Questions to ask when you hear “we need to accelerate development”
No one calls me when things are awesome. Google and Facebook aren’t calling me. The people that call me need help and one of the most common things I hear is that they need to “accelerate development.” It could be that they don’t have enough engineers or their engineers are kind of slow. But there […]
Getting pregnant is a great way to scale your organization
I’m pregnant with my second child and I’ve got a few months before I go on maternity. My growing belly is a daily reminder that I’ve got to get my 40 person team ready to run without me for a while. In my first pregnancy, I was scared about my job, my career, our finances […]
Are you doing stuff or creating value?
Note: This was co-authored with Derek Tiffany and was originally posted on the 3Pillar Global site. You can put a bunch of stickies on the wall, create tons of JIRA tickets and commit code, but are you creating value? Is the work you’ve done helping solve a problem for your customers or helping to acquire […]
My favorite resources on customer and user psychology
Last weekend I taught a workshop at DC Web Women‘s Code(Her) Conference and I mentioned a couple of my favorite books or resources on customer and user psychology. These have helped me and I hope they do the same for you. Please share your favorite in the comments. Product Psychology Some of the top talent […]
Congratulations you’re a design lead or manager, here’s what no one probably told you
If you’re reading this, you are probably good. You probably are a talented product or UX designer who has done quality work. You know the latest tools, trends and techniques. People in your company respect your knowledge, creativity and your contributions. These are all wonderful things and they aren’t going to help you be a […]
Your methodology is holding you back
Agile, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Test Driven Development and whatever new and trendy thing out there are tools. They exist to help you to do something. They are supposed to help us be faster, make better products, be more people-centered, reduce waste or prevent errors. Too often we try to do these things with such […]
Don’t be afraid to have a vision
This is a slightly edited version of a message I sent to my team: Today a prospect told us his vision of digital transformation and asked what ours was. I don’t think that’s ever happened before and it threw us off. Luckily we’d talked about ideas on the train and I’ve spent a lot of […]
The truth behind scope creep (Take 3 Podcast)
I recently appeared on Take 3 Scene 16: The Truth Behind Scope Creep with my colleague Adam Hahn to talk about how there is no such thing as scope creep, it’s just change managed badly. The podcast was inspired by the article “Scope Creep or Just Change?” that I co-authored for Mind the Product. Image: Found this abstract image of […]
Getting things done Part 4: Manage the emotions
This is the third of a four part series, in Part 1 I introduced the framework, Part 2 was about understanding the people and situation and Part 3 was about preparation. In the final part we’ll talk about why and how to manage emotions. The number of people involved in a decision or change effort […]
Getting things done Part 3: Prepare Yourself
This is the third of a four part series, in Part 1 we introduced the framework, Part 2 was about understanding the people and situation. Let’s say you have a great idea for a solution to a problem that’s been plaguing your team and you can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t immediately say yes. Except when […]