In the rapidly developing world of artificial intelligence, there are well over 100, if not soon 1,000 AI tools! This diversity raises important questions:

• Which of these tools should we use in our daily work?

• Which ones are mature and have already proven themselves?

• And which is the right tool for my role?

The AI Radar received a remarkable response from product people after my talk at Product Tank: I received dozens of messages and comments. And I won't forget the moment when around 50 mobile phones went up to take a photo of it 😅

In response to this interest, I have written this guide to provide a practical guide on how to read the radar. And thanks to helpful suggestions from the community about tools that were missing from the radar, I have added to it.

I recognise enormous potential in significantly increasing the innovative strength of teams through the selective use of AI. The radar aims to act as a catalyst for broader acceptance and integration of AI in our day-to-day work. It is intended to provide clarity and offer reliable orientation in the fast-moving landscape of AI tools. This radar curates carefully selected AI tools that are specifically tailored to the daily tasks in product management and software development.

This is because, my opinion is:

No AI usage is not an option!

Please feel free to share your feedback, tips and experiences to help reduce the barriers to using this pioneering technology. I would like to help a wide range of colleagues get started in the world of AI. The AI Radar can help to establish the routine use of AI tools in product management and software development.

How to read the AI Radar?

I have tried to make the AI Radar intuitive and self-explanatory. Nevertheless, questions may arise about the correct interpretation. So here is a brief explanation.

The circles show the level of maturity

In order to provide a clear guidance, I have organised the concentric circles according to the maturity level of the tools for daily use. Every technology, every tool, every product goes through different stages of development and adoption. The product managers among us should know this. :-)

For example, tools that are placed outside the circles sound exciting and relevant according to the manufacturers' announcements, but have not been rolled out yet.

1) experimental → observe!

This outer category includes tools that are either new and not yet fully developed or, in my opinion(!), have not yet sufficiently proven themselves in their application scenarios, especially for product management and software development. I recommend keeping these tools and their further development on your radar in order not to miss out on potential future opportunities.

Those of you who are keen to experiment can of course simply try out the tools and form your own opinion. Feel free to share your experience and evaluation with me!

2) useful → try!

This middle area contains AI tools that have already reached a certain level of maturity and their application scenarios are in my opinion(!) useful for our daily work. It's worth trying out these tools with an initial real use case at work! The proof of the pudding is in the eating. This way, you can expand your own toolbox and find out for yourself what each tool is and isn't suitable for. Usually, every tool offers a free version or trial phase.

3) established → use!

The innermost circle represents in my opinion(!) already proven AI solutions. These technologies are mature, and I recommend actively integrating them into your day-to-day work! The use of these tools brings tangible benefits, so that even a paid version should be worth it: generally speaking.

Of course, it is utopian to use all the tools! Many of the tools substitute each other.

The cross splits the radar according to roles

The division of the tools by the cross into four ‘pieces of cake’ serves to categorise the tools according to role profile:

• Product: tools for Product Managers & Product Owners

• Design: tools for product / UX / UI designers

• Engineering: tools for Software Developers

• Team: generic tools or mostly LLMs, which can help all roles in the team with various tasks.

Some tools are exactly on the dividing line. This should indicate that this tool is suitable for several roles.

The symbols assign a rating to the tools

The icons in this AI Radar serve as a rating system for the tools presented. They provide a quick overview of my personal(!) assessment and experience with the respective applications.

And what if a tool has no rating? That doesn't mean the tool is bad! Tools that I haven't tried out enough myself don't even have a symbol.

+1: Recommendation

This is my personal recommendation and perhaps also an insider tip. These tools have particularly impressed me and, in my opinion, offer outstanding added value!

👍 Thumb up: Proven

I use a 👍 to mark tools that I have observed and experienced as having proven themselves in long-term use. For me, they have proven their reliability and usefulness under real working conditions.

⭐ Star: Promising

I usually use this symbol for the most promising new additions to AI Radar. As this technology is still relatively young, new tools and features are constantly appearing on the market. Although I find tools with a star symbol very interesting and potentially valuable, I have not yet been able to gather enough experience to give a final assessment.

It is important for me to emphasise that these ratings are based on my personal experience and assessment. They reflect my current level of knowledge and my subjective opinion.

I therefore invite you to share your experiences with the tools with me, especially if you have used them more intensively in productive situations. My goal is to continuously update the radar and make it a valuable resource for the entire community.

The AI Radar 10/2024

This is what the AI Radar looks like in version 10/2024 as of 1 October 2024. The high-resolution version can be found at the very end for downloading and sharing with colleagues.

What has changed in the 10/2024 version?

8 AI tools included in the radar:

Perplexity.ai: I use this tool every day, especially for research. I simply forgot it in the first version of the radar. :-)

Cursor.com is an AI-powered code editor designed to increase the productivity of software developers through intelligent code suggestions and seamless interaction with codebases. Thanks Tarik Hennings for pointing out that the tool was missing!

Pendo.io is an AI-powered product experience and adoption platform that helps companies improve software experiences by combining product analytics, user feedback and in-app guidance into a single solution. Thank you, Sebastian Fleischmann, for pointing me to Pendo's AI features!

Kraftful.com is an AI-supported platform for product teams that makes it possible to quickly analyse large amounts of user feedback in order to gain actionable insights for product development. Thanks Bernhard Hecker for the tip!

NotebookLM is an AI-powered tool from Google that allows users to import and analyse documents and web content and use artificial intelligence to generate summaries, answers to questions and even audio discussions.

Product-Copilot.ai is an AI-powered browser extension for product managers that integrates seamlessly with common project management tools and supports the creation of user stories, error messages and other product-related tasks. Thanks, Paul Wall for the tip!

Relume.io is a web-based design platform that enables users to create responsive websites and user interfaces without coding by providing pre-built components and intuitive drag-and-drop functionality. Thanks to Paul Wall for this one too!

Condens.io is a centralised user insights platform that allows companies to import and analyse data from user research and make it accessible across teams to create a single source of truth. According to Thomas Gläser, it is a better alternative to Dovetail. Thanks for the tip!

Changed categorisation for 2 AI tools

Claude.ai was included twice in the first version of the radar (in Product and Engineering respectively). It has now moved to the border between Product and the entire team. Thanks to the Artifacts feature, I see very special fields of application for product managers in prototyping (read more here). Since it is a GenAI LLM like ChatGPT, all colleagues can benefit from it. And of course also developers for help with code creation, debugging or code review.

V0.dev is an AI-powered generative user interface system that allows developers and designers to quickly create React-compatible UI code using simple text instructions or image templates. I now see this tool as less experimental and more useful and would like to encourage every software developer and designer to give it a try! Be it for quick prototypes or as a starting point for the final implementation. A lot is possible.

Should I now only work with AI tools?

No! No matter where you or your team are in the process of establishing modern ways of working ‘by the book’ and using tools, start with exactly what appeals to you most in your situation! Start with baby steps. Better slow, but steady. It's better to establish yourself than to give up because of disappointment due to excessive demands.

If you don't know where to start, start by looking at the recommendations and proven tools for your role. This will narrow down the selection enormously.

Help to shape the AI Radar!

The AI landscape is developing rapidly. My radar is a snapshot and can quickly become outdated - that's what makes AI development so exciting! The variety of AI tools makes it difficult to keep an overview and use them effectively. I want to master this challenge with you and keep updating the radar.

And that's why your participation helps me to ensure that the AI Radar always offers help and orientation to the community! Therefore:

Share your experiences and insights with me!

• Which tools are missing or deserve more attention?

• Which tools would you categorise or rate differently?

• Should certain experimental tools be removed or upgraded?

Send me your practical experiences, screenshots and screen recordings. I will be happy to incorporate and publish them - not without giving you credit, of course!

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Let's develop a living treasure of knowledge with your feedback!

Let's take customer-centred product development to the next level thanks to AI and shape our way of working with AI together! Because lower risks in product innovations and shorter innovation cycles are real added values that can be measured in hard cash.

So, stay tuned & just do it!

Alexej

PS: Here is the AI Radar 10/2024 in full resolution:

The history of the AI Radar

09/2024

As of version 10/2024 of the radar, I have removed the ‘to try out’ rating with a question mark (?) without replacement. It was more of my internal note about what I still wanted to try out and therefore had no benefit for the community.

Though I am publishing in German first, I will publish the English versions of my most important articles and resources in English.

Consider subscribing to the “🇺🇸 English only” list for free to stay up-to-date. This is how it goes:

1. Subscribe to BeyondBacklog.de by clicking on this button:
   

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2. Go to beyondbacklog.de/account make your choice like this:

You are done! 💪

Happy reading!

Alexej

How can we use AI tools in product development practice?

For me, it was important to provide actionable ideas and go beyond ChatGPT prompt engineering use cases like I see so-called experts focusing on this topic only.

In this article I will provide the slides including my narrative, so you can grasp everything I showed. This is what the talk was about:

1. Who am I?

2. What is Product Orga Fitness Test?

3. Q1: Start with Problem Understanding

   1. Dovetail

   2. Miro AI

   3. Automating Customer Interviews with Juttu

   4. The result: one Discovery Day, Every Week.

   5. AI as Trojan Horse for Product Discovery

4. Q2: Time to insight

   1. Claude.ai Artifacts for Prototyping

   2. Uizard.io

   3. 10x Your Innovation Power

5. Q3: People Development

   1. Stanford University Study

   2. Harvard Business School Study

6. The AI Tool Radar for Web Product Development

7. Run the Full Fitness Orga Test

8. How to Stay in Touch

Who am I?

Currently, I introduce myself as a Product Leader uncovering the value of using AI tools at work.

After 18 years of non-stop working in the digital space in different industries and different product roles and studying part-time in parallel, this year I finally took some time off.

It gave me the possibility to explore new frontiers. In my private life I started dancing West Coast Swing pretty intensive. And my professional Me started trying out different AI tools for product use cases.

This is exactly where I personally see huge potential for using the right AI tools and why I was on stage.

What is Product Orga Fitness Test?

For the talk I utilized the product orga fitness test of the Value Rebels - a boutique product consulting company on a mission to upgrade European product teams to build better digital products. This test is a quick assessment which help to understand the gaps between the status quo and the common definition of “what is a good product practice?” according to the definition of the Value Rebels.

During the talk I explored 3 of 49 questions from different dimensions with the audience using slido.com and showed how using the right AI tools can strengthen your fitness level for those topics.

Q1: Start with Problem Understanding

Here are the ratings of the live poll on the question if product teams do start with problem understanding:

So the question arises:

how could AI help you with the problem understanding?

First: why most of you did not rank with a 5? What is the reason?

There are always several reasons. But there is always this one pain, you might be familiar with: From product managers point of view this is how it looks like when you have to analyze the recordings:

After the interview you have to hear all the recordings again in full length and summarize and analyze them in order to make the insights digestible for the team and for stakeholders. So we feel that it costs us almost the whole week of work to do everything right.

As humans, we seek the excuse: I need the management to allow me to put my time in discovery. If we are honest with ourselves this excuse is one reason why we do product discovery barely.

Dovetail

Let me show you dovetail.com!

Dovetail is a customer insights hub and research platform. The free version already offers everything you need to heal the pain with making interview insights digestible really quick.

How? Let me show you.

1. You upload your video of the interview (it takes 1-2 minutes):

   

2. you let the tool transcribe the video (it takes 2-3 minutes):

   

3. You get suggestions on the highlight quotes of every interview (it takes 1 minute).

4. You go through the highlights and accept or change them (it takes 5 minutes).

5. If you want you can add custom tags for certain quotes on specific features, or problems, or topics.

In the end it takes 10 - 15 minutes in total per video to fully analyze and summarize the whole interview instead of watching the whole recording again. I recommend doing this work right after the customer interview, as you still remember the conversation.

When you repeat this practice for 5 videos, you are done within 1–1,5 hours to gain all insights from all interviews without the need to listen to all recordings again.

6. After this, you want to make your insights digestible for your colleagues:

   

   Therefor you just let the dovetail AI create a board with clusters of quotes to different topics. You can edit them and organize them by using your own tags. Let’s say it takes you another 30 minutes to have something to work on together with your team.

7. And if you want to make main insights easy digestible for your colleagues, you can automatically create a summary video with all important insights from all interviews. It takes you, not longer than 10-15 minutes:

   

   So instead of showing your team or colleagues 5 interviews 30 minutes each, you show a 10-minute video out of all significant insights, e.g., when you start with a roadmapping or planning or refinement session.

Miro AI

In case you want to do discovery work by the book, you may be want to create an interview snapshot for every interview. It’s a one-pager document introduced by Teresa Torres in her book Continuous Discovery Habits. You might be familiar with it.

I prefer and recommend using this Miro template for Interview results by David Pereira he provides for free. This template is reduced to what in my opinion is really necessary:

With this template I suggest you to take the Dovetail transcript of the interview and to use the Miro AI feature to suggest what to fill in. This is a screenshot of my very first shot with a very simple prompt:

Already with my very simple prompt I got a good enough list of opportunities I can copy, paste and edit them in the template. I got also one powerful quote which I can pretty much copy & paste. Only the facts are indeed too long for the template I use. So I either would need to re-iterate with one or two prompts, or fill out the facts by hand inspired from what Miro AI suggests me.

Automating Customer Interview Scheduling with Juttu

We saw how we can simplify the tasks of summarizing and analyzing customer interviews and make them digestible for our colleagues. But there is still another pain:

Teresa Torres suggests implementing continuous discovery habits. But scheduling all the interviews with customers and the back and forth via email to find a slot is a lot of admin effort. You could automate this as well.

Here is just an inspiration from one of a lot of YouTube videos how to automate appointment generation. You can use tools like make.com together with ChatGPT and Gmail and Calendly or another tools. There is some AI logic for text generation inside this workflow. Such automation setups are pretty common for B2B sales and customer success calls. So what I already saw working for sales or customer success, we could adapt for product discovery as well.

The downside of this solution: you need to set it up first, so it requires an initial effort.

Let me show you an alternative:

Juttu

There is a startup named Juttu.co currently in their first beta iteration out there. They solve exactly this continuous scheduling problem for you. It’s a simple mail automation with a kind of Calendly functionality and this is how it works:

You just put your list of contacts in this tool, define your interview slots in the calendar and set up the weekly limit. This tool promises to automate the continuous recruiting of customers for the interviews.

And, there is no AI inside this tool: yet, I guess.

So I want to show you, that you don’t need AI for everything in order to improve your product orga fitness level! You can start utilizing the right tools with the right methods for the proper task.

Even in the era of AI don’t forget about tools and methods without AI!

The Result: one Discovery Day, Every Week.

Let’s wrap up: this is how one day in your week could look like:

You can run 5 automatically scheduled interviews in the morning, gain insights from 5 interview recordings and create digestible summary out of them in the afternoon.

When did you manage to do it last time with 5 interviews?

Me never before!

I think: This will for sure supercharge your innovation power. And you still have 4 days a week left to do, what you’ve done before while you didn’t need to ask somebody to do discovery.

And, there is another secret, I want to tell you…

AI as Trojan Horse for Product Discovery

I see AI being the Trojan Horse for us product people to bring in product discovery to life in our companies. In my experience it’s much easier to get new tools, than to explain the whole concept of product discovery to your management or colleagues. Especially if you say: “We want to use AI” chances are higher you get support because managers consider this topic as hot and want their people to gain knowledge about it.

Q2: Time to Insight

Here are the ratings of the live poll on the question if teams try to reduce the time to insight:

Therefrom the question arises:

How could AI help to reduce time to insight?

How could AI help us to throw away bad ideas fast?

We may be want to test our assumptions and ideas with prototypes, right? But it still requires some team effort and time to create such prototypes, and it takes some days and a few people.

What if we as Product Managers could create prototypes on our own?

Let me show you Claude.ai. It’s more or less the same as ChatGPT but with a special feature called Artifacts.

Claude.ai Artifacts for Prototyping

Let assume you have an idea for a new feature or app, and you want to try out things fast. This is what I did:

I told you I started dancing West Coast Swing. And as a social dancer I think I uncovered an opportunity for a product and I want to quickly visualize my idea in order to test my assumptions. This is what I did and showed to a friend already.

I wrote down the idea of a new app and a very simple prompt. This was my first result:

It’s not bad! It’s fully clickable. I was never ever able to do such things before!

Uizard.io

Then I went to uizard.io. It’s an AI powered mockup and prototype creation tool. It is like Figma on AI steroids with a prompt command line.

In uizard.io I typed in just one sentence with the very high level idea what I wanted. Just one sentence, not the whole requirements! This is what I got within 1 Minute:

Doesn’t matter if for me or for a designer: reaching this state, overcoming the blank sheet of paper would take at least some hours or days including conversations between 2 people.

How often we just don’t create prototypes because it’s too much effort?

I think, pretty often!

Now, I could have started to iterate from here in uizard, but this is what I did instead. I screenshotted the uizard results and gave them Claude:

This is the result after less than 1 hour and may be 10 iterations:

I think it’s pretty amazing for the effort I took. I was never able to create this state of my idea visualization within such a short amount of time.

Imagine how often I can do it now!

How many different ideas I can visualize, discuss with my team or stakeholders?

Additionally, I have a full functioning react code, which I could now ask my developer to push to a server and make it available on my smartphone to run interviews and assumption tests with users.

10x Your Innovation Power

We are going to become Super Swiss Army Knifes. In a very positive way. We now can reduce dependencies within a team by augmenting our skills with the capabilities of right AI tools to iterate faster.

I am bold on it: I say, utilizing AI tools with the right methods will someday 10x your innovation power in terms of speed in uncovering business value.

And the crazy thing is: this is just the beginning. The capabilities of the technology and the possibilities of its utilization will only improve.

Imagine, what will be possible in one, two, or five years from now…

When you don’t start to decrease your cycles for customer insights and assumption tests, while others will do: you will automatically fall back in the value your product provides. And this should be a matter for both: you as a product manager in a company and you as the CEO of your own professional life.

This brings me to the next and last fitness test question.

Q3: People Development

Here are the ratings of the live poll on the question if companies do care enough about development of their people:

With these results in mind ask yourself:

How does AI affect you?

Not your team.

Not your company.

Just you and your professional role?!

Let me show you some research results…

Stanford University Study

There is a study of the Stanford University showing the following:

The blue bars are performance score of knowledge workers on tasks without using ChatGPT, the pink bars are performance score with ChatGPT.

On the left side we see results for less skilled people, on the right side we see results for more skilled people.

Now look at the green arrow:

less skilled people with ChatGPT outperform more skilled people without ChatGPT.

Look at the two red arrows:

AI as Co-Pilot allows much higher performance uplift for less skilled people than for high skilled people.

And now look at the dotted red line:

there is almost no difference in performance between skilled and unskilled people who use AI.

Having 18 years of professional experience, I count myself to the high skilled people side. So for me, it means: I need to take care about utilization of AI, otherwise fresh bachelor students will outperform me in certain tasks – not everywhere, to be fair. But still.

For young professionals on the flip side:

AI is a huge chance!

Keep this in mind, doesn’t matter which segment you belong to.

Harvard Business School Study

Another study of Harvard Business School came to the conclusion, that GPT-4 has the following impact on the productivity of knowledge workers.

• The quality of work has been increased by 40 % → we can gain better results.

• The speed of task completion has been increased by 25% → we can do work faster.

• The task completion has been increased by 12% → we can do tasks which we have not been able to do before, like I showed you how me as product manager is now able to create prototypes.

If we put these results in a formula, we see, that productivity doubles. And this is only using GPT-4 in 2023:

Now, let’s do just a speculative thought experiment:

• assume that two further technological iterations influence our productivity in the same way.

• assume this happens within next 5 years, or may be 10 years: doesn’t matter. Most of us will still be working.

• This means, that people, who use those tools, will be 10x productive than people who don’t.

My advice: Take it seriously! Don’t trust that companies will take your development in their hands. They don’t do it enough right now already, as we saw it in the poll results. It’s your own responsibility!

One action, you can take, is following me on LinkedIn and subscribing to my newsletter ;-) Every new follower and subscriber motivates me to keep uncovering the value of AI tools for the product development practice:

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The AI Tool Radar for Web Product Development

Since I know there are a lot of tools out there, it is a challenge to follow them all and recognize when and what to use it for.

This is why I started creating such a radar of AI tools for product development, where I want continuously evaluate AI tools for our use cases in product practice.

With this radar I want to focus on bridging the gap between technological possibilities and practical business applications that prepare product teams and product people to adopt and benefit from AI tools. I want to curate suitable tools and evaluate how they can help the product community.

If you want to get the radar in high resolution and stay up-to-date with the recent versions, consider becoming a subscriber! I am working on my next post I want to publish on October 1st, with the October edition of the radar containing additional tools. I intend to keep on updating this radar over time.

Run the Full Fitness Orga Test

Behind this QR code you will find the full fitness orga test with all 49 questions. I highly recommend you going through the test for yourself and then also with your team. It helps you to start the internal discussion on where you want to improve. It doesn’t matter if with or without AI: there is always room for improvement.

How to Stay in Touch

If you got interested, this is how you can reach me and join the discussion: either on LinkedIn or subscribing to my free newsletter:

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If you want to shape the future of work in product development together with me, talk to me or write me on LinkedIn or an e-mail.

If you know someone in a company who wants to start a practical exploration project to measure and learn about the impact of AI in product practice together and share the results with the community, please let me know!

Thank you for the attention, and I am open for questions and the discussion. So, feel free to comment:

Einen Kommentar hinterlassen

Stay curious and just do it!

Alexej

It’s not a sum, it’s a multiplication. Yes, indeed! If it would have been a sum, then 0 as one of the summands would still have a positive sum as result. So 0 entrepreneurial thinking + 1 growth mindset would still equal 1. In a multiplication formula you need at least 1 as each of the multipliers and nether a 0. Math is easy, isn’t it? ;-) Let's break down this equation.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

At the core of the Agile Product Manifesto lies a principle that rattles the cages of convention in traditional companies:

Embrace uncertainty. Be bold to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

This approach entails thinking entrepreneurially, constantly pondering over how your scale-able solution could sustainably enable more sales or reduce costs for the company.

Here's the truth: As a product manager, you're not here to ask what to do; you're here to see what to do! You must develop a keen eye for opportunities and act decisively as if you own the company.

So you better get into the habit of the following attitudes:

• I fully embody the company.

• I don't act like an employed manager but more like an unconventional entrepreneur.

• If you're looking for a person you can steer, you'll find no use for me.

This attitude I propose isn't about being uncontrollable - it's about being the one who takes the wheel, who navigates the challenging roads of product development with audacity and vision. I would rather hire a candidate whom I perceive such an attitude than a candidate feeling uncomfortable with these thoughts.

And just like an entrepreneur, who always tries to deliver (commercial) value to customers, I see entrepreneurial thinking as an integral part of the agile product mindset. In fact, it is often encouraged as it can drive innovation and enable businesses to thrive in competitive environments. Here's how these aspects align:

1. Customer Focus: Both entrepreneurs and those with a product mindset place a heavy emphasis on understanding customer needs and working to create value for the customer.

2. Innovation: Entrepreneurs are innovators, always looking for ways to improve or create new products and services from 0 to 1. This aligns with the continuous improvement aspect of the product mindset.

3. Risk Tolerance: Entrepreneurs are generally comfortable taking calculated risks. In the context of a product mindset, this might mean being willing to experiment with new features, technologies or approaches, even if they might not be successful.

4. Resourcefulness: Entrepreneurs are often highly resourceful, finding ways to accomplish their goals even with limited resources. This can align with the product mindset in the sense of finding the most effective ways to create and deliver value for customers.

5. Long-Term Vision: Entrepreneurs who own the business think about the long-term sustainability and scale-able growth of their businesses, while executive managers tend to optimise for the next fiscal year or two - also by cutting costs. In the product mindset, the entrepreneurial attitude aligns with the emphasis on the long-term value over short-term gains. But, take care: sometimes it’s necessary to build a solution for a short-term gain in order to bridge the business gap towards the long-term vision. Don’t be dogmatic!

So, while not every aspect of entrepreneurship directly translates to the product mindset, there are many overlaps, and the two certainly complement each other in a business context. Remember, mistakes are the inevitable companions of bold actions: a product manager devoid of mistakes is merely twiddling thumbs, not blazing trails. This is why yo need to establish learning & growth mindset.

The Growth Mindset

Being entrepreneurial isn't enough. As noted by Stefanie Peters, growth is an innate aspect of our personal journey. A growth mindset, as explored and defined by psychologist Carol Dweck, emphasizes ceaseless growth and development. So, we must persistently hone our skills and expand our capabilities, particularly in product development roles.

A growth mindset is crucial for product managers. It encourages embracing change, adapting to market dynamics, and constantly enhancing one's skills. It allows product managers to experiment, take calculated risks, and learn from the outcomes, even more from such without success. Product managers with this mindset don't shy away from challenges, they thrive on them. They see setbacks as stepping stones and failures as learning experiences.

There are the principles of the Agile Product Manifesto which say:

The key to innovation is to take small risks enabling learning and evidence-based evolution

and

Make assumptions and validate them as fast as possible

To master those principles and to foster a growth mindset:

• Stay curious — instead of making confident statements, try to phrase a question!

• Don’t hide uncertainty - better share stories where things turned out differently than you initially expected.

• cultivate a learning mindset with yourself - celebrate successes and failures as long as they contribute to the learning process. Start with yourself, and then encourage a culture that embraces failure as an opportunity to learn, iterate, and improve by acting as an example

In contrast prevent fixed mindset beliefs like …

• a challenge is a threat

• success of others is intimidating

• a critical feedback or a mistake is embarrassing

It's self-expaining which mindset truly equips a product manager for success.

Let me be clear: I would neither hire nor promote a candidate with a perceived fixed mindset. I bet, other product leaders see it the same. This mindset does not enable product managers to thrive or even to survive in their roles!

The Agile Product Mindset

The marriage of entrepreneurial thinking and behaviour with a learning and growth mindset births the agile product mindset - in my personal opinion. It's more than just Scrum or other agile methodologies. It's a deep-seated attitude that shapes how you approach problem-solving.

The agile product mindset helps you to deal with uncertainty and to follow this principle of The Agile Product Manifesto:

Frequently reorient to what creates value

Today, too many companies are hiring backlog managers instead of product entrepreneurs. It's time for a change. Agile methods aren't a remedy. They're at most building blocks for an agile mindset. Agile methods need to be combined with an entrepreneurial spirit that challenges the status quo and a constant desire to learn from customers and grow as an individual.

Your mindset, subtle as it may be, wields significant influence over your success. Sure, tools and frameworks are helpful. However, without the right mindset, their efficacy remains constrained.

In other words, your mindset isn't just an ingredient in your recipe for success; it's the chef that determines how well all the ingredients go together. Embrace the right mindset, and you'll be the agile product development professional who not only succeeds personally but also contributes to the broader success of your organization.

Is Mindset a Skill and can I adapt mine?

Let's get one thing straight, the word 'skill' has been grossly underused and misunderstood. We've confined it to mere physical abilities or competencies, disregarding the dynamism it encapsulates. 'Mindset' is not just a fancy buzzword; So, let's bust the myth here: mindset isn't just some philosophical concept or a fancy buzzword; it's a hardcore skill, as impactful as any technical or practical capability.

Mindset isn't innate; it's a learned attribute, shaped over time by attitudes, beliefs, and perspectives. It determines how you perceive situations and approach challenges. Take the 'growth mindset' - it's an absolute gem in the world of product management. It's about believing in your ability to evolve, being open to feedback, embracing failure as a growth catalyst, and wielding resilience in the face of adversity. Isn't that a skill worth its weight in gold?

And since humans are masters of adaptation (and mindset is no exception) you don’t need a magic wand to work on your mindset. It's a journey - convoluted, personal, and unique to every individual. How long does it take to develop your mindset, you ask? Well, it's not a one-size-fits-all situation. Following could be your roadmap, but only you can know, where you stand in terms of your mindset skills:

1. Awareness: To change, you first need to identify the need for change. It could be sparked by a life-altering event, feedback, or a simple moment of introspection. Ask yourself when re-reading the text above: am I fine with the status quo of my mindset?

2. Desire to change: The awareness must translate into a genuine desire. Change is an uphill battle without strong internal motivation. Imagine all the stuff you can build and the problems you could solve!

3. Understanding the new mindset: Understand what the new mindset looks like. This might involve hitting the books, seeking role models, or even reaching out to a coach, mentor, or just your boss.

4. Practice and reinforcement: Now comes the grind. The new mindset must be practiced repetitively and reinforced constantly. Brace yourself for behavioral changes, challenge old beliefs, and dive into new situations.

5. Patience and perseverance: Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. Changing a mindset is a long-haul flight, not a quick hop. It's about unlearning and relearning, and that takes time, perseverance, and resilience.

How long does it take? Timelines for this are as diverse as our fingerprints. For some, a mindset shift might occur in weeks or months, while for others, it might span years. The journey is deeply personal and unique, just as the way to go from the status quo to your individual desired state.

Furthermore, even after a mindset shift, mindset maintenance is necessary to avoid falling back into old habits. Regular introspection, continuous learning, and support from others through external view can be critical in maintaining a new mindset over time.

So, to answer your question: Yes, you can change your mindset. It's not easy, but hey, who said meaningful change ever was?

High Five & see you next time! 👋

Alexej

PS: to deep-dive into many more skills beyond the Agile Product Manifesto, read my previous articles:

In the previous issue, I explained how I see the first six of twelve principles of the Agile Product Manifesto, unraveling how they intertwine with the skills required of a product manager:

And in the issue before I tackled the skill requirements out of the five values of the Agile Product Manifesto:

In case you missed those pieces, I encourage you, to read them to get the full view.

Now, in this episode, I want to go through the last six principles of the Agile Product Manifesto and explore the diverse skill requirements beyond. You'll discover that a comprehensive skill set is essential for navigating the myriad challenges that lie ahead.

Whether you're a seasoned product manager seeking to enhance your skills, an aspiring candidate eager to step into the world of product management, or a visionary boss seeking to support the personal growth of your product manager toward a path of success, this episode is tailor-made for you.

Measure business metrics and focus on improving them beyond monetary results

🎯 The Skill: Business Acumen and Data Analysis

To fulfill the principle of measuring business metrics beyond monetary results, again the ability to leverage business acumen and data analysis is required. This skill involves:

1. Business acumen: Develop a deep understanding of your organization's business model, revenue streams, cost structure, and key success factors. This skill allows you to align product strategies with broader business objectives, identify growth opportunities, and make informed decisions that drive business results.

2. Defining relevant metrics: Identify and define key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your product goals and contribute to the overall business success. This skill involves selecting metrics that go beyond monetary results, such as user engagement, customer satisfaction, adoption, or retention rates.

3. Data analysis: Proficiency in data analysis enables you to collect, analyze, and interpret relevant data to measure the impact of your product. Learn how to use tools and techniques for data visualization, statistical analysis, and data-driven decision-making. This skill allows you to identify trends, uncover insights, and make data-backed recommendations for product improvements.

By mastering the skill of business acumen and data analysis, you can measure and improve business metrics beyond monetary results, driving sustainable growth and success.

Keep the Product Backlog clean. Backlog items age like milk, not like wine

🎯 The Skill: Self-Confidence in Prioritization Decisions

Mastering the art of keeping the product backlog clean requires self-confidence in prioritization decisions. Here's a breakdown of these crucial abilities:

1. Prioritization: A product manager must possess exceptional prioritization skills to assess the customer needs and business objectives, and prioritize backlog items accordingly. By considering factors such as user value, strategic alignment, and technical feasibility at the given time, you can ensure value delivery for problems you completely understood, and come to rough ideas later.

2. Decision Making: Effective backlog management relies on confident decision-making. As a product manager, you need to trust your judgment and make tough choices amid competing demands and limited resources. By analyzing data, gathering insights, and weighing trade-offs, you can make informed decisions that drive your product's success.

3. Self-Confidence: Self-confidence plays a crucial role in effective prioritization and decision-making, especially when it comes to kicking backlog items out of the backlog regularly. Self-confidence empowers you to trust your instincts, communicate your decisions effectively, and navigate uncertainties with poise. Having faith in your abilities allows you to lead with conviction and make timely, impactful choices.

By honing these skills, you can manage the product backlog adeptly, make informed decisions, and navigate the complexities of product management with confidence. Remember, maintaining a clean backlog isn't just about the organization — it's about confidently prioritizing the right problems to solve to deliver maximum value to your customers and business and leaving the rest behind for the moment.

Craft a go-live strategy early and work backwards

🎯 The Skill: Go-to-Market & Backward Planning

Crafting a go-live strategy early and working backward requires the respective capability of go-to-market and backward planning. Let's delve into these essential abilities:

1. Go-to-Market: A product manager needs to possess strong go-to-market skills to effectively launch a product into the market (only if the product launches, it can deliver value). This skill involves understanding the target audience, identifying key marketing and sales channels, and developing strategies to drive user adoption and market penetration. By leveraging market insights, competitive analysis, and customer segmentation, you can craft a compelling go-to-market plan very early during the development phase of your product that makes a successful launch more likely.

2. Backward Planning: Backward planning is an important skill related to project management that helps product managers break down the go-live strategy and the delivery scope into actionable milestones and tasks. By starting with the elaborated scope of the solution for the discovered problem in mind and working backward, you can identify the necessary steps, dependencies, and resource requirements for seamless product delivery. This allows you to align development, marketing, sales, and other activities to hit the market opportunity.

By mastering the skills of go-to-market and backward planning, you can develop a comprehensive go-live strategy that sets the stage for successful product launches very early during the development phase. Effective go-to-market strategies focus on user adoption and market success, while backward planning ensures that all necessary steps are in place to meet the go-to-market strategy with confidence.

Know your customer and users! Every product has both

🎯 The Skill: Persona Development & Utilization

To truly know your customers and users, a product manager needs to master persona creation and utilization. Let's explore this ability more in detail:

1. Persona Development: Developing personas involves creating fictional representations of your target audience that capture their characteristics, needs, goals, and behaviors. By crafting personas, you gain valuable insights into the diverse segments of your audience and can empathize with their perspectives. This allows you to distinguish between people who will use your product and who will pay for it. It might be the same person, but oftentimes it is not.

2. Persona Utilization: Once personas are created, a skilled product manager leverages them throughout the product development lifecycle. This skill involves using personas as a reference point when making product design decisions, prioritizing features, defining requirements, and creating product descriptions for marketing and sales. Personas provide a human-centered approach, ensuring that your product caters to the specific needs and preferences of different user segments and decision-makers for the purchase.

3. User Empathy and Customer Centricity: In addition, a product manager must cultivate the skills of user empathy and customer-centricity. These skills involve truly understanding the emotions, motivations, and pain points of your users. Actively seeking user feedback, and engaging in customer interviews are important activities to foster empathy and gain insights to validate your personas.

By honing the skills of persona development, utilization, user empathy, and customer centricity, you can deepen your understanding of your customers and users. Creating accurate personas helps you identify and empathize with your target audience, enabling you to design products that truly resonate with them and motivate customers to open their wallets.

Bond cross-functional teams around the product vision, where everyone is responsible for outcomes

🎯 The Skill: Cross-functional Collaboration and Leadership

To fulfill the principle of bonding cross-functional teams around the product vision, a specific skill required from a product manager is the ability to foster cross-functional collaboration and exhibit leadership qualities. This skill involves:

1. Communication and collaboration: Cultivate effective communication skills to bridge gaps between different team members and stakeholders. Facilitate cross-functional collaboration by fostering open dialogue, promoting knowledge sharing, and creating a shared understanding of the product vision and goals.

2. Influence and leadership: Exhibit leadership qualities that inspire and motivate people within your team. Lead by example, establish a shared sense of purpose, and empower team members to take ownership and contribute to the product's success. Use your influence to align team members' efforts toward the common vision and ensure that everyone understands their responsibilities and the desired outcomes.

3. Conflict resolution: Develop skills in early conflict recognition, resolution, and problem-solving to address disagreements that may arise within cross-functional teams. Facilitate constructive discussions, encourage diverse perspectives, and find win-win solutions that prioritize the product's best interests and foster a collaborative and supportive team environment.

By mastering the skill of cross-functional collaboration and leadership, you can form a cohesive and high-performing team that is aligned with the product vision and works collaboratively towards achieving successful outcomes.

Product teams are empowered by top management

🎯 The Skill: Trust Building and Relationship Management

To fulfill the principle that product teams are empowered by top management, a specific skill required from a product manager is the ability to earn and build trust and effectively manage relationships with top management. This skill involves:

1. Trust building: Develop the skill of building trust with top management by consistently delivering value, demonstrating your expertise in your domain, and maintaining open and transparent communication. Act with integrity, reliability, and accountability to establish trust-based relationships that foster mutual respect and collaboration.

2. Influencing and communication: Master effective communication and influencing techniques to effectively communicate the needs, challenges, and achievements of your team to top management. Articulate the value of the product team's work, and provide regular updates on progress, but also on setbacks in order to keep trust.

3. Relationship management: Invest time and effort in managing relationships not only with top management but also with other stakeholders. Understand their perspectives, goals, and priorities. Foster open dialogue, actively listen to their concerns, and address any issues or conflicts. But be careful: pleasing stakeholders but forgetting end-user needs and business value is not an option for the sake of a good mood!

By mastering the skill of trust building and relationship management, you can create an environment where you earn top management empowerment for yourself and your team. You’ll get support for your initiatives and get the necessary resources and opportunities to deliver the best work. In the end: you are sitting in the same boat and your top manager hired you and is paying you to drive the foundation for business development.

🤝 Reflect and Thrive!

You might have noticed, that the skills required by the Agile Product Manifesto are not distinct to each principle. Rather, the principles slightly hand over skills and a combination of them among each other.

To get the full benefit of the Agile Product Manifesto, I encourage you to think about these values, principles, and the specific skills a product manager needs in the context of your product and your business. Engage in discussions with your colleagues and peers and share your thoughts and insights. Reflect and get feedback on where you can grow. Collaboration and continuous learning are key to personal growth and success in the world of product management.

Always remember: as a product manager, you serve as the vital link between customers, end-users, stakeholders, business, and development teams. It is your responsibility to drive the creation and adaptation of products that bring value to the world.

If you have any questions, feedback, or topic suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out. I am eager to hear from you and ensure that each issue of this newsletter caters to your needs as a product professional.

Leave a comment

Let's continue this exciting journey of growth and learning! 💪🏻

High Five & see you next time! 👋

Alexej

In my previous issue, I delved into the Agile Product Manifesto (agileproductmanifesto.com), uncovering its values and how they connect to the role of a product manager:

In this second episode, I am taking a step further and starting to examine the skill requirements beyond the first six principles of the Agile Product Manifesto. As a product manager, you'll need more than just an understanding of the manifesto; you'll need a diverse skill set to tackle the challenges that come your way.

Are you a product manager seeking to enhance your skills? An aspiring candidate looking to step into a product management role? Or perhaps a boss or supervisor who wants to guide your product manager toward success? This episode is for you.

🚀 The APM Principles: Guiding Your Product Work

The manifesto provides a set of principles that can help you navigate the complexities of product development. Let me explain how I see each of these principles connects to the specific skill requirements of the product manager role 🎯 .

Creating value for end-users and businesses is what defines success

🎯 The Skills: User Empathy and Business Alignment

A crucial skill for a product manager is the ability to balance user needs with business objectives. So you need to develop both skills: the ability to empathize with the end-users and business acumen at the same time. By understanding user pain points and desires while aligning them with the business goals, you can identify opportunities for value creation and drive the success of your product. This involves:

1. Conducting user research: Proficiency in various user research methods, such as interviews, surveys, and usability tests, allows you to gain deep insights into user needs, behaviors, and preferences. This skill enables you to uncover pain points, verify assumptions, and identify opportunities to create value.

2. Analyzing market trends and business data: A product manager needs to understand the market landscape, industry trends, and business data. This skill involves gathering and analyzing market research, competitive analysis, and business metrics to inform strategic product decisions. By aligning market insights with business realities, you can develop products that meet market demand and drive business success.

3. Synthesizing user and business needs: The ability to synthesize user research findings and align them with business objectives is crucial. This skill allows you to identify the overlap between user needs and organizational goals, define a product strategy, and meet decisions that create value for both, end-users and the business.

By mastering the skills of end-user empathy and business understanding, you can ensure that your product is valuable to users and contributes to your organization's growth and success.

Frequently reorient to what creates value

🎯 The Skill: Agile Adaptability and the Value Radar

To fulfill the principle of frequently reorienting to what creates value, a specific skill set required from a product manager combines both: being responsive to change and developing a keen sense of what truly creates value, which I call "the value radar."

The value radar is the ability to sense and identify opportunities for value creation at every time. It goes beyond merely adapting to change and involves actively seeking out insights, feedback, and data to understand what aspects of your product are most valuable to users and the business.

Here are some key aspects of the value radar:

1. Market awareness: Stay informed about market trends, competitor activities, and emerging technologies. This awareness allows you to anticipate changes in user preferences, identify gaps in the market, and align your product strategy accordingly.

2. User-centricity: Develop a deep understanding of your target users' needs, pain points, and aspirations. Regularly engage with users through research, interviews, and user testing to uncover valuable insights that can drive product improvements.

3. Data-driven decision-making: Utilize data and analytics to inform your decision-making process. Track key metrics, conduct A/B testing, and leverage user feedback to verify assumptions and guide your product direction.

4. Business acumen: Understand the strategic goals and objectives of your organization. Align your product roadmap with the overall business strategy, ensuring that your efforts contribute directly to the value proposition and financial success of the company.

5. Collaboration and communication: Foster strong relationships with stakeholders, cross-functional teams, and customers. Actively talk to them, seek feedback, and involve others in the value-creation process. Effective communication and collaboration enable you to gather diverse perspectives and make informed decisions.

By combining agile adaptability with the value radar, you can navigate the dynamic nature of product development and make informed decisions that prioritize value creation.

Embrace uncertainty. Be bold to ask for forgiveness instead of permission

🎯 The Skill: Entrepreneurial Mindset

To fulfill the principle of embracing uncertainty and being bold, a specific skill required from a product manager is an entrepreneurial mindset. This skill involves:

1. Risk-taking: Embrace calculated risks and be comfortable with uncertainty. The ability to step outside your comfort zone, challenge the status quo, and take calculated risks allows you to explore innovative solutions and seize new opportunities.

2. Bias towards action & decisions: Be proactive and take initiative without waiting for explicit permission. An entrepreneurial product manager is driven to take ownership, make decisions, and drive progress. This skill enables you to push boundaries, experiment, and learn from both successes and failures.

3. Adaptability and resilience: Embrace failures and setbacks as learning opportunities. Cultivate resilience to bounce back from challenges and leverage them to drive innovation. An entrepreneurial mindset allows you to learn quickly from failures, iterate on your product strategy, and adapt to changing circumstances.

By adopting an entrepreneurial mindset, you can navigate the uncertain landscape of product management, embrace bold decisions, and drive meaningful change.

☝️ From my point of view the entrepreneurial mindset is a crucial personality trait an aspiring product manager needs to have or at least to be willing and able to gain. The right mindset is essential to succeed as a product manager, otherwise, it’s just the wrong job. Since I see an entrepreneurial mindset as very important I’ll come back later with another article dedicated to this topic. Stay tuned!

Saying NO unlocks focus to deliver valuable solutions

🎯 The Skill: Prioritization and Stakeholder Management

To fulfill the principle of saying no to unlocking focus, a specific skill required from a product manager is the ability to combine prioritization and stakeholders’ interest management. This skill involves:

1. Clear prioritization: Develop the skill of evaluating competing requests, ideas, or opportunities and prioritizing initiatives based on their alignment with the product vision, impact on user value, and business objectives. Effectively communicate priorities to stakeholders, ensuring that the team focuses on delivering the most valuable solutions. Since I started proactively explaining what we are working on and why, I experienced less Distraction.

2. Stakeholders’ interest management: Build strong relationships with stakeholders and engage in open communication! Actively listen to their needs and perspectives, but also be able to advocate for the product and make difficult decisions when necessary. Effective management of diverse stakeholders’ interests ensures alignment, manages expectations, and enables you to say no when it is essential to maintain focus.

3. Trade-off analysis: Understand the trade-offs involved in product decisions and articulate them to stakeholders. By considering the impact of different choices, you can make informed decisions and ensure that resources are allocated to the most valuable solutions.

By mastering the combination of prioritization and management of stakeholder interests, you can maintain focus on delivering valuable solutions while effectively managing competing demands.

Make assumptions and validate them as fast as possible

🎯 The Skill: Hypothesis Testing and Rapid Prototyping

To fulfill the principle of making assumptions and validating them quickly, a specific skill required from a product manager is the ability to conduct hypothesis testing and rapid prototyping. This skill involves:

1. Formulating hypotheses: Develop the skill of formulating clear hypotheses based on user insights, market research, and business goals. Hypotheses allow you to articulate assumptions and define measurable outcomes that can be tested. You need to be able to phrase exactly one main metric and the intended direction (grow or decline) driven by exactly one initiative or change you have in mind. I know it’s hard, but it helps!

2. Rapid prototyping: Proficiency in creating prototypes, mock-ups, wireframes, or MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) enables you to quickly examine your assumptions. By testing your hypotheses with real users early in the product development process, you can gather feedback, learn, and iterate before investing significant resources. I remember me approaching random colleagues on the office floors and asking them to try using my hand-made drawing user interface visible on the photo on my smartphone.

3. Data-driven decision-making: Use data and insights gathered from hypothesis testing and prototyping to inform your product decisions. The ability to analyze and interpret data allows you to validate or invalidate assumptions, adjust your idea, adapt your product strategy, and prioritize features based on user needs and preferences. Again, remember: findings from individual interviews and observed behavioral or process patterns are also data! Data goes beyond tracking tools or sensors.

By mastering the skill of hypothesis testing and rapid prototyping, you can reduce risk, accelerate learning, and build products that real users validate.

The key to innovation is to take small risks enabling learning and evidence-based evolution

🎯 The Skill: Experimentation and Iterative Development

To fulfill the principle of taking small risks for innovation, a specific skill required from a product manager is the ability to embrace experimentation and iterative development. This skill involves:

1. Designing experiments: Develop the skill of designing controlled experiments to test new ideas, features, or product enhancements. Create hypotheses, define success criteria, run the experiment, and measure the impact of your experiments. Exactly in this order. This skill allows you to take calculated risks, gather valuable data, and make informed decisions based on evidence.

2. Iterative development: Embrace an iterative approach to product development. Break down large initiatives into smaller, manageable chunks that can be iterated upon. Adopt agile practices to facilitate rapid iterations, continuous feedback, and incremental value delivery.

3. Learning mindset: Cultivate a learning mindset with yourself, within your team and organization. Start always with yourself, and then encourage a culture that embraces failure as an opportunity to learn, iterate, and improve by acting as an example. Celebrate successes and failures as long as they contribute to the learning process.

By mastering the skill of experimentation and iterative development, you can foster innovation, minimize risks, and continuously evolve your product to meet user needs and business objectives.

☝️ I see the learning mindset by the way as another critical personality trait a product manager needs to have. I’ll come back to this with another article dedicated to the mindset topic.

🤝 Reflect and Thrive!

You might have noticed, that the skills required by the Agile Product Manifesto are not distinct to each principle. Rather, the principles slightly hand over skills and a combination of them among each other.

To fully harness the potential of the Agile Product Manifesto, I urge you to contemplate the significance of the values and principles and the specific skills required from a product manager in the context of your product and organization. Start engaging in meaningful conversations with your colleagues and peers, sharing your perspectives and insights. Take the time to assess areas where you can further develop yourself. Collaboration and continuous learning are paramount for personal growth and thriving in the dynamic field of product management.

Remember: as a product manager you are the bridge between the people (customers, end-users & stakeholders), business, and development teams, driving the creation and adaption of products that bring value to the world.

That’s it for this episode. In the following episode, I unravel the remaining six principles of the Agile Product Manifesto and explain how I see them aligning with the skill requirements of a product manager. Read on:

Keep pushing boundaries, embracing agility, and driving impactful product development. 💪🏻

High Five & see you next time! 👋

Alexej

I'll start by examining the Agile Product Manifesto, a guide we developed for product, platform, and infrastructure teams that want to make a meaningful impact and create value sooner. In this and the next two episodes of this newsletter, I will peel back the layers of the manifesto and connect it to the skill requirements of a product manager.

• Are you a product manager? Then reflect for yourself where you stand!

• Are you an aspiring candidate willing to get into responsibility as a product manager? Check for yourself, if you bring some of the basics and if you are really really willing and dare to learn the rest on the job. I would be very happy if my content helps you with this.

• Are you a boss or leader of a product manager? Then check on the strengths and weaknesses of your employee, provide him feedback, and help him with an actionable hint to develop a certain skill to a level you consider necessary for the upcoming challenges. Don’t forget: people development is your job; product development is the job of your employee ;-)

So you found yourself and got the task? Great, then let's dive in!

📜 The Agile Product Manifesto: A Compass for Success

The manifesto begins with a powerful statement:

As a product manager, the role is instrumental in fulfilling this purpose. You are the bridge between the people (customers, end-users & stakeholders), business, and development teams, driving the creation and adaption of products that bring value to the world.

🔑 The Values: Embracing What Truly Matters

The manifesto outlines five core values that are crucial for the successful product development of agile teams. Let me explain how I see each of these values connects to the specific skill requirements of the product manager role 🎯:

Simplicity over perfection

As a product manager, you must prioritize simplicity in product design, ensuring that the user experience remains intuitive and frictionless. Strive to eliminate complexity, especially in tech, and focus on delivering solutions that are easy to understand and use.

🎯 The skill: Simplifying Complex Problems and Solutions

To fulfill this value the essential skill is the ability to simplify complex problems and solutions. You must possess excellent communication skills to distill complex concepts into clear and concise messages. This skill enables you to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and customers, ensuring that the product's purpose and value are easily understood.

Pursuing goals over executing project plans

While project plans are not bad at all and an important tool for projects, in product development your primary focus should be on achieving the goals and outcomes that drive value for your customers and the business. Be adaptable and willing to adjust your plans to align with changing priorities.

🎯 The skill: Goal-Oriented Thinking and Prioritization

A key skill for a product manager is goal-oriented thinking. You need to be able to set and phrase clear objectives, align them with all stakeholders affected (why this matters, I’ll explain in another edition!), and create actionable plans to achieve them. Effective prioritization and project management skills are vital to navigating through changing priorities. Adjust plans as needed, and keep the team focused on delivering outcomes that align with the product vision.

Understanding the problem over thinking of solutions

A key responsibility of a product manager is to understand the problems faced by the target users in depth. Spend time conducting user research, gathering feedback, and empathizing with their needs. This understanding will lead to more effective and relevant solutions for them. And for business.

🎯 The skill: Problem Identification and Analysis

An essential skill for a product manager is problem identification and analysis. You must be adept at conducting user research, gathering feedback, and applying critical thinking to understand the root causes of user pain points and needs. This skill allows you to define sharp problem description as the foundation for product requirements and design solutions that effectively address the underlying problems.

End-user needs over stakeholder opinions

Balancing the perspectives of stakeholders is essential, but it is more important to prioritize the needs and desires of your end-users. Act as their advocate, championing their interests and making them transparent throughout the product development process.

🎯 The skill: Stakeholder Engagement

A product manager needs strong stakeholder management skills. You must be able to actively listen and understand their point of view. Then, communicate effectively, and navigate diverse perspectives to balance stakeholder interests with the needs and goals of end-users as well as with business objectives. The soft skill of stakeholder engagement enables you to build relationships, negotiate priorities, and gain buy-in for product decisions by making end-user and customer needs transparent to them.

Measuring results over assuming impact

While it’s a good idea to start with an assumption, as a product manager, it’s an even better idea to rely on metrics and insights to evaluate the impact of your product or the product idea. Collect meaningful data, set clear success metrics, and leverage analytics tools to measure the actual results achieved, rather than relying on assumptions or gut feelings only. And remember: findings from individual interviews and observed behavioral or process patterns are also data. Data goes beyond tracking tools or sensors.

🎯 The skill: Data and Insights Analysis

As a data-driven product manager, you must have strong analytical skills to identify causal links and measure the impact of your decisions as well as the success of your product. Proficiency in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data allows you to make informed decisions based on evidence and insights. This skill empowers you to track key performance indicators (KPIs), conduct A/B tests, and iterate on your product strategy for continuous improvement by understanding the difference between correlation and causality.

🤝 Reflect and Thrive!

To fully benefit from the Agile Product Manifesto, I encourage you to reflect on these values, principles, and the specific skills required from a product manager within the context of your product and company. Engage in discussions with your colleagues and peers, sharing your thoughts and insights. Think about and get feedback, on where you could develop yourself. Collaboration and continuous learning are key to personal growth and thriving in the world of product management.

Remember, it's all about you in-between people, tech, and business — that's the reality of and the demands on product management!

That's it for this issue. I hope this trip into the skill requirements beyond the values of the Agile Product Manifesto has provoked your thoughts and sparked the inspiration for your product management endeavors. In order not to explode this issue I was only able to give a short overview. I could go into more detail on each of the paragraphs and probably will at some point...

So, stay tuned for the next edition, where I will start explaining how I see each of the Agile Product Manifesto principles connects to the specific skill requirements of the product manager role.

Hold on, before you go…please do me the favor! Since I am new to writing I would appreciate any kind of reaction and feedback on this episode and my aspired newsletter project!

Leave a comment

So, if you have any questions, feedback, or topic suggestions, feel free to reach out. Your input is invaluable in shaping the future issues of this newsletter helping other product professionals to thrive.

High Five & see you next time! 👋

Alexej

PS: in the meantime I published the 2nd part, read on:

Beyond The Backlog

🎯What skills you 🫵 need to succeed beyond the Agile Product Manifesto 📜 (Part 2/3)

Hi and welcome back to "Beyond The Backlog"! In my previous issue, I delved into the Agile Product Manifesto (agileproductmanifesto.com), uncovering its values and how they connect to the role of a product manager: In this second episode, I am taking a step further and starting to examine the skill requirements beyond the first six…

Read more

3 years ago · Alexej Antropov

Long story short: my first day as PO for CRM & Customer Dialogue at limango was January, 2nd 2017. BTW: Thank you, Thomas, for convincing and "selling" this position to me. Otherwise, I would not have found out neither the importance of CRM for the business nor all the tools & methods. And this is what I want to share now.

What does CRM mean for business?

During the last couple of years, customer relationship management (CRM) as business function became significantly important for every kind of online business. Between 2000 and 2005 it was good enough to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to generate traffic for the online business. Now it is still necessary but became common sense in product development and go-to-market measures of an online business. Between 2005 and 2010 it was good enough to buy traffic via search engine marketing (SEM) and other channels because costs have been very low compared to the classic offline communication channels. Then between 2010 and 2015 Display and Real-Time-Advertising (RTA) became more popular in order to allocate marketing spend more efficiently. As the number of online businesses and therefore the demand for lead generation via performance marketing channels have increased, cost per lead and cost per buyer raised to such a level where unit economics do not work anymore.

Nowadays it became inevitable to keep expensively bought leads active and engaged in order to get new leads into action, prevent churn of existing customers and increase customer lifetime value over time. These are the main business goals of CRM in order to get customer lifetime margin higher than customer acquisition costs. Important to know is that a good CRM strategy does not start after first purchase, but already after the very first contact.

A business can be sustainable, only if the company acquires right leads by good brand and performance marketing, converts this leads into customers, keeps customers active and repeatedly buying by good CRM. This can be measured by year based cohort revenues of leads, as Sven explained at NOAH conference (starting at 5 min 30 sec):

The goal is to keep the revenue from all leads, which have been acquired during a certain year, at least stable. This can be mastered by churn prevention combined with the utilization of own lead and customer base. If a business masters this challenge, then it will profit from a very low cost-to-revenue-ratio for marketing spendings. It is possible because communication to existing customers or leads via owned channels is significantly cheaper than performance or brand marketing ad spend needed to convince a very new customer to buy.

How CRM works?

In order to reach excellent customer activity, it’s important to communicate relevant content and offerings to the customer. Therefore being customer-centricand to know what my customer wants and expects is inevitable. But how do we know? There are two possibilities: guess or ask.

By guess, I mean all the BI-driven methods to calculate the probability for a particular interest using behavior data of the customer with my product or service. These methods in most cases might produce appropriate results and bring business uplift, but they are obscure from the customer's point of view on the one hand. On the other hand, such methods usually need a minimum number of behavioral data and also time to adjust recommendation results once a customer changed her behavior. Otherwise, my recommendations will hang behind the customer's interest. 

To overcome this it’s better simply to ask the customer for her preferences and interests. Using this first party data the company can satisfy customer’s expectations much better because it simply knows what the customer wants.

In order to achieve a valuable cost-to-revenue-ratio for CRM communication, it’s necessary to set up automated communication paths. The benefit of automation is its scalability: there is only a one-time effort to set up the path and almost endless profit with really low marginal costs. Therefore it’s not important to use as much data as possible for automatic segmentation and using as many variables as possible for content personalization. The most important thing is to set up a coherent communication strategy based on very few data variables along the customer’s lifecycle. This way the complexity will be reduced and automated communication paths can be set up based on each other for the entire customers lifetime.

The best results can be achieved by combining both worlds: automation and relevance. This can be done by introducing reminder services for customers. They work simply: the customer selects what she expects and the company reminds the customer as soon as the product or offering of her interest is available. 

The masterpiece of doing good CRM communication is to provide relevant content via the right channel and to be consistent with the marketing message for the particular customer across all channels this customer is using. From the tech and product point of view, the challenge here is to identify this particular customer across all the devices and channels. Exactly this is the reason why user login brings a strategic benefit for an online business. Nowadays it pays off if a company implemented user login 10 years ago, especially if competitors did not.

What is the Tech behind CRM?

End of 2016 and at the beginning of 2017 (only 2 or 3 years ago) it was hard to find a tool which covers business needs for outstanding CRM. In order to accomplish all the requirements for doing valuable CRM, the so-called MarTech industry has grown up during the last couple of years. Marketing Technologies have the purpose to give marketing and CRM managers the possibility to provide the right message via the right channel at the right time to the right audience and measure everything. The development of MarTech is in essence comparable with AdTech, which has grown up 10-15 years ago. At those time there have been an uncountable amount of Software-as-a-Service providers. They have been hard to distinguish and their positioning in the value chain was hard to understand. Currently, we can see the same tendency for MarTech. It forces companies to think and decide about their tech strategy in this field. A good CRM ecosystem should combine the following capabilities:

• Customer data platform (CDP) to store all the customer data in one central place.

• Automated data import processes to identify customer data updates in own systems, transform and update them in the CDP.

• Segmentation: this allows CRM and marketing managers to build their audiences by using any combination of segment criteria

• Campaign management system: this allows CRM and marketing managers to set up a campaign among different touchpoints and over a period of time

• Channel implementations which are necessary to deliver your message to your customer. This could be an email, an app push, a print mailing, a messenger, an on-site or in-app message or even a completely new unknown channel.

• Tracking & Reporting among all channels to enable data-driven decisions by CRM and marketing manager

What else...?

I am very proud to have been part of limango, which is one of the CRM leaders in Europe’s eCommerce landscape. Credits for this go to Melanie, Verena and Daniela - three power girls with a passion for CRM, who introduced CRM tools and methods to me during my 27 months at limango.

For me personally, it was an exciting ride through CRM and the tech behind it during the last 27 months at limango. I had no idea about CRM but only some about AdTech. There have been no best practices for implementing a state of the art CRM tech ecosystem. So at limango, we’ve been pioneers to implement something replicable and affordable by other middle-sized companies, which we realized as other companies started to approach us for know-how sharing especially last year. The increasing interest of other companies shows me: CRM matters and what we did was not bad at all.

What about your business?

Take couple of minutes and think about your current CRM strategy. Do you have one? Does it pay off already? Is your tech stack prepared to reach your customers among different and even yet unknown channels?