
In almost 20 years as a product manager, I have seen some concepts work, but many more fail. To this day, I can’t really recognize a pattern for success or failure. Concepts that I would bet a lot of money on don’t work at all. Others, in which I have little faith, scale fast. I […]

A key task of digital product management is to make decisions in a complex environment with almost infinite options for action. In this context, committing to a product strategy is probably the most fundamental decision a product organization has to make. Surprisingly, however, many companies operate without a product strategy - partly out of fear of committing to something, partly out of uncertainty about how to build a product strategy in the first place. This post describes why a product strategy is necessary and how it can be defined.

The general state of agile product management is embarrassing. Despite better knowledge and the agile manifesto being around for decades now, the vast majority of products only see a lab or split test at the very end while all steps before remain agile wasteland. The usual reaction of product management is to blame others: stupid […]

Personal interviews are an effective way to gain empathy for customers and their customer journey: What do customers experience and – most importantly – why? What points of contact do they have? Which information sources do they use? Where are problems and what runs ok? Without answers to these and many more questions it will […]

Innovation requires great ideas. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on fuzzy brainstorming sessions anymore but have a much more sophisticated method set at hand. Design Studio for example allows us in only 2-3 hours to explore many more ideas compared to brainstorming sessions AND collaboratively develop the best ideas into a tangible prototype. Design […]

Developing online products is expensive. Once the concept has been defined, a calculation for developing a small product might look like this: persons in dev team 6 days development x 60 EUR per person and day x 600 EUR development costs = 216,000 In view of such amounts possible ways to cut costs will be […]

Revenue and profit pressure can be used in appositive, productive way. It potentially helps to concentrate on stuff that really matters, to quickly go through the phase of product/market fit and to realize a truly scaling business model. In big enterprises however this pressure often turns into the very opposite, becoming a long-term problem that […]

It seems to be some kind of natural law that leads to an exponential feature growth on websites over time. This exponential curve is mainly driven by budget planning circles regularly emphasizing the need to create hockey-stick-like revenue streams. But even without any revenue pressure, product managers are creative enough and want to be “productive” […]

Sometimes product managers are tempted to enviously look back to the good old times of waterfall. The world was still simple and easy. Product managers sat at their desks, documenting their plan in a PRD, then handed it over to the developers and before long the next PRD was written. In the meantime one was […]

Background One of our clients is a highly specialized service provider from Germany, offering its services on a level that only a few others are capable of worldwide. Customers have to visit the provider in person in order to get the service. Due to the exclusive nature of the offer, customers will travel even very […]

We meet surprisingly many UX people who are dissatisfied with the way UX works in their companies. And vice versa, surprisingly many companies are not satisfied with how UX works for them. One of the first questions we usually get is how an organizational structure and processes should look like to integrate UX successfully in […]

The promise for revolutionary mobility in the 1980s had a name “Sinclair C5”. Innovator Sir Clive Sinclair developed this electric vehicle, and Hoover, better known for vacuum cleaners, took over sales and distribution. This thing was from another galaxy: super innovative and super cool. But somehow only a few would buy a C5. For a […]

Implementing innovative ideas in large enterprises often feels like fighting windmills. Employees may be qualified and motivated to whatever level and there may be an abundance of ideas, but an invisible evil force seems to smother any creativity in no time. According to Russell Ackoff, it is always the “system’s” fault when no innovation is […]

Asking laptop owners in hipster startup cafés (like the Sankt Oberholz in Berlin) what they are missing, the answer will probably be: „I just need a cool idea.“ Just the opposite seems to be true for established companies in need of growth, where other statements are typical like: “If there is one thing not missing, […]

Business Development is a fuzzy term with many definitions and roles in enterprises. In practice the following activities prevail: Acquisition of large, strategic customers Development of strategies and initiatives to let the company grow by vertical and horizontal differentiation Acquisition, the first role, is an important task for companies. But I simply don’t get why […]

The core of agile product development is to improve a product iteratively, based on fast customer feedback. However, there are many companies out there, which do not learn from customers (see also “Wasted potentials of agile product development”). The majority of them has an inner claim to involve customers in development, but is not able […]

productable hasn’t had any vacation for a while. We should go soon. We live in Berlin, so options are manifold. We could go by train, by bike or by car. Or we’ll take a plane from one of our airports Schönefeld or Tegel (if we just wait a bit more, we could choose the brand new […]

No matter how small a product starts – over time it will get bigger and fatter. The seemingly canonical growth paradime enforces the continuous extension of the product portfolio. Needs of existing customers should be satisfied even better and new customer groups should be cracked in parallel as well. There are only a few organizations […]

In our blog post „Test Angst“, we discussed the fear of product tests damaging a company’s market reputation. This time is gets actually scarier. There is a Test Angst II sitting in every one of us that is even harder to overcome. This angst triggers statements like: “This test person was not our target group anyway.” […]

Many products won’t be tested at all during concept or development phase or only at a very late stage. One of the main reasons is fear of damaging one’s brand by confronting customers with products that do not meet the company’s usual quality standard. Especially larger established enterprises think of product tests as jeopardizing market […]

Customer centricity is the master key for product management. Strictly tailoring products to customers’ needs is mandatory for long-term success. What is clear to every product manager in theory becomes surprisingly hard in practice – especially for established companies. Why? Almost every company with some longer history in a market has roughly run through the […]

Secrecy is important for every business to secure know-how. When overdone, however, secrecy can have negative impact on the learning curve that is highly important for product management (see also our blog-post „Wasted potentials of agile product development“). In the following we take a look on how to balance secrecy and learning in product management. […]

Lately in a well-known and highly successful online company: The latest big project is presented to product managers from around the globe. The introduction: „This project has been implemented following Lean Startup!“ And so, the audience curiously waits for the next slide to explain the approach. And then it is shown: A 3-month market survey […]

When asking product managers on the main principles of agile product development, you should roughly get the following answer: Cut the product in the smallest possible, viable and testable pieces (also called MVP). Deliver those, piece by piece (incremental), to the customer to learn as quickly as possible from real feedback from real customers on […]