What do you need in order to be a good Führungskraft (a person with leadership power; executive; leader)? The framework no. 1 describes the responsibility of leadership, namely directing, managing, and leading. Framework no. 8 explains the function that leadership serves within an organization, namely creating clarity of intent, alignment of commitment, and autonomy of […]
Thoughts on the role of a product manager
Michael Siliski from Google wrote the post ‘The Role of a Product Manager’, Steven Sinofski commented on the post. I like both posts and have some additional thoughts that I put here. Links: The Role of a Product Manager Steven Sinofski’s reply My 50 cent
Writing off hierarchy is the wrong answer to the wrong question
I believe that very often the concept of hierarchy is ill-defined and misused. Because of ideological debate and personal ego, the function of hierarchy is not appreciated nor utilized where it should. Also, describing the transformation from a hierarchical organization to a networked organization as getting rid of hierarchy is misleading. There is quite a […]
How to unite management and team in product development
Product managers constantly have to decide what to build next. This is challenging on two sides. On the one hand, product managers have to get the real commitment of the development team for their decisions. As they have no formal power over the team they depend on the goodwill of the team members. Plus, it […]
Framework No 9: Auftragsklärung
Sometimes, a German word captures the essence of what you want to express better than any English word. Auftragsklärung is one of those. The best translation we came up with at XING is ACE: Assignment Clarification Exercise. Source In autumn 2014, we at XING started to experiment with a new alignment format for larger new product […]
Top 8 gems of wisdom from the ‘Mind the Product’ conference in London
For all those product managers who haven’t had the chance to attend this year’s ‘Mind the Product’ conference in London I have collected my top 8 insights from the speakers. I took the liberty to add some of my thoughts as well. In roadmaps, replace features or epics done by user problems solved. This will push your thinking much […]
