OKRs—objectives and key results—are a popular goal-setting technique. But can and should you use OKRs on product roadmaps? What benefits does this approach offer and are there any drawbacks? These are the questions I’ll answer in this podcast episode. To learn more, attend my training courses and read my book Strategize: https://www.romanpichler.com/training-courses/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993499244

For any business to succeed, it is crucial to make the right strategic decisions. To achieve this, you’ll benefit from using four different types of strategies: business, portfolio, product, and technology strategy. But that’s not enough. You’ll also have to successfully align the plans. To help you address these challenges, I have developed a new framework, the Strategy Stack, which I introduce in this podcast episode. Download the Strategy Stack here: https://www.romanpichler.com/downloads/tools/Romans-Strategy-Stack.pdf Read the related article on my blog: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/ Attend my product strategy and roadmap training: https://www.romanpichler.com/training-courses/product-strategy-roadmap/

Being empowered can make all the difference in doing a great job. Sadly, not all product people have the authority they need. This observation is hardly new, though, and just wishing for more empowerment isn't enough. In this podcast episode, I explain what empowerment in product management really means. I help you determine how empowered you are, and I share specific tips to increase your empowerment. To learn more, attend my Product Leadership Training and read my book How to Lead in Product Management. More info: www.romanpichler.com

Products often don’t exist in isolation. Instead, they are part of a product portfolio. Think of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, which belong to Microsoft Office. Such a portfolio benefits from having a dedicated strategy—a product portfolio strategy. But what information should it contain? Which template can you use to describe it? How does it relate to the overall product portfolio management work? And who should create and update the strategy? Listen to this episode to find out my answers.

Product discovery has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way to determine the right solution. In this podcast episode, I explain why you need a product strategy to succeed with product discovery, how the strategy helps you determine the right outcomes and opportunities, and how you can use the Product Vision Board to build an Opportunity Solution Tree.

Strong product leadership is crucial to offering successful products and enabling product-led growth. Unfortunately, there is disagreement and confusion about what exactly product leadership is and who should exercise it. Is product leadership limited to someone working as a head of product? Or can—and should—others lead in product management too? In this podcast episode, I share my advice to help you effectively practise product leadership and become great at leading others.

The GO Product Roadmap is a simple yet effective tool to help teams create goal-oriented, outcome-based roadmaps. Despite its simplicity, I find that it’s not always correctly applied. To address this challenge, I’ve created a checklist, which I share in this podcast episode and which you can download for free from my website.

"Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team," Steve Jobs once said. This insight also applies to product management: As product people, we can’t achieve product success on our own—we rely on the support of others including stakeholders and development teams. This episode shares my advice on how to foster collaboration and form an effective product team in order to maximise the chances of offering a great product.

The product strategy is an important product management artefact. But despite its significance, it is not always effectively used. In this episode, I discuss ten common strategy mistakes I see people make so you can avoid them and successfully leverage the product strategy.

The product vision plays a crucial part in achieving product success: It sets a shared direction and helps create strong alignment. Despite its importance, there are two competing views of what a product vision is and how it should be captured. In this podcast episode, I discuss the different approaches and explain which one I recommend.

To create value, product people, stakeholders, and development teams have to work together. But when people collaborate, things don’t always go smoothly, and problems emerge. As the person in charge of the product, you should address these issues and offer constructive feedback. That’s often easier said than done, though. Asking people to change their behaviour can be difficult, especially when you are not their boss. To help you with this challenge, I have developed a new framework, which I describe in this podcast episode.

Change seems to be the only constant when it comes to software technology. Over the last ten years, microservices, cloud-based computing, augmented reality, blockchain, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have emerged—to name just a few new technologies. But as product people, we are often so busy with getting new and enhanced features delivered that we risk overlooking new tech trends and being overtaken by competitors. In this episode, I share three tips that help you spot new and potentially disruptive technologies early on so you can take full advantage of those that will benefit your product.

The head of product role and the product strategy are often linked. But should a head of product make strategic decisions for individual products? Or would it be better to empower the product people to own the product strategy? These are the question I discuss in this podcast episode.

The product strategy is possibly the most important product management plan. But what exactly is it? Which information should it contain? Do you need a strategy for your product? How can you ensure that it is likely to result in a successful product and how do you keep it up to date? Listen to this podcast episode to hear my answers.

Scrum is not a product management framework. But it can be tremendously valuable for product people: It can help you make the right product decisions and deliver great products if it’s correctly applied. In this podcast episode, I share ten tips to help you maximise value delivery with Scrum.

As the person in charge of the product, you have a rewarding but challenging job. A key challenge is leading the stakeholders and development teams without being their boss, without being able to tell people what to do. In this podcast episode, I offer my advice on how to overcome this challenge, guide the individuals, and create value together.

The product roadmap is a great product management tool. But it can cause significant issues when it is not used appropriately. In this podcast episode, I discuss ten product roadmapping mistakes you should avoid to fully leverage your roadmap.

The product backlog is a simple yet powerful tool to capture tactical product decisions and direct the work of the development team. To take full advantage of it, it’s important to set up the initial backlog in the right way. This episode offers five practical tips to successfully stock the product backlog and lay the foundation for a successful development effort.

Making the right strategic decisions is crucial to achieve product success. If it’s not clear, for example, what a product’s value proposition is and what its stand-out features are, then it will be difficult to create the desired business value. But I find that many product teams do not use a systematic approach to create and evolve a product strategy. To put it differently, they lack a product strategy model. In this podcast episode, I describe the model that I have developed.

I was recently asked at a product management conference what superpower product people should have. I didn’t have to think twice and replied, “empathy.” This podcast episode explains why empathy is particularly important in product management and how you can strengthen your ability to empathise even with seemingly difficult stakeholders, customers, and team members.