What does it mean to “slow down to speed up”? — The past few months have been hectic for me, both professionally and personally. Following a long, hot summer filled with networking, work, travel, and more work — I found myself in need of rest. Unfortunately, I was in the midst of taking over a new team and had lots more…

How to use the right product metrics, and use them right. — In the world of Product Management, we’re often told that we need to be more data-driven. Sometimes, leaders from across the business will ask us to back up our decisions with some sort of metric. Where’s the data that proves this hypothesis? However, metrics are highly context-dependent. Data must be…

Exploring different ways to organize product teams — Let’s face it, there is no standard way to organize a company. Many factors like size, maturity, and capability will impact how an organization is structured — and it is no different for product teams. Although there is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, each model will…

How to give your customers a 5-star dining experience, not a $1.99 cheeseburger — It really pisses me off when I hear Product Managers describe their job along the lines of “I gather requirements from the customers and build into the product”. It paints the picture of a fast-food clerk endlessly customizing the burger order of every picky patron to walk through their doors. …

Healthy alliances can be a critical growth factor for business — Within product-focused organizations, I’m of the opinion that the role of widespread partnerships is undervalued, and can go unnoticed when compared to direct sales channels and proprietary products. In more dramatic cases, software-as-a-service businesses may shy away from forming partnerships until very late in their maturity. Despite various examples of…

Lessons learned while shifting paradigms at work —

How the L&D business has become a life raft in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — To quote the great Bob Dylan, “The Times They are A-Changin”. The short-term impact of the global pandemic is evident to every one of us as we sit at home, sheltered from the outside world. …

Hands-on command line tips for a Unix-like OS shell — Housekeeping Items 🏡 In this quick tutorial, we’ll be using the bash shell, but hey — use what you want. My personal favourite is zsh, which can be downloaded using homebrew — more on that tool another time. A shell is basically an interpreter for direct requests to the OS, using a command…

Exploring Different Types of APIs and When to Use Each — In today’s tech landscape, APIs are a hot topic. The rise of microservice based architectures opposed to legacy monoliths has further driven the necessity of robust APIs. With microservices, powerful applications are broken up – i.e. distributed as discrete components across numerous logical and physical machines. …