusting smoothly. But then something happens. A reality sets in that your team hadn’t physiologically prepared for. Here’s what that might look like under a couple of real-world examples. Transform Your Organization from Traditional Marketing to Product-Led Growth Sure, your stakeholders might have found this idea exciting in principle. It sounded great: Let’s be like Slack and make a free version of our product so compelling that people can’t help but share it and market it for us. We can even cut down on our paid marketing campaigns. But then the first month passes, and your paid signup rate is down. That was part of your product-led growth model, and everyone agreed in theory. But experiencing a month of lower-than-normal revenue could make your executives panic. Will they demand the company reactivate its costly marketing campaigns to generate immediate revenue? Transform Your Product Development Process from Waterfall to Agile Changing your company’s development approach from waterfall to agile might be a wise strategic decision. And at first, you might find a lot of enthusiasm across the company. In the abstract, saying “We’re an agile shop” will probably sound appealing to your stakeholders. But let’s do another thought experiment. Imagine your company has made this transformation its official policy, and your cross-functional team is about to begin work on a new product, with natural resources and budget on the line. Will your development team panic at the idea of starting their work without a complete vision of the full-featured product? Does your executive team be willing to greenlight a new product without a firm market launch date? Will your product team have the discipline to turn down stories that aren’t ready for development in their weekly sprint planning? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '9e6140b2-e382-45fd-ace0-16435228cf7b', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Resistance to Change Is Part of Human Nature As I hoped I’d communicated, resistance to change often stems from our hardwiring. In some cases, you’ll have trouble earning buy-in for a transformation because your coworkers envision themselves as having already made the change. In other cases, they’ll push back because they feel more comfortable with a legacy approach or worry about their fate under new conditions. Sometimes, your team will agree to the change first but then abandon it when it leads to challenges. Bottom line: Do not expect to pull off a company change with zero pushback. Dealing with resistance is part of the change management process. But you can reduce this resistance and earn more trust and enthusiasm for your plan by following some best practices. I’ve outlined them below. 6 Steps to Successful Change Management 1. Present the potential benefits to your stakeholders. Before you describe how much work the transformation will require, you should explain to your team why it will be worth the effort. Keep your description of the upside anchored to reality but let your enthusiasm for the new framework show. If you’re going to earn buy-in for the change, you’ll need your team to be enthusiastic about it. 2. Explain honestly the effort needed to make the change happen. Everyone needs to know upfront what they’re getting into when they sign on to your proposed transformation. That will minimize the culture shock your company experiences as people run into the inevitable bumps along the way. If you’re proposing a shift from waterfall to agile, what if anything is agile about your current practices? If your processes are entirely waterfall, you need to explain the significant adjustment this represents for everyone involved. 3. Let your team know what success will look like. One common reason employees resist proposals for change is that the process seems endless. Your stakeholders could legitimately worry about you following them around forever, saying: “Can we make this process more agile?” “How can we make that routine more agile?” A key to earning stakeholder buy-in for your plan is to give everyone a picture of what it will look like when they’ve completed the change. That will provide them with something tangible. It will also counter the fear they have in their minds that they’ll never get done once they start this process. 4. Evangelize the change throughout the process. Every change implementation faces setbacks and frustrations. As the driver behind this change management effort, an essential part of your role will be to continually serve as the plan’s advocate and champion. You’re there to remind your coworkers that the struggles they’re experiencing during the change will pay off when the company becomes more vital, more competitive, more profitable, etc. You might have this conversation dozens of times with different stakeholders. Heck, you might have to evangelize to the same stakeholders repeatedly. Some people will need more convincing, more pep talks to keep them on track. That’s okay. Bring the same level of enthusiasm and confidence to your evangelizing every time. 5. Establish celebratory milestones along the way. You’ve shown your team the end state of your transformation. They have a picture of the finish line. Still, many of them will experience change fatigue at different points in the process. One way to counter this is to create internal victories to celebrate throughout the process. Send out positive updates when the company achieves a milestone along the way—schedule parties for internal accomplishments throughout the transformation. Give out awards to stakeholders: Maybe honor an “Agile Hero of the Week” for your agile transformation. 6. Remain resilient. Essential stakeholders may tire of the changes you plan to implement. It is also important to note that you may also get fatigued from changes. As your coworkers push back against the change or show signs of frustration with it, you’re going to be tempted to throw up your hands and revert to the old process. This is where you need to remain resilient, remind yourself about the strategic benefits of implementing this change and maybe even evangelize the plan for yourself. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '9252db78-e0f2-4f64-b933-416e291c2422', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});