Your product briefing
Industry analysis - Where is product management headed in the 2020s?
To borrow a line from the song, ‘these are the days of miracle and wonder’ for product management too, because, according to Google Trends data, interest in the topic is as high as it has ever been. But just ten years ago, the outlook for product management wasn’t so rosy. (Medium)
New product launch - Jira launches new roadmapping tool
Looking ahead into 2020, roadmaps will increasingly become part of Jira Software’s core promise to help teams plan, track, release, and report on their work. We’ll be focusing on further helping organizations aggregate multiple roadmaps into a single consumable artifact, providing better visibility into all the work happening in a business. We’ll also be exploring more ways to bring the roadmapping functionality to customers who haven’t yet started using our next-generation experience in Jira Software. (Atlassian Blog)
Podcast - Competing against luck
In business, mistakes of omission may be just as bad as (if not worse than) mistakes of commission — simply because of the loss in potential upside: new companies, new products, new opportunities for growth. Or even in the ability to respond to the disruption coming to one’s industry and company… if it hasn’t already. Sometimes, and in certain industries (such as hospitality and education), it just takes longer to pull off. Clayton Christensen and Marc Andreessen (in conversation with longtime tech writer and Backchannel editor-in-chief Steven Levy) share their thoughts for how such theories can play out practically in both managing business, and managing priorities in life. (Andreessen Horowitz)
Strategy - Why digital transformation is not about technology
A recent survey of directors, CEOs, and senior executives found that digital transformation (DT) risk is their #1 concern in 2019. Yet 70% of all DT initiatives do not reach their goals. Of the $1.3 trillion that was spent on DT last year, it was estimated that $900 billion went to waste. Why do some DT efforts succeed and others fail? (Harvard Business Review)
Process - How to run product strategy workshops
The product strategy workshop is designed to help product teams set the strategic direction of their business and product. During the workshop, you’ll decide on fundamental aspects of your product such as product goals, tone of voice, personality and strategic opportunities. If you’re trying to decide what to build next or if you find yourself in a debate with different stakeholders about competing priorities you’ll probably benefit from running a product strategy workshop. (Department of Product)
Metrics - Are your bounce rates accurate?
The point of analytics is to measure customer behavior. If we’re measuring bounce rates, we want to know when customers bounced, why they bounced, and strategize ways to keep them from being so dang bouncy. Colloquially, we define a bounce as anytime a user navigates away from a website after viewing only one page. But if you manage one of the millions of websites using Google Analytics, your bounce rates may mean something different. (Venture Beat)
New product features - Google Assistant adds ‘household notes’
In addition to household notes, the Big G is also rolling out a feature called “Scheduled Actions.” As the name suggests, the idea is to let you set custom schedules to turn on/off or start/stop any compatible smart device hooked up to Assistant. The feature will pair with Google Home, too. (The Next Web)
UX - Standards for writing accessibly
Writing chronologically is about describing the order of things, rather than where they appear spatially in the interface. There are so many good reasons to do this (devices and browsers will render interfaces differently), but screen readers show you the most valuable reason. You’ll often be faced with writing tooltips or onboarding elements that say something like, “Click the OK button below to continue.” Or “See the instructions above to save your document.” (A Note Apart)
Productivity - How to take notes whilst reading
The first purpose of notes should be to enhance your concentration on what you read. This is especially true when taking notes from written material, because, in most cases, you’ll be able to go back and read the original source in case your notes were incomplete. (Scott Young)
Industry analysis - Is venture capital worth the risk?
In the fall, WeWork, a venture-founded office-rental company, tried to enter the public markets with a forty-seven-billion-dollar valuation and the pixie dust of world-changing rhetoric, only to postpone the I.P.O. indefinitely when the valuation dropped by about seventy-five per cent and its lion-haired C.E.O. resigned amid disturbing revelations about his management style. Before that, there was Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing company, which, despite the absence of evidence that it could do what it promised, raised a mint in venture-capital funding—then, on the basis of that, hundreds of millions more—and Juicero, which, before the company’s abrupt shutdown, in 2017, had raised a hundred and eighteen million dollars for seven-hundred-dollar Wi-Fi-enabled squeezers of juice packets. (New Yorker Magazine)
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