Department of Product small logo

The Blog

Get product-led news, analysis and knowledge for people who work in tech. Join 45,000+ product managers, designers, engineers and VCs from Spotify, Netflix, Apple, Amazon and more.

No spam. Check out a sample of what you get here.

Explainers

How to Write a Product Vision Statement

It goes without saying that your product vision should ultimately link back to your product’s overall value proposition. Sure, it doesn’t have to be explicitly obvious that your vision fits within a specific industry domain, but it makes no sense to come up with a vision so random that people feel confused by the mismatch between the vision statement and the company.

Strategy

How to Create a Product Content Strategy

Content is perceived as something that can be slapped onto a design at the end of the product development process. But in the best companies, content is the design process, not an afterthought. A product that has invested in heavily integrating both design and content into the overall experience oozes quality. You can feel it.

Why Product Features Matter

Feature factories is the term people use when they’re working at a company who’s idea of product strategy is putting a spreadsheet together with a shopping list of items that need to be delivered with a few dates slapped next to them. But as real as these frustrations are, it’s also worth asking: what if features actually do matter?

Radical product strategy

In 2011 when I founded Likelii, we had a clear vision: To make it easier and fun for wine enthusiasts to find wines they were likely to like. But despite having a clear vision, I had caught what I now call the Iteration Epidemic where we try to copy the success of companies that found their success through iteration, trying one strategy after another to find the nirvana of product-market fit.

How to measure product market fit

As we look to challenge ourselves to make the best decisions possible, we often judge our decision making skills on the outcomes we achieved. This isn’t quite right since the outcome itself will always be unpredictable; the results achieved are different to the decision making process which led to a decision being taken. This is known as ‘resulting’ – where you assess the quality of your decision by the outcome it achieved.

Process

Skills

Tools for making better product decisions

A good decision can lead to bad results, but so long as the steps you took to make that decision were sound, you can sleep safe at night knowing that you took the best action based on what you knew at the time.

3 Ways to Develop a Metrics Oriented Mindset

Get yourself into the habit of continuously asking yourself, the product team and the wider business how you will measure feature requests and upcoming product developments.

Podcasts

Product Stacks – Episode 2 – Majed Chaaban at Venmo

Majed Chaaban is a Senior Product Manager at Venmo where he’s focused on the Venmo Debit Card – a product allows millions of users to spend Venmo balance funds everywhere Mastercard is accepted in the U.S. and in U.S. territories. Prior to Venmo, Majed was Senior PM at PayPal.

Product Stacks – Episode 1 – Christin at Shopify

Christin Karwatzki is a Senior Product Manager at Shopify where she helps millions of merchants offer competitive and reliable delivery experiences. Prior to Shopify, Christin spent 4 years at Amazon in both product and program management.

Resources

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Career development

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Weekly briefings

Product Briefing – October 5, 2023

Google Docs’ new competitor, AI wars, App industry benchmarks
Plus: Airbnb’s ML patent, DoorDash’s swipe for restaurants and Uber expands to returns

All articles

Product Principles – Examples for Product Managers

Product Principles – Examples for Product Managers

Product principles are used by product teams to help guide decision making. They may initially feel like a nebulous corporate waste of time, but once you’ve invested some time in developing them, you’ll rarely wish you didn’t.

How to Conduct a Product Health Check

How to Conduct a Product Health Check

Product strategy isn’t simply about clear decision making; before you can even begin to make any decisions about the direction of your product, you need to spend some time in diagnostic mode where you try to build a big picture snapshot of the health of your product.

DevRel Explained for Product Managers

DevRel Explained for Product Managers

Developers are, and always will be, a critical part of product development. Not just because engineers are the ones actually building the products we use, but also because getting the engineering community on board as evangelists for your product can make or break your success.

How to Build Products Quickly

How to Build Products Quickly

If you’ve ever had the joys of working in both an early stage startup and a large corporation, you’ll understand the difference between a company with an operating cadence of ‘run’ and a company with an operating cadence of ‘stay afloat before the quicksand of corporate bureaucratic sludge kills you’.

Accessibility Checklist for Product Teams

Accessibility Checklist for Product Teams

Why accessibility can no longer be treated as an afterthoughtAccessibility is the practice of improving the usability of your products for a broad audience. When product teams hear the word “accessibility” they may think first of people with physical conditions: low...

Product Positioning for Product Managers

Product Positioning for Product Managers

Why an understanding of how your product is positioned is criticalA key responsibility for Product Managers is to define how their products are positioned in the market. Pricing, user experience, features, performance, branding, customer service and partnerships...

How to de-risk your Product Strategy

How to de-risk your Product Strategy

Ultimately, you’ll never know if what you’re going to build will succeed until you’ve built it. But there are some sensible steps to take before committing to building your product that will help you to increase its likelihood of success – and de-risk your likelihood of failure.

How to Structure your Product Org to Optimise for Growth

How to Structure your Product Org to Optimise for Growth

If your company’s success depends on growing effectively, you need to get these things rightWhen a company grows quickly, it undergoes stress. The faster the growth, the more the stress. Structure can make the situation better, but only if it is designed correctly for...

Download your template

Enter your email below to get access to the product roadmap templates.

Check your email to access your resource

Download your template

Enter your email below to get access to the product roadmap templates.

Check your email to access your resource

Download your template

Enter your email below to get access to the product development models.

Check your email to access your resource

Download your template

Enter your email below to get access to the product development models.

Check your email to access your resource