Check out our suggestions below, you never know something might help you get your team behind a better way of working, get that promotion you’re way past due, or give you something to talk about at that job interview you’re going to smash.

2020 was a stinker of a year. Look up damp squib in the dictionary, and 2020 is the definition, but there are so many things to make 2021 a much better year.

So let’s dive in and see what new year resolutions for product managers we’ve come up with.

1) Level Up Your Product Management Game

This product management resolution should probably be on your to-do list all year round. It’s super important to look for ways you can iterate and improve – much like you would for the products you’re building. 

“Continuous learning, iterative improvements, and applying a product mindset in more and more situations before you get to an ideal state.” The words from our very own Wes Galliher on how to become a better product manager. You could also make time to upskill and check out some of the awesome training courses our friends at Mind the Product offer. 

2) Become Outcome Focused

If 2020 taught us anything, it is that sometimes, no matter how detailed and researched your date-covered roadmap is, something can come out of the left field and change everything. Why not learn from 2020 and use this new year as an opportunity to take a step forward and become outcome-focused?

Defining clear objectives and key results (OKRs) helps to align your teams around the same set of goals and understand what needs to be built next. Our CEO and Co-founder, Janna Bastow, has outlined ProdPad’s OKRs feature in a handy how-to video.

3) Make Every Team the Product Team

One of the more important product management resolutions, particularly for those of you working at product-led companies. 

Now with more companies remote working, we need to find ways to fill silos and get everyone working the same way and creating cross-team transparency. “But I am a product manager how can I make big cultural changes?”, I hear you say! Let’s break it down into three parts.

• Your leadership team won’t want to waste any more time so if they are still on the fence about becoming product led now is the time to show them the light.
• The product approach should be stretching across all teams including development, product design, and marketing.
• Get the whole team together (virtually of course) and play the Product Tree Game – it is a great way to get the juices flowing amongst groups.

4) Build a Better Roadmap

It should really go without saying, shouldn’t it? A lean, outcome-focused roadmap is a great place to start when you want to kick-start your product strategy for the new year. 

If you haven’t done so already, jump into our free Sandbox and have a play around with ProdPad’s product roadmap (without having to input your own data). You’ll also find this blog post on how to build a roadmap really useful, too. Or, why not crank it up a notch and have one of our product experts take a look at your roadmap for you by booking in for one of our popular roadmap clinics?

5) Connect With the Wider Product Management Community

The product management community is a friendly bunch and there are so many great folks out there that you can connect with and learn from. So whether you’re on the hunt for some advice, what to hear about new and improved ways of thinking, or just have a laugh with some classic product in-jokes, please make it one of your product management resolutions to immerse yourself in our community. We’d suggest following these product thought leaders:

• Our CEO and Co-founder, Janna Bastow, invented the Now, Next, Later roadmap. One of the leading product management influencers, Janna’s not only there to offer sound advice but is a great go-to for the latest developments and approach to the product management craft.
• If you want to talk and learn about product management best practices then Liz Love is the Twitter account for you. Liz knows the ins and outs for minimizing risk and ensuring you’re thinking about product management in the right way.  
• If you’re looking to improve your understanding of continuous discovery then give Teresa Torres a follow. Teresa’s account is bursting with insights on how you and your teams should grow your product and ways of thinking.
• John Cutler is a leading personality in the product community. He shares plenty of advice around product development, as well as high-level strategic thinking and approaches to some of the most complex product management pain points. 
• If you’re after some social media content from a product leader who also has a real passion for addressing the world’s climate emergency then Matt Stratford’s account is where you need to be. Learn how to save the planet and be a well-rounded product person.

6) Look After Yourself – 2021 Is a Marathon Not a Sprint

Now more than ever, we need to take time to make sure we’re okay. We’ve all struggled in the last year with a variety of worries and losses. In between these new year resolutions for product managers make sure you are taking the time to check in with yourself. Look after yourself because you’re awesome and there is only one you and that’s something to celebrate.

We asked the team at ProdPad what self-care means to them and what tips they would recommend adding in to your day to make sure you’re feeling tip-top and ready to face each day. 

There You Have It – Six New Year Resolutions for Product Managers

Thanks for reading folks! We hope you’ve found this helpful and that it got you champing at the bit to make 2021 a great year. We’d love to hear what you think – if you have any suggestions then sound off in the comments.

Some of these new year resolutions for product managers are easier to embrace with the help of our product management tool, ProdPad. Start a free trial to learn what we’re all about. 

The post Six New Year Resolutions for Product Managers appeared first on ProdPad.

I joined ProdPad in May 2019. With an ever-growing list of questions and limited Product Management knowledge, I flamboyantly and energetically dived right in. Throughout the last year I have had the opportunity to watch product demos, attend product management training courses, and meet product people from all over the world. What’s struck me most is that a lot of common problems faced by marketers can be solved with product management best practice.  

If your marketing team are pulling their hair out, or crying into a glass of wine at noon under their desks – thanks to stress, confusion and being avoided by the rest of the company – then maybe it’s time to make a change. Why not start thinking about how you can align your ways of working with the rest of the team in a shared tool? Your marketing team will be grateful for the support and structure it provides. Also, they’ll have a space to make valuable suggestions to the product. Marketers are full of ideas, so why not make sure you capture them in the language and structure the product team is already using? It might be just what you’re looking for. 

ProdPad keeps the marketing team focused 

It’s no secret that marketers can sometimes get carried away. If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard the words ‘scope creep’ in a meeting, I’d be a rich man. But marketing isn’t all getting over excited in planning meetings. You can pretty much split the sort of work we do into two camps; one is the day to day work like content, CRM and social, the other is the more ad hoc work like events or product launches. Measuring the success of either has its difficulties.

For the day to day work there is never really an end to it, so it’s hard to articulate to the rest of the company what you’re actually doing when you put “social” in your daily standup every day. There will always be; tweets to tweet, emails to email and all sorts of things that once completed on your to do list get replaced with the same thing for a different day. There are however different experiments we can do like testing polls on different social platforms to gauge engagement or A/B testing personalisation in emails. ProdPad is perfect for this – we can add all these little experiments as ideas and review how well they did.

When you’re working on one particular area like blog content for example it can start to feel like that’s all you do. Attaching blogs to a wider theme or experiment like increasing search traffic or targeting a new set of keywords makes the day to day work feel like it matters much more. It’s not just another blog anymore, it’s a bet you’re making against a wider objective.

The work isn’t any different but the way we look at it (thanks to ProdPad) is. Reframing the day to day work as part of a wider strategic initiative means we stay much more focused. We’re looking at our list of things to do and know that we’re doing the right stuff.

Product Marketing – How we use a Roadmap and OKRs

Our Marketing roadmap is the same as a product roadmap, we use the now, next and later format. Why? Because strategic planning is integral to success, so the format is perfect for marketing best practice. Each roadmap card represents a problem we want to solve, which is normally either grouped as a campaign or in some cases a collection of potential solutions to a question like “does feature adoption lead to more renewals?” or “which digital platform leads to a better trial to sale conversion rate?”

We have shared objectives with the entire company, because we all want the same thing, to make the best product that’s used by everyone. The key results keep us aligned and on track. Like Product Management, we only do stuff that is solving a problem – otherwise, what’s the point?

What’s awesome about working like this is it gives the team autonomy over our work. Liz (our CCO) has written about having a top down/bottom up approach to product management and it’s actually very similar to how she manages the customer team. We get directions/problems to solve from the senior leadership team but we get to use our expertise to decide how we get to the solutions. 

Having our roadmap in ProdPad makes it easy for the leadership team and the entire company to see exactly what we’re doing right now and what’s coming up in the future to support the wider strategy. This level of transparency stops us from falling down a rabbit hole, wasting time and resources on stuff that isn’t needed. 

We also love the completed column, who doesn’t love a nice big tick on your checklist? Once we’ve come to the end of a campaign we move it over to the completed column and identify what worked and what didn’t so we can iterate and learn for future projects. Sounding familiar, product people?

Collaboration

In-app communication

One of the things I love about marketing is that I get to work with everyone. One day I’ll be working with the sales team looking at how best to target prospects, the next day I’ll be working with the development and product teams to identify what features are ready to promote.

If you’ve met anyone from ProdPad in real life you’ll know we’re a right chatty bunch. Therefore, when we work together we need lots of ways to talk to each other. What’s awesome about ProdPad is we can use the in-app discussions on each idea, roadmap card or piece of feedback. We can also use our super awesome Slack bot to collaborate, too. It makes working with the whole team so easy and frictionless. I can talk to Design, Product even my CEO on whatever I am working on to get their help or expertise. It’s that easy.

Campaign management 

ProdPad’s Kanban-style workflow is probably my favorite feature. The workflow allows us to move various campaigns along, much like a product manager would move tickets/epics/ideas along towards development. We can see what stages certain initiatives are at so we know when to involve other teams, evaluate progress, or simply push to Trello. 

I manage the entire editorial process through this workflow. This allows our product experts to submit content ideas directly into ProdPad. The marketing team use the triage functionality to work out which ideas need to be written for the company blog. Giving us editorial control and giving the team visibility on how close to publishing their blog is.

Product Marketers will fall in love with ProdPad

Sometimes the entire direction, approach, and treatment for taking a product to market has already been decided before the marketing team can get a look in. ProdPad allows us to see what the product experts are discovering and testing at all times. This first-hand view reduces any shocks or surprises further down the line. It allows us to successfully manage our workload, and company expectations ahead of product launches. 

Marketers can contribute to the development of the product by logging ideas and feedback. I’m able to collect useful feedback when meeting customers and prospects at events. The information I gather might help the product team make ProdPad even better. It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to contribute in a meaningful way. 

Let’s also get real here, marketing specific tools are really expensive for more than one user. They live or die by the number of users you have working out of them. I have been demoed some fantastic marketing tools that would help the team with strategy, delivery and organisation but they cost an arm and a leg. They just don’t fit the small (but mighty) marketing team we have here at ProdPad. 

Having access to something as awesome as ProdPad feels like I’ve got the golden ticket. After-all, marketing and product management aren’t so different. We also spend a lot of time researching, looking at ways to solve big problems and delight our current or potential customers. Doing Product Marketing the Product Management way means that we consistently deliver kick ass strategy. We spend less time doing work about work, and actually do awesome stuff that is aligned to our wider goals. 

Don’t take my word for it. Why not sign yourself and your marketing folks up for a free trial?

The post Product Marketing Done the Product Management Way appeared first on ProdPad.

Our Idea Backlog functionality includes prioritization charts, idea triaging, and in-app conversations. Product managers can decide on the right stuff to build, before pushing specs over to their development team. This reduces risk, minimizes tech debt, and ensures that the right problems are always solved.

Watch our Idea Backlog tutorial

Who better to explain this feature than our CEO and Co-founder, Janna Bastow? Oh yes, after the success of our Objectives and Key Results tutorial we asked Janna to talk through our Idea Backlog, too. We hope you find it useful.

Book yourself in for a free demo with one of our product experts for more information. They’ll answer your questions and tell you how ProdPad can support your product strategy.

The post Video: Let’s Learn More About ProdPad’s Idea Backlog appeared first on ProdPad.

Avoiding bias or opinion when it comes to making a product decision

We get it, there’s often a lot of cooks circling around the product pot, particularly at large organizations. A product manager needs to make sure they’re putting the user first, not company stakeholders or those paying the wages. 

The ProdPad way: Our ideas feature provides a space to call out that bias. All ideas going into ProdPad arrive in the ‘unsorted’ section, giving product teams the time to nurture and develop ideas before deciding what to push through into the product backlog.

Aligning your decisions with other teams

Product managers need to be transparent with what they’re working on so everyone is on the same page. For example, your development team will want to have some idea of what’s coming up, your marketing team will want an idea of what content needs to be created, and the leadership team will want a broad view of the progress being made.  

The ProdPad way: We’re advocates of lean roadmapping which helps you explain the why to various teams. It highlights your agreed objectives, outcomes, and the problems your teams will solve. Publishing multiple versions of your product roadmap to various teams will align them around what you’re working on.

Defending product decisions

Once you’ve aligned your teams around the decisions you’ve made, you may need to prove why – especially to investors, who probably think they’ve got more of a say in product management than they actually have. It’s your responsibility to deliver the product strategy, but it’s also important to show your rationale.

The ProdPad way: Our impact and effort scoring within the ideas section of ProdPad can help you. After scoping out ideas in your product backlog, you’re then able to award each idea an impact and effort score. When triaging, you can identify which ideas are going to provide the most value before making the decision on what should be worked on. The in-app conversations feature on every idea can also help illustrate your reasoning and document your conclusions.  

Measuring and learning from past decisions

It’s important to make sure you have an idea of what good looks like before you begin building new features. Ideally, you’ll want to measure the success of stuff early, perhaps even when you’re testing hypotheses. It’s important to remember that sometimes planned ideas won’t deliver the desired result.  

The ProdPad way: Working lean means that you’re able to build stuff quickly, measure its impact, and iterate based on what you’ve learned. But how do you measure success in order to learn, you ask? Our Objectives and Key Results feature helps you to determine what good looks like and set criteria to benchmark against it. Once you’ve completed a project you can record whether or not you’ve met your objective, based on the key result. There is space to reflect on your original intent and whether or not your decisions helped you to reach your goals. There is also space to record outcomes in the completed roadmap sections. You can replicate success or avoid failure on future initiatives based on what you’ve learned.

Our team of product experts are always happy to jump on a call to talk you through ProdPad in more detail. Why not sign up for a demo and we can go from there? 

The post Four Ways ProdPad Will Help You Make the Right Product Decisions appeared first on ProdPad.

World Product Day 2020 was always going to be a little different, but that didn’t mean we were going to let it pass us by. We played to our strengths and brought World Product Day to people scattered around the globe.

Our virtual World Product Day booth was where the magic happened. At the center of this were the free, one to one, Product Mentoring Sessions that were available to anyone who booked a slot. ProdPad’s product experts had cleared their schedules, making themselves available to chat to product people throughout the day.

Our community jumped at the chance to speak to them. It wasn’t long before our team of trusty product experts were deep in a variety of conversations. They offered advice and guidance, made roadmap recommendations, discussed new ideas, made suggestions, were a fresh pair of eyes, and sometimes they were just someone different to talk to – whatever the topic, our team showed up and delivered. 

“The team and I enjoyed some really worthwhile conversations during World Product Day, and I am delighted with the response. Not only were we able to help people with their product-related queries, but we also got to spread our positive vibes and enjoy the day with our community. Yes, we advised. But most importantly, we celebrated.” Janna Bastow, CEO and Co-founder at ProdPad.

As well as booking in for a session, visitors to our virtual booth could also download one of our Handy Guides for Product People, check out some of our resources, and even learn a little more about ProdPad’s features.

World Product Day doesn’t need to end – you can still book a session

Who cares that World Product Day is over? We’ve received such great feedback that we’re keeping them going a little longer. Our product experts are still offering these valuable sessions to anyone who wants to have a chat about product management. 

Do you want to learn about ProdPad’s lean roadmap, backlog management, and feedback tools? Perhaps you’re after some advice and guidance for your own roadmap? Book yourself in for a session and we can go from there. If you just fancy a chat about best practice in product management then that’s totally fine, too. 

Fill in the below form to grab the last few slots.

The post The One Where We Celebrated World Product Day appeared first on ProdPad.

OKRs link to individual initiatives on your roadmap, with the functionality to track progress. Objectives help product teams stay outcome-focused and understand what needs to be built. Worthwhile conversations can happen around the ‘progress status’ of a Key Result. And, stakeholders can see why certain items are being worked on to deliver the product strategy.

Let’s look at ProdPad’s Objectives and Key Results feature

Our CEO and Co-founder, Janna Bastow, has taken time out of her busy schedule to give us an exclusive walk-through of this feature. 

Book yourself in for a free demo with one of our product experts for more information. They’ll be able to answer your questions on our Objectives and Key Results feature.

The post Video: Let’s Look at Our Objectives and Key Results Feature appeared first on ProdPad.

If you’re a ProdPad user or an advocate of lean roadmapping, then you can afford to feel optimistic about your strategy. Your roadmap doesn’t need to change. You’re still able to see what needs to be worked on and what problems need to be solved.

But how are you going to work remotely?

ProdPad supports remote collaboration and is used to align teams wherever they are in the world. For example, our Slack integration allows users to stay up to date with new ideas, feedback and important conversations happening in their product space. 

Ok, what about remote management?

When the Covid-19 measures were first introduced, back in March (we know, it feels a lot longer), our Chief Customer Officer, Liz Love, took to twitter to share her remote working tips.

We’ve teamed up with Venngage Infographic Maker to present those tips which were specifically based around managing a remote team.

Are you a product person who is managing a remote team for the first time? Perhaps you’re worried about how best to communicate with different people within your team? And, most importantly, do you want to make sure your positive company culture continues to resonate with your team online? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Check out our top 12 tips on remote management.

Please get in touch if you’d like to chat about how we can help you during these times of uncertainty. We hope the Covid-19 virus can be managed effectively to secure safety for everyone.

The post Infographic: 12 Tips For Managing a Remote Team appeared first on ProdPad.

We’re here to support our staff, our customers, the product community, and anyone else who might be struggling with a new working environment. You might be finding it hard to focus? Perhaps you’re worried about productivity? Perhaps you’re suffering from cabin fever, and want to scream into a pillow? Whatever you’re feeling during these uncertain times, we’re here to help. 

Working from Home and Self care tips from the ProdPad team

We got members of the ProdPad team to submit a home video of their top self care tip. We’re used to remote working and want to make sure that everyone looks after themselves. 

So from fashion to feng shui, here is what some of the ProdPad team practice to help their own mental and physical wellbeing. Remember, we’re always here for a chat. We’ve got this, people!

Sign up to our newsletter

Why not sign up to our monthly newsletter, The Outcome and our marketing communications. As a result we’ll make sure you are the first to:

• Hear about our upcoming webinars and product resources
• Learn about our latest findings, insights and recommendations 
• Get the lowdown – with news from the product industry
• See what the ProdPad team are working on, and which events we’re hoping to attend!

Be sure to get in touch if you’d like any more advice on self care.

The post Working From Home: Self Care Tips for Staying Happy and Healthy appeared first on ProdPad.

What we do know is this: we should be working from home if we are able to do so.

At ProdPad, we’re confident our team will weather the Covid-19 storm thanks to our unique ‘blended working’ culture, which embraces a human-first approach, and is centered around remote collaboration. We have the freedom to work from home or from one of our offices. Remote staff in the UK, Europe and the US, who are unable to regularly make it into an office, are still made to feel part of the team. There is a strong focus on remote collaboration, with all employees given access to software and tools to work away from the office. Everyone can be involved in meetings and workshops, which prevents feelings of anxiety and isolation. 

“We make sure everyone is included no matter where they are in the world. If someone needs to work from home, for whatever reason, then they’re still able to connect with the rest of ProdPad. We hold an annual offsite, and attend multiple conferences and events together – our company culture is never compromised. We don’t need a boardroom to be a successful team.”

Janna Bastow, CEO and Co-founder, ProdPad. 

So, what tools do we use to help us with remote collaboration?

We asked ProdPadders which tools they use to bring their remote working A-game. We hope it makes your remote working setup a little bit easier.

ProdPad (excuse the shameless plug)

The leading product management tool

Why? Because the best way for us to move closer to our vision is to collaborate on solving the right problems. All teams (not just our product folk) use ProdPad to align around our OKRs, understand our strategy, as well as make good decisions on what to tackle next. We get the same benefits as our customers – strategic alignment, transparency into upcoming work, customer insights, and the ability to work together regardless of where we are in the world.

Miro

The online collaborative whiteboarding platform

Why? We find Miro is perfect for team collaboration and group problem-solving. Consequently, we can use the canvas to visualize our ideas, plan workflows, and keep track of what we’re all working on. As Product Managers, we obviously love the virtual sticky notes the most! 

Notion 

All-in-one-workspace

Why? It keeps everyone aligned on our company policies, processes and useful information. We use Notion as our go-to hub of ProdPad knowledge. Therefore, we all know where everything is.

HubSpot

Our CRM

Why? Our CRM allows us to track all our customer conversations, and manage them through their customer journey. This allows us to give them a more joined-up and consistent experience. We’re also able to track and report on the success of our marketing campaigns and sales conversations, as well as deliver the right content to the right person at the right time.

Todoist 

To-do list solution

Why? This helps us all stay on the straight and narrow. When working remotely you need help focusing on the right things; Todoist helps us maintain a manageable task list for the day and the week ahead.

Zoom

Video and web conferencing 

Why? This allows us to have digital face-to-face meetings with our teams. Either on a one-to-one or group basis, Zoom can sometimes be the only face time our remote workers get with the rest of the team. Where possible we encourage everyone to turn their webcams on to enhance the video meeting experience. 

Trello

Collaborative organizational boards

Why? Trello allows our team to see the current status of different projects. We can also assign people tasks on various boards, which means they have a record of what needs to be completed. 

Slack

Instant messaging 

Why? Slack is the glue that holds our blended working community together. This is because we’re able to message our co-workers instantly, share documents, receive feedback, and connect with our ProdPad customers through our customer community. 

Sign up for our newsletter

Why not sign up for our monthly newsletter, The Outcome, and our marketing communications? As a result, we’ll make sure you are the first to:

• Hear about our upcoming webinars and product resources
• Learn about our latest findings, insights, and recommendations 
• Get the lowdown – with news from the product industry
• See what the ProdPad team is working on, and which events we’re hoping to attend!

Be sure to get in touch if you’d like any more advice on remote collaboration.

The post The Tools We Use for Remote Collaboration appeared first on ProdPad.