Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed a few trends in software development. Many of these trends seem to take on the characteristics of a pendulum where practices swing from way over bearing to woefully insufficient. Both extremes lead to difficulties for teams which drives to eventually find a happy medium. The documentation pendulum…

I like attending conferences because they offer a bit of insight into what others’ worlds look like. The insight doesn’t come from the speakers on stage, they come from the conversations at the lunch table. Although ironically, this story starts at the speaker’s dinner table the night before a conference. I was at a conference…

Do you work at a company switching from a project to a product approach (ie undergoing a product transformation)? If so, and that company is in an industry that doesn’t actually sell software products, you most likely work on ​internal products​, or you’re an IT Product Manager. You may also not really care what it’s…

Earlier this week I spoke at ProjectSummit*BusinessAnalystWorld in Chicago, a conference for business analysts and project managers. Given the audience, I figured Backlog Refinement: “Writing user stories” is not the whole story would be an appropriate presentation. As happened last week, there were some great questions that I thought I’d share along with what I…

I had the opportunity to speak at Agile + DevOpsDays Des Moines today where I delivered Filters not Buckets, prioritization for product people. In the presentation I described a set of prioritization principles and described how to approach prioritization at different stages of the Internal Product Lifecycle. You can get the details from the presentation…

A couple years ago I worked as a freelance product manager at an industrial distributor that had been pieced together after a series of mergers and acquisitions. As a result, the information about their products were spread across multiple systems. The company was trying to follow the industry’s digital transformation trend and every team that…

Last week I was at INDUSTRY 2025 and took copious notes on all of the presentations. My main motivation for doing that was because I was the “official” note taker for the conference. I also take on that assignment because it forces motivates me to pay attention to all the sessions. I find that I…

Here’s a description of how a team I worked with approached testing and dealing with test issues, as well as an explanation as to why we approach testing in this fashion. As a starting point, it’s helpful to establish what outcomes you should expect from testing. Thanks for reading InsideProduct! Subscribe for free to receive…

A common question in product management circles is “what books should I read.” Resisting the urge to mention my own books, or those few books that get enough attention already, I’d like to suggest a book that is particularly well suited for organizations most likely to have internal products. Sense & Respond by Jeff Gothelf…

In honor of week 1 of the 2025 college football season here in the states, I thought I’d share a piece of work advice with a sports angle. I’ve heard it said that the main purpose of managing up is to make your boss’s life easier. Sometimes, making their life easier means making your own…