Jan Bosch
To state the obvious, product management is about managing products. Often, the product manager is described as the CEO of the product, expected to decide on everything that touches it. In practice, things prove to be significantly more complicated and product managers often spend a considerable part of their time on stakeholder management. Previously, we … Read more
The word “feature” is used in very diverse ways in the companies I work with and means different things to many. In some companies, it represents the key differentiation that we offer to customers and that helps us stand out from the competition. In other companies, a feature is a nice-to-have but rather irrelevant chunk … Read more
Normally I try to be very careful with predictions. As Yogi Berra so eloquently said, prediction is hard; especially about the future. When looking at the folks predicting the stock market, the data shows that their accuracy is about as good as random, or even worse. For example, at the end of 2022, many predicted … Read more
One of my favorite sayings is that you can do anything in life, but not everything. This is sometimes hard to accept as it requires choices as to what not to do. And if there’s one thing most people prioritize, it’s optionality. Making choices that close off paths that were available to us up to … Read more
Humans hate uncertainty. Even saying “I don’t know” feels very uncomfortable for many. There are very strong evolutionary drivers for this as our prehistoric selves experienced existential risk whenever they entered situations with high uncertainty. As a consequence, we organize our lives to maximize certainty, ranging from the houses we live in, the jobs we … Read more
One of the most obvious principles of product management, and consequently the first one we discuss here, is to maximize the return on investment on the R&D efforts that we put in. As we’re a for-profit business, the goal has to be that we seek to maximize profit. This requires us to prioritize those R&D … Read more
Engineering is concerned with building systems. We look at the requirements, design an architecture, do detailed design, implement, test and release. This may be a bespoke system for a specific customer, a product or a platform used to build other products with. Whereas engineering is concerned with how to build systems, there’s another activity concerned … Read more
Everyone loves to own a platform and use it to their advantage, either internally or externally. The notion of a platform communicates a perspective where there’s a fundament that we and others can build on top of. Without having to do all the hard, boring work ourselves. Instead, we can focus on that which is … Read more
As alluded to earlier, I work with quite a few companies in a consulting, advisory, board, research collaboration or other capacity. In many of these engagements, the discussion turns to what to build or how to extend the product with new functionality. When asked why we’re prioritizing certain types of functionality, the typical answer is … Read more
During my time in industry, I learned that every company has two cohorts of employees: the transients and the lifers. The transients would change company every couple of years whereas the lifers were on track to spend their entire professional life at one company. These lifers may have tried some other companies early in their … Read more
