Blog

Advocacy is a big part of product management. This tool will help you craft better arguments.

Software product managers can borrow these research techniques from the consumer packaged goods world.

Slides for a talk I gave at ProductTank Austin on the tricky interface of PdM and agile engineering.

[External post] In the spirit of Halloween, let’s focus on something really scary: over half of enterprise AI projects fail.

[External post] AI is built by humans; data scientists who understand all 4 types of bias will produce better models and better training data.

[External post] I appeared in Reza Shirazi's Austin VOP interview series.

Kaizen: continuous improvement. Or, is it continuous dissatisfaction?

Avoid the (rather natural) mistake I made when creating cohort graphs.

Regular one-on-one meetings are essential to properly running a team. Here are the four guidelines I use to make mine effective.

Is the P in PM for product? Program? Project? Is the M for marketing? Let's not even bother deciding.

My screenplay for a gritty reboot of the old tale about drills and holes.

Music has much to teach us about defining a mission and getting teams to play in harmony.

It was the best of the day before: I get a follow back on my way home from work.

Slides from a lecture I gave at the Kellogg school in 2015 on social commerce.

Slides for a talk I gave at Product Camp Austin on how to communicate authentically but carefully.

Stack ranking (or force ranking) is a clear method for priorizing, but it also has a serious flaw. Here's an introduction to ranking and how to get around that flaw.

A targeted understanding helps us get more value from efforts to gamify social features in web sites and apps.

Social media marketing, including through owned digital communities, has a huge role to play in the Consumer Decision Journey. Here's how to understand and measure that role.

Leading thinkers tell us that empathic behavior in business actually improves your bottom line. So, what does empathy mean in product management?

Every business has table-stakes metrics that must be reported on but don't necessarily yield profound insights. Thankfully, you can gain a deeper understanding by faceting these reports into cohorts based on gamification. (Part two in a series on gamification measurement.)

What can measuring badge/level attainment teach you about the health of your gamification program? Moreover, how much better can your insights be using cohort analysis? Inquire within.

Here's an easy technique to add to the PM toolbox that leads to immediate roadmap input from a variety of stakeholders, a greater feeling of involvement across your organization, and (surprisingly) consensus.

When I was a kid, the TRS-80 Color Computer blew my mind, but what really changed my life were the books that came with it. Where pedagogy and wonder meet, magic happens. What lessons can we take from this today?

Gamification programs must be designed with flexibility in mind, else they're set up for extinction. To prevent that at a mechanical level, never award a single point for any activity. Here's why.

Gamification programs fail when a business North Star isn't defined and followed.