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Articles by Mart Objartel
From Scrum to Shipping Work that Matters with Shape Ups
Shap Up is a framework for running product development teams by collaboration and productivity company Basecamp. Shape-Ups focus heavily on execution and shipping features or products. In very simplified terms, Shape-Uping divides into three parts: Shaping, Betting and Building. During Shaping a small team, a product manager, tech lead, UX-designer, and other essential stakeholders usually shape the project. The focus is on outlining the rough scope and asking, "How much is this idea worth?
Its Time to Stop Following the Lean Startup Movement
https://unsplash.com/photos/oydF7IKn6Bk Twenty years ago (in 2002), I read a story about how software is so bad that it kills people, and the story has stuck with me since then.
Product Failure is An Opportunity
“Fail faster” is something nobody really wants. Failing slowly is of course worse than pulling the plug early on a badly performing product. However, the ultimate goal is to succeed faster. Obviously. Failure is just the inevitable ingredient to create successful businesses and products. What people mean when they say fail faster is in fact “learn faster”. Learning comes with trial and error.
Values of Science in Product Management
Modern digital product management has adopted some lingo and ‘methods’ from the scientific method: hypotheses, experiments, studies, validations. But more often than not, the similarities are superficial.
The future of work is asynchronous and the death of a meeting
Last year proved that working remotely isn’t just a fad for some other hip companies that definitely don't work for us. Or something that you did once or twice a month and felt slightly guilty the whole day (“I’m working, I promise”). https://imgflip.com/ “If an employee is working at home and no one is around to witness it, does she really work?” — is a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding work and leadership.
Dr. House Rules for Product Problem-Solving
Dr House is a misanthropic, ingenious, and unsociable diagnostician in a fictional TV show. He ignores rules and clashes with his colleagues, comes up with controversial hypotheses, and saves his patients' lives more often than not. If you have not seen the series yet, you have roughly 124 hours worth of episodes to binge-watch. It’s difficult to imagine a more toxic workplace than what Dr House has created for his team.
Why A Great Mission Statement Matters
In very general terms, it can be said that the purpose of a company is shareholder wealth maximization. Increase in value comes mostly from growth and growth from (scalable) business models where your costs don’t scale at the same rate as your revenues. Great companies have great missions, clear focus and a vision. Why mission and a vision are important? Why not just use gross profits as a metric for all teams? Let’s imagine two scenarios: Scenario 1 A team has a goal to increase revenues.
A Contactless Future for NYC Transit: The Rollout of One Metro New York
Hey New Yorkers! Let’s talk about your favorite thing in the whole wide world! The subway! Yes, that ancient locomotive that somehow manages to move millions of residents of NYC from one place to another without totally giving up midway. What a champ, folks. But let’s not address its mind-boggling disruptions. Or its Olympic-level delays. Or even its vast range of confusing smells. Let’s, instead, talk about its future.
Estimation & Amdahl’s Law
Understanding the work done by Gene Amdahl in the field of parallel computing Photo by Mark König on Unsplash Let us take this opportunity to explore a theory (involving Amdahl’s Law) one needs to be mindful of before even wanting to turn estimates into facts in the future. Gene Myron Amdahl was an American computer scientist and primarily known as the brain behind Mainframe computers at IBM. He formulated Amdahl’s law, which states a fundamental limitation of parallel computing.
Why Agile Crumbles, Why The Struggle?
Marty Cagan articles about product vs delivery teams and some that followed have resonated greatly with my experience and outlook. These articles do a great job in providing questions to understand whether you are in a product/delivery team or how to work like one. I feel that failing to work as a product team is closely linked with struggles to implement or stay agile in general.
Tribute to the Microsoft PowerPoint: Product Managers most useful tool
This story is not about the importance of good slides or slides in their usual context at all. If you need to make kickass slides you might be better of avoiding MS Powerpoint altogether. So whats Microsoft PowerPoint good for then? Its seems that for about everything else. If I must choose only one tool to take to a remote island as a PM, I would take MS PowerPoint (I also would try to sneak in MS Excel, but that's another story). There is a ton of different .
My seven cents for new product managers
Product manager position is still not very clearly defined in general terms and in some cases, there can be a completely different job behind PM title even in the same organisation. Expectations what PM actually does or is responsible for also depend on the development framework and maturity level of the team(s) and the structure of the company. And then there are Product Owner, Business Product Owner and Technical Product Owner roles that in some cases overlap with Product Manager roles.
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