The Secrets of Product Management Podcast

Bad news is product management stock in trade In this episode I talk about the best tactics for delivering bad news. Have you ever had to tell a customer you weren’t going to deliver their favorite feature? Or inform your executive team that your new product version will be later than you had promised? We Read More

This podcast is the first of a series discussing some of the key tech concepts you need to be an effective software product manager, even if you aren’t technical. I briefly cover all the different types of skills and characteristics product managers need to have (technical skills is just one of these, an equal among Read More

We are experts in our product, and often in our domain. How do we overcome our expertise – the Curse of Knowledge – to discover new things about our market? In this podcast, taken from my weekly live Facebook video, I talk about a few simple questioning techniques you can use. The video/podcast was inspired Read More

“You should never get attached to your idea because it will change.” In this episode of All The Responsibility, Nils and Rob interview Ryan Troll, co-founder of the PM Genome project. Ryan started focusing on startups and the startup space after reading a Harvard Business Review about the life of CEOs. In 2016 he and Read More

Market discovery and how to do it In this episode Rob and I continue our conversation on the things you can do as a product manager even before you have expertise in the product or space. In the last episode, our topic was common problems that product managers can start addressing on day 1 of Read More

“Always Problems” The genesis of episode’s topic came up in many conversations I’ve had with experienced product managers. Most product management job listings want you to have direct experience with the product you’ll be managing, or at least experience in the space. On the other hand, most experienced product managers think domain experience is the Read More

Innovation Options are superior to ROI for justifying investment in innovation At the end of 2016, Nils heard and met David Binetti at a Product Tank meetup. He was blown away by David’s take on the ROI of Innovation and Innovation Options. So we asked David to come in for a more in-depth interview. This Read More

At the end of 2016, Nils watched a Q&A with David at a Product Tank meetup. He was blown away by David’s take on the ROI of Innovation and Innovation Options. So we asked David to come in for a more in-depth interview. This is the first of two parts of what turned into a Read More

A few months ago, San Francisco played host to the Mind the Product conference, a meetup meant to inspire collaboration and bring together the ever growing community of product managers. The conference, now in its 5th year, was started by some of today’s leaders in product management including the founders of the ProdPad product management Read More

The power of retrospectives Teams that do structured retrospectives or debriefs are typically 25% more effective. What does this mean for you? That improvement can translate into very big business results, like multiplying your profits by a factor of 10.  Want better retros? Download my 5 Tips To Unleash The Astounding Power of Retrospectives. How Read More

Taking on an existing product In this episode, we talk through an underrepresented topic in the world of Product Management: how specifically to approach the management of an already existing product. Much of the conversation in the podcast and blogosphere about Product Management focuses on the act of bringing a new product to market. But Read More

How did we learn product management? In this episode Rob and I share some stories about how we learned product management, how we learn new things in general, and what we’re focused on learning right now. How Did Nils Learn Product Management In The Dark Ages? I start out by talking about how I learned Read More

Rob created the Feature Canvas to help manage the development of major new features. We think other product managers would find it valuable. He presented about it at Product School recently, and offered to share it on the podcast. Some of you already have a picture in your head what that might look like, simply based Read More

In our earlier episode about how to answer the "product teardown" question in a product manager job interview, we promised a real life example. Here it is!

How do you lay the foundations for success when starting your first product management job, or your third, or your tenth? In this episode we go through a set of ten activities that - if you do them - will get you off to a great start.

In this pair of episodes, we focus on that very common and somewhat feared question that occurs in many product management interviews: What’s a product you like and how would you improve it? I think we can all agree that in an interview context, the interviewer does not really care what products you like. This Read More

We product managers are not our customers. Without good market information, we can’t make good product decisions. So, we need to spend a lot of time talking to customers and our market to find out what we should make. Here's how to do that better.

It's a question we all get a lot from our executives - “How much money will we make from this feature?” In this episode we explore a few techniques for answering the question.

How Much Is That Product Manager In The Window? In this episode we revisit a topic from last season – the business value of product management. How much is your time worth? How much should your PM work this year contribute to revenue next year? Does it make a difference if you’re managing enterprise software Read More

Rob and I both do some advising, are invited to advise various companies, and lead workshops. The conversation in this episode grew out of self-reflection we’ve both done about our advising, our readiness to be advisors, and what organizations seeking advice should consider when seeking out advisors.

This is part two of our interview with Hubert Palan, found and CEO of ProductBoard, and long time product management leader and executive. Part 1 is here. Three things you can start doing today As always, we like to give you actionable takeaways from our podcast episodes. The three ideas below come directly from our Read More

Nils first met Hubert Palan about a year ago at the Product Management Summit in San Francisco. Nils was presenting some ideas on a “roll your own product management system of record,” while Hubert was there to talk about the product he was building – a real product management system of record. This product, ProductBoard, Read More

We are very excited to unleash the first episode in our new season of All The Responsibility, None Of The Authority, a podcast for product managers, product marketers, innovators, entrepreneurs – everyone who wants to be more effective and more successful creating and selling products. Season Two has a lot of changes, including a new Read More