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…

I came all the way to Ireland this week to see a college football game that I’d usually see in a freezing football stadium in November. It also provides an excuse to spend a week seeing this lovely country in the lead up to the game. To be honest, the game is really just an…

If you’ve been reading InsideProduct for a while, you’ve probably picked up by now that I focus on solving the right problem and ignoring everything else. I’ve found that one, or a small series of discovery sessions are an excellent way to identify what that problem is and also understand the constraints you have on…