Leading
Office Hours
Most product leaders have packed calendars, and this can mean it's hard to find time for quick, spontaneous conversations. Book set times each week when PMs know they can always find you.
Focus
Story Mapping
Use a User Story Map as a negotiation tool with the team to figure out what your product increments will be.
Product Councils
Form product councils for each of your main product areas. Hold a monthly, 90 minute meeting with 5-20 stakeholders where you share progress, present priorities, get feedback, and build buy-in all at once.
Leading
Short Videos
Does your team ignore written messages? Get in the habit of making quick videos, not more than 7 minutes.
Focus
Quarterly Delivery Planning
The roadmap is full of dates with unknown origins. Engineering is complaining about shifting priorities. PMs are surprised by and complaining about dependencies. PMs are barely keeping up with sprint planning and not providing their teams with a mid- or long-term view.
Strategy
Foraging for Strategy
There is no single set of strategic documents. The PMs are struggling to prioritize, or make prioritization decisions in conflict with each other.
Portfolio
Portfolio Grading by Horizon
You have a lot of offerings in your product portfolio and your spending on them is based on a mixture of tradition, emotion, and advocacy.
Leading
Change Experiments
You want to roll out a change, but that change involves other humans who have other things in mind.
Focus
Cost of Delay: Rank Work by Value, Not Effort
When build effort drops, effort-based prioritization stops working. Cost of delay ranks work by what waiting costs the business.