Product Management – UserVoice

Breaking Down the Product and Engineering Wall: A Catalyst for Product Success

Matt Young — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 17:40:09 +0000

While there are many reasons to unite your product and engineering teams, shipping better software faster is among the most compelling of the bunch. At UserVoice, we found that the separation of our product and engineering teams led to finger-pointing. Engineers would grumble “I don’t understand why we’re building this, it doesn’t make sense,” while the product managers would see what the...

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Product backlog keeping you up at night? Throw it away.

Matt Young — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 16:00:53 +0000

What would you say if I told you that your product backlog is hindering your product and engineering teams from building the software your customers actually want? What if I said that by eliminating your backlog entirely and beginning each development cycle with a blank page you will reap tremendous benefits? It turns out, the majority of the time and energy spent in your backlog is wasteful and a...

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How we Doubled our Valuable Product Releases by Adopting Shape Up

Matt Young — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 17:30:07 +0000

Is the software you’re building delivering the most value to your customers? When we asked ourselves at UserVoice this very question at the beginning of 2020 we weren’t proud of our answer. Realizing (and admitting) we’d failed to maintain focus on one of the most important goals of any software organization was the harsh wake-up call our organization needed. One that prompted us to make drastic...

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Top 5 Technical Skills Every Product Manager Should Know

Heather McCloskey — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 16:00:00 +0000

While a technical background is a mandatory prerequisite for becoming a product manager, there are some technical skills worth having in your toolbox as a PM. The good news is you don’t need to go back to school to master these technical competencies either. The skills we’ll discuss in this article won’t put you in competition with your engineers or make you smarter than your system architects.

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The Best Product Management Tools and the Problems they Solve

Daniel Molina — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 13:00:14 +0000

As a product manager, you probably wear a lot of hats. Strategist. Liaison. Analyst. Salesperson. QA…and those are just the ones you wear before lunch. With the litany of responsibilities on your plate, eliminating inefficiencies becomes an(other) important task. Fortunately, there’s no lack of solutions. There are tons of specialized product management tools available today to solve some of your...

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The One Question You Need to Answer as a New Product Leader

Cliff Gilley — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 16:30:57 +0000

Outline The One Question What Could Inhibit My Ability to Succeed? Is it people, process, policies, vision, etc? What do I have control over and what do I not? Do I have the influence i need to change things for the better? Prioritizing Potential Problem Areas Eisenhower Model – Urgency vs. Importance Avoid the time vampires and zombie efforts It’s not you, it’s me… Make a Plan to Tackle Potential...

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How to Spot the Gaps You Inherited

Cliff Gilley — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:00:29 +0000

Product Management is All About Filling Gaps One of the most interesting things about Product Management is the wide variety of things that the role is expected to do and to cover. While we can pretty much all agree that the primary purpose of product management is to discover new and valuable problems that we can solve through innovation and iteration, the very process of bringing those ideas to...

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Overcoming your Company’s Fear of Failing

Bonnie Pecevich — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:30:06 +0000

The latest generation of entrepreneurs has contributed its share of buzzwords and mantras to the business lexicon with mixed results. We all now know “unicorns” aren’t just mythical horses. “Disruption” is a legitimate strategy for a company trying to break into a new market… and legitimate fear for those already making money there. And, of course, we know the best way to hone your business...

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Building Relationships with Other Team Leaders

Cliff Gilley — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 17:00:41 +0000

No product leader should be surprised how much their new job features coffee meetings and impromptu chats. There will be plenty of leaders at your level (sales, support, success, marketing, etc.) and while you may be the one given domain over the roadmap, your stakeholders take these peers’ opinions of your work into serious account. How do you build solid, open relationships with these key peers...

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How to Get Roadmap Buy-in: Tell a Good Story

Anne Harris — Wed, 16 May 2018 22:16:07 +0000

Numbers are great—when the black ones get bigger and the red ones get smaller, it’s always a good thing. And yeah, charts are awesome—arrows pointing up and to the right portend great things in the future, especially when they look like a hockey stick. But it’s hard to make an emotional connection with facts and figures when you’re seeing them in a presentation. While you can intellectually...

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