Customers are the people who give your organization money in exchange for some product (or service). In order for that product to appeal to those people, it should satisfy a need they have. If the product you work on for your organization is the thing you’re selling to your customers, the importance of understanding those…
Last week, I explained you can use North Star Metrics to measure impact. During that discussion, I pointed out the North Star Metric is a leading indicator of revenue. As I was writing that letter, I heard this nagging voice in the back of my head. All this talk of revenue is great, but what…
If you’ve ever been part of an organization that has adopted agile approaches you’ve heard some variation of this phrase from your agile coach/scrum master/SAFe consultant: “You must prioritize based on business value!” “Great!” you may have responded, but at least thought, “I’ll do that. Just as soon as you tell me what the heck…
When I meet folks who work on internal products, I often ask “What product do you work on?” I’ve also used that question in workshops to get a feel for the backgrounds and experience of the participants. I frequently get puzzled looks in response to that question and thanks to some feedback from Adrian Reed,…
When I decided InsideProduct should focus on the trials and tribulations that come from working on internal products, I figured I should probably try to get into the heads of the people most directly affected. One group of those people are CIO’s those sometime members of the C- Suite who have struggled over the last…
A couple of weeks ago, I shared my favorite decision making guide – the decision filter. That tool is particularly helpful when you’re trying to decide what to build, and how to build it. It’s not so helpful when you’re deep in the throes of developing and delivering part of your solution and the crap…
Back in 2019, I was part of team charged with rebuilding a pricing app for an agriscience company. We started our effort with a six week period of discovery sessions. Everyone on the team was new to the company and the industry, so those sessions helped us understand the business process, business rules, and data…
In a perfect product world, you’d know the outcome you’re trying to reach, and you’d have a clear metric to guide your decisions to get there. At least that’s what countless product management articles would lead you to believe. Most of my experience has been in a not-so perfect product world – perhaps a big…
The business analyst title has an identity problem. If you ask 10 business analysts from 10 different companies you’re likely to get a few (up to 10) different descriptions of what they do on a day to day basis. You may hear things such as: Identifying business process changes Eliciting requirements for custom software development…
In this session recorded in 2023 (prior to the Building Business Capability conference) I talked with Adrian Reed, Principal Consultant at Blackmetric Business Solutions, about my career journey and the evolving roles of business analysts, product owners, and product managers. I emphasized the overlap between business analysis and product management, highlighting that business analysts possess…