Posts
Building a Product *Impact* Factory
In an annual review, a board meeting, or even just a recurring check-in, scrutiny is too often disproportionately on features and dates –...
Foundations of High Performing Product Teams
Between us, the Prodify advisors have earned more than our share of gray hair working in product management. From this, we see patterns of...
How to Overcome the 10 Dysfunctions in Product Management
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The first chapter of Prodify’s book Build What Matters highlights the 10 Dysfunctions of Product Management, which identify the most common...
B2B Product Discovery: 3 Ways to Avoid the Game of Telephone
B2B product discovery can sometimes be like the game of telephone. Ever play that as a kid? For those who haven’t, here’s how it works:
5 Ways Product Leaders Can Champion Their Teams Through a Recession
Market analysts, business leaders, and venture capitalists agree a recession is looming. Today, startups are forced to reevaluate their...
Lead Your Product Teams Through A Recession | Prodify
Business leaders, venture capitalists and market analysts agree a recession is looming. Without question, startup capital has become harder...
How Product Operations Can Influence Your Company Culture
What makes for a great culture? After advising / coaching nearly 40 product teams and reflecting on my own time as a product manager /...
How to Ditch User Stories and Backlogs to Create Better Alignment
Since late 2020, I have served as the VP of Product at Territory. We connect thousands of customers to great-tasting healthy meals that fit...
4 Ways The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) Helps Product Teams
Photo Source: EOS A few of my clients, both current and former, are using the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) as their way of...
Broadvoice Case Study: Becoming Product-Driven
You may have seen our recent client interview about the transition to being product-driven instead of sales-driven. Specifically, it was...
A B2B Customer's Key Outcome Pyramid
At Prodify, we often use the Key Outcome Pyramid with our clients to help them identify the relationship between metrics, decide which...
Curaytor Case Study: Becoming Product-Driven
At Prodify, we work with a variety of clients who are looking to make the transition to being product-driven instead of sales-driven. The...
WeSpire Case Study: Product Responsibilities of the CEO
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. In 2012, WeSpire was in the midst of a successful pivot from a B2C model to an enterprise...
Advisor Case Study: Building Software Users Love
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. After I joined Morningstar, we went through an Agile transformation that focused on...
Advisor Case Study: An Army of INTJs
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. While I was at eBay, the product management team grew to over a hundred people. When the...
Advisor Case Study: The Impact of Product Operations
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. When I arrived at Opower, the need for a Product Operations position was immediately...
Advisor Case Study: The Tokens System
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Earlier in the book, I told the story of Opower’s color-coded roadmap, which highlighted...
Advisor Case Study: Innovation Sprints
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. At HelloWallet and Morningstar, we used to reserve some product development capacity each...
Ordergroove Case Study: Reframing the Question
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. We’ve worked with Paul Fredrich for many years and across multiple companies. He is...
Octopus Case Study: Rapid Experimentation
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Octopus Interactive is a rideshare media company based in Washington, DC. Co-Founder and...
MarketSmart Case Study: Consistent User Research
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. In late 2017, Elizabeth Weiland heard Ben’s This is Product Management podcast episode on...
Advisor Case Study: Letting Customers Speak
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. One of my most important responsibilities at GoCanvas was being the author and steward of...
Advisor Case Study: The Business Value of Operational Tools
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. When I was on Ben’s product team at Opower, my goal was to increase our margins as we...
Advisor Case Study: Confidence as the Key Outcome
I spend a decent amount of time reflecting on my past roles and how the Vision-Led Product Management framework would have been a valuable...
DrFirst Case Study: Clarifying the Direction for a New Product
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Since 2000, DrFirst has pioneered healthcare technology solutions and consulting services...
WHOOP Case Study: Exercising Great Judgment
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. WHOOP was an advisory client for years prior to Ben joining the company as Chief Product...
How to Evaluate Candidates for Product Mindset
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. There is one factor that separates the great product managers from the ones who’ve...
Advisor Case Study: Setting Meaningful Design Principles
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. At energy-efficiency startup Opower, a question that was constantly asked throughout...
Advisor Case Study: The Literal 'Aha' Moment
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Many companies struggle to connect the dots between early user behaviors in the product...
Advisor Case Study: The Behavioral Science Behind Triggers
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. I had no idea what behavioral science was until I joined Ben at Opower. There, I learned...
How Jobs To Be Done Can Help More Users Switch To Your Product
If the concept behind Jobs To Be Done wasn’t real, we’d all drive the exact same car.
Advisor Case Study: Time Horizons and Financial Results
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. After Morningstar acquired HelloWallet, there was a grand vision for how our two products...
Ten Percent Happier Case Study: Impact Metrics
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Ten Percent Happier is a mobile app that helps people be happier, healthier and more...
3 Tips for Managing a B2B2C Product
At HelloWallet, we sold web and mobile apps that helped employees improve their financial wellness. The product was offered as a benefit to...
Advisor Case Study: Too Many Outcomes
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Right before I joined HelloWallet as a Senior Product Manager, the company pivoted from a...
Advisor Case Study: Hidden Shipping Costs
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. One of the most fundamental experiences in an e-commerce product is called “finding,”...
5 Steps to Become a More Outcome-Driven Product Team
“Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” -- John Wooden Unfortunately, it’s all too common for product organizations to focus on the wrong...
4 Focus Areas in Leading a Rapidly Scaling Product Team
My most rewarding yet challenging roles have been as part of a fast growing business. These come with an opportunity -- plus an expectation...
How to Write a Stellar Product Management Resume
In our collective careers, the Prodify advisors have reviewed thousands of product manager resumes. Sadly, for both the candidates and the...
Key Outcomes and Jobs to be Done
I first started using the Jobs to be Done framework about 5 years ago, and while I never quite got it to stick, I've seen more of the...
The 10 Dysfunctions of Product Management
I’ve been a product leader for more than 20-years and, sadly, I’ve experienced (and sometimes unintentionally caused) every one of the ten...
The Five Traits of a Product-Driven Company
Rajesh spoke recently at ProductCamp Austin about The Five Traits of a Product-Driven Company. Not only does he detail the common...
Storyblocks Case Study: The Effects of Vision-Led Product Management
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Storyblocks is the world’s first stock media subscription service, offering video, audio,...
CrossLead Case Study: Converging on Product-Market Fit
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. CrossLead is a platform that helps organizations of all sizes plan, manage, and track...
Advisor Case Study: Constantly Changing Priorities
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. When I joined Adchemy, a twenty-five-person startup, in 2006, the company had already...
Advisor Case Study: The Color-Coded Product Roadmap
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. The Never-Ending Customer Commitment Cycle I vividly remember joining Opower as the VP of...
Advisor Case Study: Measuring Lines of PRD
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. During my time at eBay, from 2001 to 2005, product management was run by a few different...
Contactually Case Study: The Power of Focus
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Initially, Contactually was a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for the long...
Advisor Case Study: Assuming What Users Want
The following is adapted from Build What Matters. Spring 2014 was an exciting time for me. Not only was our first son due, but I also saw...
3 Tips for Product - Design Collaboration in a Remote Work Environment
The collaboration between Product and Design is critical to the success of the end product. (read up on best practices at The 10...
The Top 3 Product Lessons Learned from eBay
eBay was in direct competition with Amazon in the early 2000's, but they had very different methodologies when approaching the market. The...
The Top 3 Product Lessons Learned from Webvan
The story of Webvan's rush to go public features prime examples of what not to do when trying to scale. I recently joined this episode of...
Wartime Product Leadership
An Unprecedented Situation The COVID-19 outbreak and associated response have staggering immediate ramifications for many technology...
3 Reasons to Stop Solving Problems and Start Delivering Outcomes
A few years ago there was a new phrase that made its rounds through the product management community: “love the problem, not the solution.”...
A Product Manager's Guide to the Kano Model
Kano Model Overview The Kano Model is a theory developed in the 1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano to categorize customer satisfaction of...
3 Tips That Will Make You a Great B2B2C Product Leader
Many businesses operate under a B2B2C model, with business customers who are disparate from end consumers. They facilitate key outcomes for...
3 Tips That Will Make You The Sales Team's Favorite Product Manager
Collaboration is a critical skill for product managers, and in this post, I interviewed Juan Thurman, a fellow Austinite who has held...
The Top 5 Resources for Product Managers
One of the most common questions we get from aspiring, new and experienced product managers alike is - what do you recommend I do to learn...
The 4 Things to Look for When Hiring a Product Manager
Collectively, we've hired hundreds of product managers in our time. So we thought it'd be good to share the 4 big buckets of traits we look...
A Product Manager's Guide to Customer Discovery
One of the most common consulting engagements we do is market research interviews, and it usually comes up in when a company is:
How to Scope a New Feature
While consulting with a client last year, one of the challenges I helped the team with was their process of planning and releasing new...
The 10 Commandments of Product-UX Collaboration
Product management is a highly collaborative role. One of the most critical partnerships in the success of any product is the...
Behavioral Science Crash Course: Steve Wendel's CREATE Action Funnel
I consider myself really lucky to have learned so much about the power of behavioral science in product design at both Opower and...
Roadmap Case Study: Chuckwagon
One of the most common questions we get when coaching product managers is: how do I create a roadmap? There's a great visual we often...
Getting Peer Feedback as a Product Manager
Product management requires collaboration across many disciplines to make the product successful, so it's important to understand how those...
8 Ways to Organize Your Product Development Squads
In 1967, computer programmer Melvin Conway introduced an idea that came to be know as Conway's Law. It stated:
Strategic Planning Case Study: Chuckwagon
To illustrate the concepts of Vision-Led Product Management, we use an imaginary app we call Chuckwagon. Let's take a detailed look at the...
4 Signs You Need to Make Your First Product Hire
One of the most common questions we get from startup founders is - how do I know when to hire my first product person?
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