Product Coalition

ProductCoalition, the leading global community for product management professionals, is delighted to announce the launch of its new brand identity. Transitioning from the iconic black logo to a vibrant pink version, this change encapsulates our renewed commitment to creativity, continuous learning, and the dynamic essence of product management. “The new single-line continuous style of our logo represents a never-ending journey of learning and growth,” said Jay Stansell, Founder of Product Coalition. “This line embodies our global community, connecting us all in our shared mission to master the craft of product management.” The innovative curl in the design signifies the myriad overlaps within product management—intersecting skill sets and the diverse stakeholders we engage with. This visual element captures the essence of our interconnected roles and the collaborative nature of our profession. Since 2014, ProductCoalition has stood as a heritage brand, dedicated to making the craft of product management approachable and accessible. Our informal yet professional identity reaffirms our position in the industry, adapting as the role continues to evolve. Returning to our roots, the pink colour harks back to the original accent used on our Medium.com publication. We are excited to embrace this vibrant hue, symbolising a return to the creativity at the heart of product management. “The original black and white branding represented the clarity product managers strive to bring to a complex craft,” Stansell continued. “Now, over the past decade, product management has matured significantly. In this journey towards maturity, retaining the creativity that makes our craft truly human is crucial. Focusing on the creative side of the craft highlights the human complexity, elevating the role above AI. This complexity is beautiful and should be embraced.” The original vision of ProductCoalition, articulated in 2014, remains steadfast: “The Product Coalition’s mission is to make mastery of product management globally accessible.”

At this moment in time, we have over 200 ideas in our backlog across our suite of applications. Each of those ideas represents anywhere from 3 days to 3 months of work for our product and development teams to fully define, build, and release. All said and done, we could keep our teams busy for 5 years with only the things we already know about and there are more ideas coming in every day. So how do we possibly prioritize this giant pile of possibilities? Here’s our dirty secret. We don’t. I know some of you are uncomfortable already, how can you possibly manage your teams and your workload if you don’t have the entire pile of work prioritized? How do you make a stunning 5-year long Gantt Chart roadmap without having priorities? Let me explain. We used to try to manage our entire backlog, using our crystal ball we’d look out at our pile of things to work on and say that Feature X (the one our big customer asked for and is really excited about) would be ready in about 8 months. Our sales team would go let our big customer know that their feature request should be ready in about 8 months and everyone would be happy! Then, not even 3 months later, our landscape would shift, as would our priorities. That feature that we were going to build? No longer urgent as something new had come up, we needed to reprioritize our backlog. Our sales team would go let our big customer know that their feature request was now delayed and it would be another 8 months before it would be ready. Now people were starting to get mad. The customer would get irritated with the sales team, the sales team would get irritated with the product team, and the product team just got irritated at the world for having the gall to change and not sit still for us for a measly 8 months! We decided to step back and re-assess how we were approaching things and what we could learn from this frustration. By Justin Hawkins Read more... https://lnkd.in/eyRBYN7U #productdevelopment #productmanagement

A lot has been said about the one-team mentality, the partnership between product and engineering, and the idea that working together leads to great things. But in reality, do engineers care about the roadmap? Or do they just want to build? After talking to and working with hundreds of product managers and engineers, I’ve found that engineers care deeply about what’s on the roadmap and bring a lot of value to the roadmap development process. But only if you engage engineers in the right way when creating your roadmap. And what happens if you don’t? Engineers can often undermine inadvertently and stall progress with questions, challenges, and a lack of engagement. So then, how do you best partner with engineering to develop your roadmap? Simple. Treat engineers as an equal partner in its development. Bring them in at the beginning. And remember that engineering (along with design) co-owns the roadmap and will be accountable for delivering it. Of course, I am grossly oversimplifying and, in part, joking. Yet thinking of your engineering colleagues as contributors instead of end consumers of your roadmap goes a long way. By John Utz Read more... https://lnkd.in/ePG9JWac #productdevelopment #productmanagement

As Bezos sat through endless meetings filled with lengthy PowerPoint decks and number-crunching Excel sheets, he pushed back. “How was this product going to be better for customers?” His MBAs were having a tough time getting there. Business schools excel at teaching people how products succeeded in the past through analyzing case studies. They’re also great at helping people become solid managers and operators. But historical analysis is bad at getting people to think creatively to design something new. Bezos sensed this and gambled Amazon’s future by changing the product development process. He was done looking at countless PowerPoint bullets. By Michael Goitein Read more... https://lnkd.in/egdhux3r #productdevelopment #productmanagement

Depending on the organization, the summer season can introduce shifting lifestyles and prolonged vacations that introduce friction to the product development velocity of a given team. With hundreds of moving parts designed to drive a business forward; the summer shift can impact the smallest projects, the shortest marketing lines, the most important process changes, or the largest dependencies. But, for most of the world, it’s difficult to maintain that same level of performance when that sun keeps slamming down, screaming at you to go out and enjoy the rays. How can we find that productive balance when it’s so easy to drop the ball? By Kasey Fu Read more... https://lnkd.in/ek2vBae8 #productdevelopment #productmanagement

People are happier when they’re not getting confused. And whether it’s in the world of product development or life in general, people crave clarity and understanding. They appreciate when information is presented in a straightforward manner, making it easy to grasp and act upon. Customers for example can immediately see the value a product offers without wading through product information that’s filled with jargon or ambiguous language. Clear communication not only enhances customer experience, but also builds trust and satisfaction, making it easier for people to connect with and invest in a product. In a LinkedIn post, Cofounder and Partner of FletchPMM Anthony Pierri 🎸, criticizes product marketers for being “pretty sloppy with definitions” as he described it, often confusing features and benefits. “If all the words are interchangeable, then everything means everything! And as a consequence… everything is meaningless!” He explains. https://lnkd.in/e9yEcQKj #productdevelopment #productmanagement

Given our limited resources — time, people, and funds — we can’t always build the ideal version of a product. Instead, we create a minimal but still functional version, known as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). If this MVP receives neutral to positive feedback from customers through usage, purchases, clicks, or ratings, we invest further resources to enhance it. If the feedback is negative, we stop and move on to a new idea, ensuring we focus our efforts on the most promising opportunities. To work towards a release of a fully coded version of a product, you must test key assumptions. This means that you must go through several tests to determine whether the product idea [1] is viable and can get stakeholder buy-in and financial investment. This is where the release and presentation of a proof of concept [2] to stakeholders is critical. Once stakeholders see value in the prototype based on the proof of concept [2], the coding and development process moves forward, subsequently leading to the release of a coded version [3]. Once your product team and stakeholders endorse the delivery of the coded version [3]. The learning and iteration continues as needed, as they continue working towards the release of the mature product [4]. Read more... https://lnkd.in/eDH-K2fw #productdevelopment #productmanagement

Imagine the stages in the product development cycle as a series of diverse terrains, each needing a unique approach. And your success depends on how well you read the situation and make decisions along the way. Every phase — whether it’s coming up with ideas, building the product, or launching it — has its own realities shaped by your team’s culture, the tools you have, and what your customers and business need at that time. What works in one situation might not work in another, so the team needs to understand the context and choose the right methods accordingly. To make this happen, it requires that you build a culture that values trying new things and learning from them, seeing processes as tools rather than strict rules. It’s about defining what the development process looks like for your team, using their strengths, and constantly improving how you work. It’s not often that we read stories online about how product leaders organize their team and navigate the product development life cycle, so when artem ivanov, Founder and Head of Design at product design studio ‘Other Land – Product Design & Growth’ wrote the article about the FoodTech digital products they’ve designed for clients — we wanted to see if we could uncover how the product development life cycle works for him and his product team. We reached out to Artem, and he accepted our request for him to shed some light on their approach. Read more... https://lnkd.in/e_ScCF7p #productdevelopment #productmanagement #ux #uiux #productdesign

Digital products designed with Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to reshape our retail landscape, and consumers are increasingly turning to their devices instead of visiting physical stores. In response, most retailers are actively enhancing their digital customer experiences in order to safeguard their futures. At a product management presentation in New York City, Soumya Shukla emphasized the critical need for retail companies to adopt AI technology swiftly and efficiently. "The pace at which AI technology is advancing means that companies can't afford to lag behind," she asserted. Shukla, who worked for AI solutions platform provider Voyager Labs, and retail customer platform provider Tulip Retail (now at Shopify), shared that while technology adoption is essential, other factors are also at play. Referencing Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, Shukla highlighted an observation he made about machine learning (ML) innovations in the retail industry. At the Internet Association's annual gala, Bezos remarked that "there is no institution in the world that can't be improved by machine learning." Echoing this sentiment, Shukla remarked, "Machine learning is not just a buzzword; it's a powerful technique that's giving retailers the capability to expand the usability of digital services." "ML innovations are leading the creation of not just new user interfaces and features based on what they've done already, but it also accelerates experiments towards building the next generations of products and services. We'll see the emergence of better search engines, voice assistants, image and video generators, and services designed to ensure the technology itself understands the nature, purpose, and value of retail products from the consumer perspective." Read more... https://lnkd.in/e3s6kpNi

If you’re a product manager and you’ve performed market research analysis, you’ll realise there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Back when I worked for a software development startup, I learned this the hard way. For as long as SaaS products have existed, product teams have been pushed to release features by clients because they see their competitors release similar capabilities. Our client at the time believed that their market was defined by going with the “feature zeitgeist” as they described it. The client’s desire was to win more of the market, and even when our collective intuition knew better, in the pursuit of keeping the client happy, we agreed to build a case for more funding to build this feature and perform a Total Addressable Market (TAM) analysis. I was good at finding target market statistics if I went deep enough into mountains of data, but for this project, there was little that gave me clarity. Every time I thought I was on the right path to discovering an untapped market segment, I would get there only to realise that I was looking for customer demand in the wrong place. Read more... https://lnkd.in/eQ7GJKjj #productdevelopment #productmanagement