Most product organizations have varying degrees of alignment with their various Go-to-Market (GTM) organizations. Best-in-class organizations have a systematic, organized process whereupon: Product systematically enables the GTM organization, such that the product value and differentiation is clearly aligned with and baked into all stages of the GTM process beginning with demand generation and flowing all... Continue Reading →
Quantitative Adoption Funnels and Growth Loops are for Everyone
I have found that it is the belief of many executives that investing in product analytics and measuring product adoption (including identifying up-sell opportunities, or growth loops) is something exclusive to B2C, consumer, and/or product-led-growth (PLG) businesses only. I would argue the counterpoint that these are for everyone, regardless of business type – and will... Continue Reading →
Get the Basics Right in the Eyes of the Customer with Jobs-to-be-Done
I can’t name any organization that doesn’t conduct some form of qualitative user research. However, very few do so on a systematic, end-to-end basis. This results in deep understanding within pockets, but no clear picture of how things fit together end-to-end from the customer perspective. My suggested alternative is to leverage the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) methodology.... Continue Reading →
Harder Core Product: My Theme for 2024
This post is about how Harder Core Product became one of my key themes for 2024. Last fall, as I started exploring new roles and ventured back into consulting/fractional roles – consistent struggles with the Product discipline emerged. A tighter, more demanding economy and marketplace are principal drivers. What became obvious is that there is... Continue Reading →
OpenAI Drama Seemingly Over; Microsoft Wins (inevitable); and Why Big Tech is a Builder’s Friend when Mission Criticality Matters
Yesterday Sam Altman of OpenAI announced that it was back to business as usual (not that they missed many, if any steps) at OpenAI, the board has been re-constituted, and Microsoft now has a non-voting seat at the table. Further governance changes are forthcoming to prevent what happened from recurring, as well as an investigation... Continue Reading →
OpenAI Developer Day and the World’s First AI Platform
A few weeks back, I surmised that now was the time for builders given the state of Generative AI. And, with yesterday’s Developer Day, OpenAI has completely upped the game on the entire industry on innovation once again AND reinforced the point that now is indeed the time for builders. In short, yesterday’s announcements evolved... Continue Reading →
Are product experiments going too far in 2023? A look at recent actions from Big Tech…
Experimentation has been a critical topic in product management over the last several years. However, an interesting trend I’ve observed in 2023 is that of taking experiments much further than in years past – and shipping some seriously half-baked products that were positioned to the market as being generally available. This is not coming from... Continue Reading →
11 Months with Generative AI; the Implications for Software Development
Next week, the world will have had generative AI within its repertoire for eleven months, as ChatGPT was first released on November 30th, 2022. Debatably, the world of computing has never seen such a pace of innovation and seemingly gone through the equivalent of a Gartner Hype Cycle in less than a year. My post... Continue Reading →
Using a Nest Hub Max with Google Workspace 2022 Edition
The instructions I had previously written back in 2020 now no longer work. After a few more weekends of trial and error I finally figured out how to setup a Google Workspace account with a Nest Hub Max that is part of my personal Google Home. Fortunately the process is now quite a bit simpler.... Continue Reading →
Setting Up a Second Ubiquiti Unifi Site
To finish out my misadventures in home networking, I wanted to capture the process to add a second site and setup the site-to-site VPN. It was less than obvious. Preparing Your First Site The first thing one needs to do is prepare the first site. This involves enabling Multi-Site Management and then configure the USG... Continue Reading →