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Articles by Janna Bastow
Your Backlog Has a Hierarchy Problem
An idea can be anything from “should we replace our payment system” through to “could you add this button to this particular page.” When both live in the same list, treated as peer-level items competing for the same prioritization slot, you’ve already lost. The word “idea” is doing too much work, and nobody in the room realizes it.
Getting your product pricing strategy right
A not-so frequent topic for Mind the Product is the pricing strategy for your product and how to get it right. With help from product and pricing experts, we discover the key fundamentals for successfully executing this part of your product strategy. A pricing strategy is a model or method used to establish the best price for a product or service. It helps you choose prices to maximise profits and shareholder value while considering consumer and market demand.
You Can’t be Lean Unless You’re Agile
I see so much talk and confusion over what’s Lean and what’s Agile. The two terms can get used interchangeably, so much so that in some places they’re blended into one term, simply Lean-Agile (thanks again, SAFe 🙄). However in order to do our jobs effectively we need to be able to separate these two. We need to know when we’re making efforts to be Lean, efforts to be Agile, or if we’re falling down in either area.
Lean Strategies for Maturing Products - INDUSTRY19 Slides
Believe it or not, building an MVP and launching a product is actually the easy part. It’s much more difficult to manage a product in its maturity or decline stages. In this talk, ProdPad CEO Janna Bastow tackles the challenges of a product that’s past its initial growth stage. Sign up to our monthly newsletter, The Outcome. You’ll get all our exclusive tips, tricks and handy resources sent straight to your inbox.
Paving the Cowpaths - Log in how you like
Desire lines based on user behavior in ProdPad We noticed a pattern recently. People were resetting their passwords a lot, sometimes two or 3 times in a row. We couldn’t figure out why people were struggling to get in, but when we looked a little deeper, we realized that a good 30% of users were logging in with their email address. Now, what’s wrong with that, you ask?
The Complete Guide to Building MVPs
Source: Unsplash The goals of a minimum viable product are centred around idea validation and execution, learning, experiments, and ways of minimizing the effort to bring a meaningful new product to market. For the majority of product owners, having an MVP is not a question at all, while some are still skeptical about spending time on this concept.
What is product/market fit? By Janna Bastow
In this ProductTank London talk, Janna Bastow – co-founder and CEO of ProPad – shares her view on how you can define and measure your product/market fit. Watch the video to see her talk in full, or have a quick read of her key insights below: How to define product/market fit What you should not think about product/market fit How do you get to the sweet spot? How do you measure product/market fit?
Product Roadmap
A product roadmap is a strategic communication tool. Its purpose is to show your team and other stakeholders what your product vision is and how it breaks down into product strategy and the product development initiatives needed to achieve that strategy. A product roadmap is not a Gantt chart, and it’s not a device for showing off every last detailed feature in your development plan – instead, a product roadmap should focus on high-level themes aligned around customer outcomes.
How To Write Great Product Specs
What is a product spec? A product spec is a blueprint that describes what you’re building, who you’re building it for and what the final outcome should be. A well-written spec is about clarity. The more information you have going into a product spec, the more clarity you give everyone working on the product with you. We generally include some or all of the following, depending on what is needed to clearly communicate what is needed. A product spec includes: Summary – what is the idea being suggested?
Decisions, Debt, and Other Dilemmas by Janna Bastow
In this keynote from #mtpengage Manchester 2020, Janna Bastow, co-founder of ProdPad and Mind The Product, discusses how in tech, optimising debt is essential to building the perfect product. Watch the video to see her talk in full.
Free Your Product Roadmap and Ditch the Timeline
I recently raised something on Twitter that I’ve said in the past on conference stages, webinars, podcasts, Mind the Product and elsewhere – the timeline roadmap simply has to go. The topic led to a long thread of questions which I’ve decided to answer here. My Tweet was inspired when checking out Ecosia, a new browser that puts your search-result ad dollars towards planting trees instead of lining Google’s pockets.
You might be a product manager if... [Comic 001]
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3 Reasons why you Should go to ProductCamp
ProductCamp is where it all started for me, and I get a particular feeling of joy when it comes around each year. These are the things I love the most about it: The Open Agenda When I tell someone about an upcoming ProductCamp often the first question they ask is “Who’s speaking?”. Most events have a defined speaker line-up that’s been curated for the day. While this approach has some definite benefits, it’s nothing like the unique approach to having no agenda until the day of the event.
Growing up Lean: Lean Strategies for Maturing Products
Building an MVP and launching a product is actually the easy part.
A Product Manager's Job
Let's talk about the job of a product manager and how to do it really well. Based off of this post: https://medium.com/@joshelman/a-product-managers-job-63c09a43d0ec#.v0kdyf816
Why Release Dates Are Irrelevant To Product Managers
What's a product roadmap with dates? A release plan. Or at least it might as well be. I'm going to say this again and again until my voice is hoarse and my fingers run out of steam. I'll be a crotchety old lady waving a cane at you saying the same old thing, if I have to: This is my one and only mantra for a reason. Product managers who refuse to put dates on their product roadmaps do a better job than product managers who do. They adapt faster when plans derail.
Inside ProdPad's spontaneous product culture
When our CPO Simon and I started up ProdPad, we quickly realized that the plans we’d carved out for our product didn’t matter. The path was always changing—whether it was because of new customer feedback, what our analytics were telling us, or some unexpected opportunity that popped out of nowhere. Here’s an example from our early days: A customer wanted to use ProdPad, but didn’t see how it would work with Trello. So 36 hours later, Simon built a Trello integration. Well, kind of.
How to Sell Your Boss on Roadmaps Without Timelines - MindTheProduct
Can’t get your boss to part ways with a time-based feature roadmap? Then sell them on the risk. I wonder what it is about feature roadmaps that is comforting to the C-suite. Is it the false sense of security that you’re setting yourself up to deliver a list of features based on untested assumptions and educated guesses? Is it the delusion that locking your organisation into a plan a year in advance equals a competitive edge?
How To Build a Growth Roadmap For Your Product
Brian Balfour, former VP Growth at Hubspot, sounds a lot like a product manager when he talks about growth marketing: Accepting inevitable change? Developing team culture around it? Preparing for the unknown? That’s product management talk. But these days, it’s also growth talk. It makes perfect sense that Balfour’s sustainable growth principles run parallel to product management principles.
Agile Roadmapping: How To Think Big, Ship Fast And Always Keep Moving
There’s only one thing that will get you anywhere in the tough world of product (and no, it’s not cool swag). The thing you need is real product vision. Because here is what’s happening to your team: A product enters a new market and sees some success. Then more products follow, making the space more competitive. That sparks a tendency to hunker down on whatever’s working, but not to really innovate.
The product roadmap that boosts innovation - InVision Blog
I wish I could say I invented the following approach to product roadmapping. But the reality is that I’m not the first product manager who tried planning with quarterly and feature roadmaps before coming to the conclusion that there’s no room for product innovation here. I’m also not the first to realize that you need more space and flexibility to lead a product than a feature roadmap can give you.
10 Tips on how to be an Awesome Product Manager
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What Is Product Management?
As products and technologies continue to evolve, so too does the role of Product Management. We take a look at what Product Management is in 2016 and also ask some product experts and influencers what it will look like in the future.
Is Your Boss Hijacking Your Product Roadmap? Try This.
Search through blog content Are you locked in an uncomfortable power struggle with a HiPPO (hilarious acronym for “highest paid person’s opinion”) over your product roadmap? Have you been taking the heat from your team for letting the HiPPOs take over? Is your HiPPO full of legitimately bad ideas? I’m a big fan of the “just say no” ethos, and an even bigger proponent of using every opportunity to reference your product roadmap.
Why Your Roadmap Should Be Flexible
I talk to a shocking number of Product Managers on a regular basis who are exasperated at their company’s approach to roadmapping. Some companies refuse outright to have a roadmap, instead opting to put to paper only what they can commit to in the next few sprints – ie. a release plan or project plan. These poor product managers spend most of their time either firefighting or building whatever tickles the fancy of their CEO/noisy sales team/eager developers, etc.
Why Your Roadmap Should Be Flexible
I talk to a shocking number of Product Managers on a regular basis who are exasperated at their company’s approach to roadmapping. Some companies refuse outright to have a roadmap, instead opting to put to paper only what they can commit to in the next few sprints – ie. a release plan or project plan. These poor product managers spend most of their time either firefighting or building whatever tickles the fancy of their CEO/noisy sales team/eager developers, etc.
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